Genetic Diversity of Dogs

[GimmeBACON]

So I know I'm just overthinking this, but the genetic traits that define different breeds of dog are man-made; that is to say man found desirable traits in dogs and bred them so that they would develop said traits inherently, i.e. tracking dogs/hunting dogs. After the world got blown to hell, dogs were left to develop largely without mans interference, and so breeds would have been largely removed from the gene pool, suffice to say you won't be finding Chihuahua's and Pomeranian's 200 years later. The games lore also said that dogs were largely unchanged by radiation... but I'm thinking with the inclusion of the mutant hounds and mongrels, they likely changed that, so radiation probably did effect them.

 

So here's my question, how was the different games version of Dogmeat unaffected by the in-game world around them? Maybe there's a secret dog vault out there that got opened to the world and these well-bred dogs are being traded for supplies. Or maybe the institute is breeding and releasing well-bred and trained dogs throughout America with some kind of video/audio recorder to gain information on the world they left... maybe Dogmeat being at the Red Rocket truck stop was by design, and Shaun wanted to see how you'd handle the world above ground.

 

Naturally there's likely no canon answer, so I just figured to ask what others thought about it... ya know, food for thought.

[FauxFurry]

Unfortunately, the supreme silliness of a vault filled entirely with pets being bred and pampered by Mr. Handy units never came to be outside of empty rumors and speculations. 

The idea that The Institute made their own synthetic versions of the various dog breeds that they kept genetics samples of before the world is not wholly unlikely but not explored in depth,though. They did make Synth gorillas so it definitely out of the realm of possibility that they made synthetic dogs.

[GimmeBACON]

2 hours ago, FauxFurry said:

Unfortunately, the supreme silliness of a vault filled entirely with pets being bred and pampered by Mr. Handy units never came to be outside of empty rumors and speculations. 

Well yes, that was more a joke than a serious thought, but with Vault-Tec we can never really know... I'm just hoping there really is a vault occupied with 1000 guinea pigs.

[GimmeBACON]

Fucking hell, AlChestBreach played a NV mod yesterday and part of it discussed just this thought... I swear that wasn't intentional.