Template talk:Working animals

This seems to be an excellent idea – thank you, Chiswick Chap! However, I'm a bit bewildered to see oxen listed under pack animals; I've never heard of a pack ox as far as I can recall. They're almost invariably used as draught animals, and I'd have started a section for those in the template – except that I don't know what should then be done about beasts such as the donkey that belong in both categories. What's best here? Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 12:50, 12 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Personally I see no reason not to include (major) animals or articles twice if need be. Pack Oxen do indeed exist, and of course they certainly belong under Draught as well. Chiswick Chap (talk) 12:53, 12 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Currently have a proposed containerization / splitting of the Category:Livestock guardians put forward. Looking at the template at present for the potential addition of this (and perhaps merging or more clear differentiation of Guard Dog from Livestock guard dog, it seems kinda unwieldy to keep having all of the specific roles of dogs and horses in the same group in the template. Maybe we can have two groups in the template - one for species, another for role? This would allow for the addition of some general role specific pages to the template which are currently missing, like pack animal. The role one could then include parenthetical links afterwords to refer to specific roles where we have a species and role specific wiki-page when it is especially unique, like for Search and rescue dog. Wouldn't see it as needed for species and roles where it isn't unique, like most pack animals Wcconey (talk) 12:11, 4 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I would support doing something but I think it needs to be carefully considered, the previous version of this navbox was a bit of a mess, dogs alone among species had their own section whilst probably the most prominent (today) use of horses (riding horse) was missed.

I would strongly object to any attempt to merge guard dog with livestock guardian dog, the first is any dog trained to guard, the second is a large genetically linked type of dog spread from Portugal in the west Tibet in the east, they just happen to be named after their role. Kind regards, Cavalryman (talk) 20:47, 4 February 2020 (UTC).[reply]

Yeah, wouldn't want to merge them as articles - but if there is anyway to be more specific about what is intended to be covered in the article guard dog that'd be helpful. Wcconey (talk) 00:58, 5 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I agree, we are gradually working our way through the various dog type / dog role articles, unfortunately there are only 4-5 active members of WP:DOGS so it’s a longer term goal. Kind regards, Cavalryman (talk) 06:09, 5 February 2020 (UTC).[reply]