To be a Spiritual Mutt is the only way to go. I say this, having owned, or been owned by, a great many dogs, and been acquainted with many others; virtually all the purebreds of my acquaintance have been either nervous, anxious, neurotic or borderline moronic in some degree; and all the most intelligent, well-balanced, courageous and friendly dogs have been mutts and mongrels of undistinguished lineage - as I am myself, both ancestrally and spiritually. (Undistinguished, I should make clear; as for the other qualities, time, as always, will tell.)
Inbreeding, whether of dogs or humans, with all of its unfortunate consequences, is the physical equivalent of obtaining all one's spiritual learning from a single source, or a small group of interlinked sources; the same applies to scientific learning also. To rely on just one source of information is to run the risk of becoming closed-minded, rigid, humourless, smug, shrill, fanatical - fundamentalist, in short. I have seen good friends, whom I once admired as intelligent and perceptive, become narrow-minded, spiritually arrogant, dismissive or scornful of any but their own opinions - and stupid. It was not an edifying sight.
It is perilously easy to fall into the single-source trap, the source that has "all the answers"; mainly, because it absolves you of the necessity of thinking; and thinking is hard work - perhaps the hardest there is.
Blessed Be, Fellow Mutts,
Alchymist.
