When I was growing up, I regularly read dog magazines, and I always looked at the classified ads of various breeds.
I remember seeing an unusual advertisement in one of the magazines: “Rare, white dobermans!”
I didn’t think anything of it. After all, people were mass producing deaf white boxers and nasty white German shepherds. How were they any different?
Well, what I didn’t know is that they were doing something quite different.
White boxers are true white dogs– the white masks either fawn or brindle.— and white GSD’s are e/e’s– a variation on the same color as the golden retriever.
White dobermans are albinos. If you look closely, you can see where the tan or rust kiss marks would be on a typical doberman.
And albinism in dogs is a bit more complicated that in other species.
Albinism causes them to have greater photo-sensitivity, which sometimes manifests itself in greater aggression.
The dogs are prone to skin cancer, as one would expect from a think coated dog with pink skin.
The genes that cause albinism are believed to be related to the genes that cause issues with the blood, kidneys, and liver. They also often have skeletal issues and missing teeth. This is very different from albino rats and ferrets. It’s also different from people with albinism.
As far as I know, no one has put a title of any sort on an albino doberman. (Obviously, conformation titles are out!)
There used to be a very good site on albino dobermans, but I can’t seem to find it. It was so good that the albino breeders are now putting up their own propaganda sites. (I’m not posting any photos of them, because they are all either associated with these unscrupulous breeders or their propaganda sites. Just go to Google Images and type in “albino doberman” too see for yourself.)
And you can still find the breeders offering “rare, white dobermans.” I guess if I wanted a dog to show off, I’d get one, but if I actually wanted a doberman, I’d get one of the more standard colors.
I’ve never known of an albino dog of any breed to be of any use– save St. Hubert’s May, a yellow Russian retriever (golden retriever), who probably wasn’t an albino at all!
This is just a gimmick. It makes money. White golden retriever, white boxers, and white GSD’s are all in the same vein. It’s a fad color. It’s just in this case, the dogs are more likely to be defective than the breeds that are normally sold for their pale pelts.
I bet that one could sell a normal black and rust doberman for a lot more if it carried the albino gene or was suspected of carrying. Wonderful.
This is on the same level as the freak show owner who wanted to buy a five-legged puppy.
No one in their right mind would breed a five-legged dog.
And no one in their right mind would intentionally breed an albino dog.
But if it sells, it sells. Who cares what happens to the dog?
People love unusual colors on animals. Novelty is a powerful force in the human brain, for some reason.
And dogs are very good at producing novelty.
Producing novelty meant that certain dogs got better treatment and more mating opportunities, so it was to their evolutionary advantage to produce strange coat types, colors, patters, and conformation.
But after thousands of years of selecting for novelty, then extreme novelty, I think dogs are almost at the breaking point. Those muzzles can’t get any shorter. Those coats can’t lose any more pigment. Those bodies can’t be any more distorted.
At some point, we have to take stock of what we’re doing to them.
I don’t think I could have said it better.
I first saw the explosion of white Boxers a few years ago, and wasn’t sure if it was due to the ‘rare’ phemonemon or if there was just more of an outcry against culling pups that weren’t an appropriate color, so they’d be saved and go into rescue. People also talk about their ‘rare blue Dobes’ as if they’re something special, not thinking about the skin problems that come with that particular color. And honestly, I’ve never been a fan of the white shepherds, even though I guess they now are officially called “American White Shepherds,” but I’ve never seen any in work that the regular GSD does. I’ve heard rumors that they have weaker nerves and can’t handle the agitation work(?).
And then there’s the ‘rare’ long-haired or red Rotties that come out every so often…the ridgebacks that are born without ridges…I’m as sick of color fads as the next dog person, but I’m wondering what makes them ‘rare’ or undesirable beside some breed standard (or genetic problems, obviously!).
The European version is called the Swiss White shepherd for white GSD’s.
I have no problem with ridgeless ridgebacks, because a ridge can be associated with dermoid sinus.
http://www.dermoids.org/
I don’t like fads, but the standards themselves often become fad-prone themselves.
In the last ten years, golden retrievers have become so heavily feathered that they can’t really swim with any efficiency or run in heavy cover without taking half the undergrowth out with it.
Oops, forgot about the ridgeless problem. I was just ticking off “Reason why breeders cull pups.” Thanks for the link. (There’s also the spina bifida problem too, I remember.)
This just reminds me of the Crazy Colored/Spotted Sport Horse breeders: just because the horse has spots or pinto patterns on it, they think no one will see the horrendous conformation underneath. Unfortunately, looks win out over form/function in that area too.
I thought true albino meant total lack of pigment which means pink eyes. If they have colored eyes they may only be partial albinos?
They don’t. They have pink eyes that look blue in a certain light.
Wondered about the white GSD. Here in Southeastern PA, the white GSD seem to have more normal looking backs and legs — not that horrible slouch that the bred GSD have that we all hate.
I was hoping that the white GSD was going to save the breed’s skeletal structure until sanity reigns again and that horrible slouch (it gives me the willies every time I see a GSD like that and as a child in Pittsburgh in the 60s, I was terrified of GSD — and for good reason as most folks kept them for protection.) is no longer bred for, but if the nerves are bad in GSD, that’s probably even worse for the breed. :-(
The GSD is being replaced by its relatives lower down the Rhine, the Malinois and the Dutch shepherd.
The white ones were a fad and always were. The working shepherd people in Germany didn’t want them.
Max von Stephanitz (the breed’s founder) is probably rolling in his grave. However, we still have the landrace herding dogs from whence the shepherd descends. He probably would tell us to go for those dogs or try to find working East German and Eastern European lines.