Wiston Cap was a most-used sire in trial border collie. Virtually all border collies alive today descend from him. In this case, trialling has reduced genetic diversity.
Specialization is so far advanced in dogdom that even among working lines there are divisions between trial and hunting or herding dogs. Whereas not too many years ago field trials were merely a way to keep a dog employed during the off-season, they have become ends in themselves. Trial dogs, be they pointers, retrievers, spaniels, setters, herders or hounds, tend to be as a rule possessed of high energy, drive, and speed. Some of the trials are timed event with scores awarded for the number of animals treed or flushed, while others require precise execution of prescribed tasks. Intensely trained and drilled, the dogs work close to their handler, taking direction from him or her.
Working dogs must be more independent. Situations on the hunt, the ranch, or the farm are considerably more complicated and subtle than those in a trial, where the goal is to make everything uniform so the dogs can be measured against each other or against a standard of behavior– for example, whether a retriever can follow a beeline for a duck on the ground and bring it back with minimal human direction. A super trial dog, trained to point one tamed bird at a time, might forget forget entirely what to do when in the field on a hunt it encounters a whole covey of wild quail intent on scattering to all points of the compass. Or it might face pheasants whose idea of fun is to keep moving along the ground, forcing it to hold point over empty space or to engage in a kind of moving point, which its handler has worked to discourage.
–Mark Derr Dog’s Best Friend (273-274).
The problem that Mark Derr is discussing here is actually a major issue with virtually any breed of dog that still has a purpose.
Not only do we have working lines, we also have trial lines. In goldens, we also have two types of trial lines– those that do dog sports and those that are used in hunt tests and field trials. The ones that do dog sports are on their way to becoming golden border collies.
Trials are contests by definition. Tests are trials without competition. Tests are based upon a modification of the trial.
But in many cases, I am not so sure that either are very good systems for evaluating breeding stock. They might be fun. The camaraderie of the community of trials and testers is very real.
I’m not denying any of this.
However, it doesn’t answer whether these things are the best ways to evaluate breeding stock.
That’s originally what conformation shows were all about. That’s why the AKC conformation shows require that all animals be unaltered–except in some veteran classes and junior handler competition.
I’m not much into games.
To be honest with you, I don’t get sporting events. I can’t tell you who won the Super Bowl, and I certainly can’t tell you a name of any Olympian.
But I do like dogs.
I have often argued about how conformation shows lead to narrowing genetic diversity in many breeds of dog. The super studs that win well in the shows have always wound up siring many of the puppies in each generation. Golden retrievers have a problem with what is usually called the “most-used sire” effect.
But I’d be lying to you if I told you this problem only occurred in the show lines of that breed. Indeed, the working lines of golden have this problem, and it may be worse. There are just a few really specialized lines of golden that really can do gun dog work at the highest level. It is almost impossible to find a working line golden that doesn’t have the Holway line somewhere in its pedigree. It doesn’t matter if you’re in New Zealand or Scotland. The Holway line is behind almost all working-type goldens. In the US, a particlar Holway (AFC Holway Barty) seems to appear in nearly every pedigree of working line goldens that I have examined.
Now, that problem is something worth discussing in itself, but I’ve done it enough already on this blog. My question still remains: Is this the best way to evaluate breeding stock?
Well, Labrador expert Robert Milner doesn’t think so. On his retriever site, Milner describes American trials and British trials. He’s not at all convinced that American trials are that useful for selecting breeding stock. Indeed, he feels that the selective pressures that make a dog excel in the American trial and test system are fundamentally changing Labradors.
Today a puppy form the Field trial and Hunting Retriever breeding pools has a 40% to 50% probability of being calm enough and cooperative enough that the average hunter can train him and keep him under control.
A great deal of the cause of this phenomena is the field trial evaluation process. Field trials are evaluating and placing value on the wrong behaviors. As explained in the field trial article, field trials have evolved into a game unto itself and bearing little relevance to hunting. The behaviors evaluated for field trials have little value for hunting. In some cases, such as staying in the water, the field trial behavior has a strongly negative value for a hunting dog.
Some of the field trial behaviors, specifically lining behavior, require a great deal of repetition and some pressure to train. The dog that does well at this type training is typically too hot for the average hunter to train successfully. Either our field trial process needs to change or we need to start telling all the hunters to get a PHD in dog training.
My only (very slight) disagreement here is that it isn’t the trial dogs that are wild and intractable. All trial dogs have to be.
But what about their brothers and sisters?
I first started thinking about this after reading Marley and Me. Marley is a good example of what one can get from trial quality Labradors in this country. He was a wild dog that even a correction trainer couldn’t civilize.
These wild dogs aren’t the cream of the crop from trial breeding. They are the cast offs. It’s just like how breeding for flashy markings in boxers produces white puppies. Breeding for Labs that are super active and tough enough to put up with the conditioned retrieves and regular use of the e-collar also increases the change of producing a Marley-type. A Marley-type is of no use to a working retriever person, and he’s a disaster in home (unless you write a best-selling novel about him.)
The trials themselves are not based upon real world hunting situations. The trial dog can be used to work, but it may have been trained out of its talents. I have often mentioned how working strain goldens, which are not markers but are excellent air-scent trackers, have to be trained around their noses to be able to do working retriever work. Nose is useful in the real world, but if nose causes a dog to break its running out line, then that it is a fault.
Now, this problem is hardly limited to retrievers. It seems that this problem also exists in border collies. Border collies are heavily trialed. Although the trial stock in this breed isn’t normally registered with a multiple breed breed registry. The breed has several working registries.
What’s interesting is that border collies are also affected by intense selective pressures to perform at trials. Most trial border collies have the most-used sire problem. Indeed, almost all of them descend from Wiston Cap.
If a show breed had this sort of problem, it would be pilloried on the anti-dog show blogosphere, but since we’re talking about a “functional” breed, this is ignored.
Blog regular Christopher Landauer has taken issue with some of the platitudes that exist in the sheep dog trialing community. Christopher’s blog is an excellent resource for those looking for some relatively unknown histories of border collies. As I also do, he frequently comments on dog culture.
Christopher’s view of the border collie is that it essentially exists as a trial breed. Very few dogs actually work vast flocks of sheep, because as I have written, there aren’t that many sheep in North America.
People like to “play shepherd,” but sheep themselves are not a major part of the US agricultural economy.
Offering a critical view of Donald McCaig’s Dog Wars, Landauer writes:
From Donald McCaig’s The Dog Wars, you’d swear that there were too few working dogs and too much work to do, thus the dire need to “save” the entire breed (all 35,000 new puppies per year) to preserve the working ability only.
But it’s not really so, McCaig admits. In fact, it’s the opposite.
Donald McCaig sings a different tune when he’s talking to fellow sheeple than when he’s pleading the case for his cadre’s supremacy. This is not a new tactic, one story to the ignorant public, another for the in-the-know hobbyists. Notice how his Dog Wars book talks all about the evils of conformation vs. sheep trials, since it’s easy to belittle the pageantry of conformation and it’s clearly not work. But he fails to demonize dog sport in the same manner (at least in the book). Dismiss, yes; belittle, certainly; demonize, no.
Why? Because it’s a hard case to make that Agility is not work. It requires smarts, training, and drive, the only thing missing is the sheep…. and that’s not a bad thing for 99% of us. But with fellow sheeple he talks all about dog sport being THE “Clear and Present” danger to the breed. It’s also hard to make the case that sheep trials are work, not sport. They are sport.
So it’s really not that different from pressures that dogs experience from the conformation shows. The goal is to produce dogs that win in trials. If they win, they produce a ton of puppies. It’s not whether the dogs work vast flocks of sheep in the Montana high country. It’s about winning.
And that is entirely consistent Mark Derr’s criticism of working trials. It’s not about working dogs. It’s about ego. The human ego is the worst thing that ever happened to the relationship between people and dogs.
Now, I do believe breeders do have to have ways of evaluating breeding stock, but these have to be based upon real world working conditions. Kennel-blindness is something that must be fought.
Robert Milner thinks the best way to do this is to develop a British trial system for evaluating retrievers. Of course, the majority of the dogs that are run in these trials are British trial Labradors. Other lines of Labrador are still run in American Kennel Club and UKC retriever trials. And if you mention Milner’s criticism to someone who is in the other system, it doesn’t go over very well.
The reason why I like Milner’s suggestion is that it might be good for goldens. Goldens don’t have the marking ability that Labradors have. They are also more sensitive to pressure, and one doesn’t need so much pressure to train the dog in the British system. Again, these types of criticisms seem to launch people.
And I’m not sure that Milner’s suggestion would entirely solve these problems. I think it would help to increase the average working ability of retrievers, and it would open up new opportunities for non-Labradors to have their working abilities fully evaluated.
But I still think this would not solve the real problems that exist within the fancy and the working dog community.
That’s because dogs are all about institutions and egos. If an institution is threatened by criticism, the egos that are caught up in the institution feel affronted. As you can see from some comments on this blog, it doesn’t even have to be a big criticism. It can be as innocuous as a snide remark in the comments section.
The ego is all caught up in dogs. If you’re not winning, then you’re losing. Your dogs are a failure. Your dogs are stupid.
But if we actually cared about their gene pools or whether these animals can do their work, we would check our egos at the door. We need a more holistic evaluation process for all working dogs. The goal should be to produce healthy dogs that genetically diverse and on average have very good working ability. The current system rewards breeding an elite, but elites are by their very definition a small number of dogs. And we know what that does to the gene pool. It reduces its genetic diversity.
And genetic diversity is a real problem when we start talking about the health of both working and show dogs.The trial system also is based heavily in the dominance model. The dominance model is going to die. Most people aren’t using it — especially the younger generation. If we want working dogs to last through the next century, we are going to have to transcend this thinking.
I seriously doubt that the trial system is producing the best thinking dogs that we can have. Problem solving isn’t encouraged in any working trial– except those for scent and sight hounds. As a result, we are not breeding the smartest dogs and the most efficient workers. We’re breeding the most subservient animals.
I don’t think that any of these structural problems help people purchase good working dogs, and they certainly aren’t helping breeders choose their breeding stock.
It’s all one big game, and the results aren’t that much different from solely breeding for conformation. It’s just a different set of selective pressures.
It’s the same bitter wine, just in a different bottle.
Great post.
The best part is McCaig’s own words which I quote in full and verbatim in that post. If you flip through the blogs of people who are involved with sheep trials, read about their dogs, and see that they are all related. This goes beyond the Wiston Cap (who himself was highly linebred on another Cap dog) disaster. The community is still incestuous in their choice of dogs.
McCaig is also a bit misleading when he points to a big time sheep outfit and says that their owner doesn’t trial but he gets his dog from trialing stock. All Border Collies come from trialing stock, it is the defining activity of the breed. It’s simply a matter of how many generations to the last US or Int. champion.
Really, if it’s about the dogs and not ego, why to the same few people use the same few dogs year after year in competition after competition. Especially the females who will have a limited impact on the breed anyway.
We’re both going to get lots of fun comments from this. I can feel it.
I was born into a family with Labs as “huntin’ dawgs”. From there, I progressed to showing Labs in conformation, competing in obedience, hunt tests, field trials, and rescue. I have lived with over a hundred Labs total in my lifetime.
I spent about 10 years studying hard to be a Lab breeder. I reasearched the subject nearly to death. I bought potential breeding stock, including importing a bitch from an elderly Swedish breeder who is not only an internationally known conformation judge but also a Swedish field trial judge. She got her original breeding stock from the Brit Mary Roslin Williams, pretty much the goddess of the Dual Purpose Labrador. (I ultimately decided breeding was not for me, but that’s a different story)
I also, as mentioned previously, have generally had a token Golden retriever, because I enjoy them.
Currently I have two field trial bred Labs, and one bench bred Lab deliberately chosen from a litter produced by dogs with breed ring, obedience and hunt test titles. And a 7/8 field bred Golden. The “show” part is a CH/MH with Open All Age points. I think field training is about the most fun you can have with your boots on. It’s a lot *more* fun when you’ve got a good dog and do well. I like high drive, high energy, intense dogs myself.
And you’ll be really, really surprised that I don’t disagree with you. The problem is that that which is good for the overall breed and the *average* owner is not what is good for the individuals breeding the dogs. I can identify some individual exceptions, but in general, it’s not human nature to check ego and self interest at the door.
Curious–what’s your multi-purpose Lab’s kennel? Always wondering that.
My Swedish dog? Alvgarden.
Ah–I was hoping it was an American kennel. Thankyou, though.
Oh, that one. Saddlehill. California.
what you mean it’s not all AKC’s fault?
I’m shocked…
I’ve come to the conclusion that the AKC is just a convenient scapegoat. What’s rotten in dogs is rotten throughout dog culture.
Oh no, don’t make me pull out my “Siding with the AKC” post.
http://www.astraean.com/borderwars/2007/10/siding-with-akc.html
I forgot what the estates are. Can you remind me?
It’s a very good way of putting this subculture within its context.
Entirely of my own invention:
The First Estate of the Border Collie is as a working stock dog.
The Second Estate of the Border Collie is as a conformation show dog.
The Third Estate of the Border Collie is as a dog sport athlete.
The Fourth Estate of the Border Collie is as a house pet.
http://www.astraean.com/borderwars/2008/12/third-estate-of-border-collie.html
fascinating essay, Christopher! My eyes bugged out at this:
“Donald McCaig mercilessly scoffs at dog toys”
That’s an approach to dogs that is completely outside of my comprehension. The view of dogs as ONLY workers that do jobs for us, only because we want them to and presumes that’s all they care about is not even antediluvian (since dog surely became dogs not just because of easy access to food, but for social reasons… including our willingness to give them love, treats and toys). I’m sure McCaig has some sentimental feelings towards his dogs, as he probably does towards any well made, high performance tool of the inanimate kind. But taken to extremes, his view is the death of dogs in the modern world.
Of course I support dogs doing jobs for us (assuming the jobs are legal and humane). But dogs SOLELY as workers without sentiment attached are doomed.
Somewhere between the deadend uselessness of much of the AKC show world and the hardheaded “dogs are tools” view is the proper middle ground.
in my .very. limited experience with field work….and I repeat….very limited….the Labs I saw were not under any kind of stim control. Now this was not high level work, it was mostly started (?) level dogs but that is where the basics should be really important, right? I mean isn’t this where you find the holes in your training and fix them? On the other hand my best friend just got re-married and although her new husband has a reputation for being an “obedience nazi”, he gets ‘er done. He trialed with American bred dogs for many years and just recently switched to the English bred dogs. Holy Moley what a difference in temperament. These dogs are still high energy but focused in a way the others weren’t. I’m certain that Jon won’t be going back to the American dogs. I don’t hunt so I’m only observing what I see as 1)poor training techinque and 2)probably high energy dogs that were never taught to contain themselves.
Just keep in mind that Robert Milner is very controversial in retrievers.
Any time I post something of his, I get those “interesting” comments.
Christopher said,
“Really, if it’s about the dogs and not ego, why to the same few people use the same few dogs year after year in competition after competition. Especially the females who will have a limited impact on the breed anyway.”
Some possibilities beyond the argument that they are proving the dogs’ abilities for the sake of breeding programs,
The dogs are good, and it’s fun to work with a good dog.
The dogs enjoy the work and the practice, and competition is the culmination of work and practice and an opportunity to fine-tune that work and practice.
The people enjoy the work and the practice…
It’s a culture centered around working dogs…
It’s a hobby that connects one to an agrarian culture that one values…
And back to, the dogs are good, and it’s fun to work with a good dog, and the dogs enjoy it. They were literally MADE for it. To deny them on principal is as warped as doing it for ego.
And leaving aside my horror at the idea that a great female has a limited impact on the breed (I would say they have a GREATER impact, and ought to be tested and trialed MORE than they sometimes are), why don’t the girls get to have any fun???
The girls are bred for it as much as the boys. I mean, seriously. What a strange statement. Many of the dog people I know are anxious to have a girl spayed, so that they can both go have fun without hormonal interruptions… Also, I don’t think one can say they they really understand working dogs until they’ve worked with many dogs of both genders. I love training my girl. It’s different. She’s taught me a great deal.
Just like some people don’t “get” competition, sometimes I don’t “get” why some who don’t get it don’t “get” it.
When you are training and trialing a dog, you’re working with good dogs, as a team, in a focused way, watching them do what they were born and bred to do, with people who are dog people who have something to offer you in terms of better understanding and working with dogs… It’s interesting and challenging and fun and full of dogs. Why not?
Besides, if one’s doing it for ego, one had best be prepared to be crushed. Repeatedly. By the best.
flattie-n-Labbie,
Those are wonderful points on why people do it (trial their dogs ad infinitum), but are they evidence that it’s work and not play? Serious business and not sport?
Existentially they are proving the dogs worth for breeding programs because winning dogs are quite often very heavily bred. So this is observable and true. But does form follow function here? Not if the function is to select breeding dogs. It does if the function is sport.
– The dogs are good, they enjoy it, human enjoyment, culmination, culture connection, made for it.
All true. And a good analysis of why we see people doing it. Also very applicable to the most active and successful people in disc sport (Frisbee), flyball, and agility, etc. And like those in sport, participation is most often subsidized heavily by income elsewhere because even with the few sponsorships you might find at the very highest level, the endeavor doesn’t pay for itself. I.e. it’s poor business.
– Great females
That even the greatest females have limited impact is an observable truth, it’s not some sexist statement about their comparative quality or any such thing. The top males can have thousands of offspring, and do. And producing puppies has little to no negative impact on their trialing careers. A top female is already well into her prime breeding years before she’d even be trained up to compete. Once proven, if you tried to maximize her impact on the breed, she’d have to be pregnant every breeding cycle until she died. This would most certainly harm a future trialing career, and I just don’t see it being done.
There are certainly dominant female dogs in sheep trialing (even the best dogs AND handlers are women). The female dogs just aren’t going to shape the next generation, for no reason other than the inability for them to be bred enough, even at the extreme.
It’s not about the girls not getting to have fun. It’s not about their aptitude on the field. It’s simply about the statistics of biology.
My observation that we see female dogs treated like athletes and not breeding stock (i.e. they continue to compete and dominate year after year instead of producing litter after litter) goes to my point that the form is following the function of sport and not work, and more sport-as-sport than sport-as-breeding stock identifier.
Ah, so little time…
For now–who produces the boy that produces the sperm?
The girl who produces three or four boys who produce the sperm is arguably three or four times more important than each of them, and that’s just in the first generation.
In Labs, everyone knows Lottie, Hattie McBunn, etc.. The stud might be the first thing mentioned, but the first question about ANY breeding is “What’s the bitch line?”
Again–maybe retrievers are lucky. We have field trials, hunt tests, upland tests, HRC, NAHRA… And we know our bitches. ;)
My longer reply is not in-line (it ended up at the bottom). But, let me make it clear that I’m NOT saying that a bitch (or mare, in the case of horses) isn’t as important in the production of good offspring as the stud.
I’m saying that they are genetically less significant to the shaping of the genome.
From what I recall of _All the Pretty Horses_, John Grady and Don Hector agree that the mare is of equal importance in the production of good offspring, whereas many breeders think that the stud is much more important.
This is not my point. Although it is something many breeders talk about.
This is like micro-economics, and I’m talking macro.
Yes. Stud dogs essentiallly shape whole breeds. In goldens, this dog is most influential to show dogs in the AKC: http://www.gold-rushgoldens.com/charlie.html and this dog is most influential in developing the field lines:http://topbrass-retrievers.com/barty.htm
Dams just can’t have that many offspring.
Oh, all right, all right. I get it.
Ever read all the pretty horses by Cormac McCarthy?
The main character, John Grady Cole, is hired on at a big hacienda in Mexico to advise the ranch owner how to select breeding stock. One of the discussions they have is about selecting mares for breeding stock.
I have been participating in the herding “trial” scene for a couple of decades now, and I agree. I’m not sure what the solution is regarding competitions — every program I’ve seen tends to gravitate towards encouraging specialist breeding and “top winners” (both handlers and dogs). Frankly, one should be selecting from among about 40% of the gene pool, not the “top 10%”. And the characteristics that tend to make for the “top winner” often aren’t condusive to pets or other functions. I’ve tried myself to have a “pet” that also was a highly competitive dog, and it CAN be done, but it’s truckloads harder than doing it with a specialist dog. It requires the breeder to be dedicated to doing both.
You can try creating more realistic scenarios for “trials”, including having ones that vary from event to event. American Herding Breed Assn does that with their HRD courses, but it’s still the case that it’s “a trial” and things that might exist in the real world aren’t permitted. You could try to require a more “rounded” dog — CGCs, or some other temperament /pet test, but you’d get howls of protest from the specialists. Even in the “BC” world, you don’t generally see the SAME dog running in the cattle and the sheep events in USBCHA in the top open dogs.
I live in one of the few areas where sheep really are a significant part of the economy in the US (Kern county, California) — but even here, cattle are equal if not more important. What’s interesting is that those people who do “hobby” or “family farming” with 20 or so head of livestock generally don’t want a trial dog. They want something a lot more low key that will HELP manage the stock but be most often a pet that happens to live “on the farm”. They don’t want or need something they have to work every day nor something that will constantly be after working the stock when it isn’t needed.
In AKC at least, many of those into the herding program have a pet that they want to enjoy and compete with. They get discouraged when competing with those who are in it for the “win”. Generally, the “pet” folk gravitate out of herding and into other sports or do NOTHING further with their dog. It’s not beneficial to the breeds in general and it certainly isn’t beneficial for the individual and their relationship with their dog. I don’t know how you get around that. It’s not that herding should be “sheep are dumbells for the dog” but neither should it always be a cutthroat “I win only if you lose” system. There’s a push in AKC herding to “raise the bar” and one rep has been reported to state that trials will be using “range sheep” and competing with USBCHA by 2020. That might be fine for the few “top” competitors. It will be an unmitigated disaster for the majority of those who are out there to work their dogs to see what the dog can do and it won’t be much good for the various AKC herding breeds — who all differ from each other in various ways every bit as much as Goldens do from Labradors or even differ as much as Springers do from Pointers or Retrievers. Obedience was created in AKC as a “fun” way to demonstrate a well mannered dog. It’s gravitated far far from that now. But I don’t know how you stop that, let alone reverse it.
vr, Peggy Richter
I guess in retrievers, we’re lucky to have the hunt test program.
I am an amateur with a full-time job (though summers mostly off), who reached Master with a good training group and a modest number of private lessons with a good retriever pro and the same with a practical obedience pro. It was challenging, for sure, but that was what was fun. While I’m NOW looking forward to eventually being able to trial, I’m not sure how I would have felt had that been my only venue for competition with my first dog.
As for getting the all-around dog… I looked very, very hard for a breeder that had that as a priority. I wasn’t disappointed. The onus is on the consumer as much as on the breeder, I think. I don’t have a clue as to whether this is possible in herding breeds… again, I guess I’m lucky I love retrievers.
I was wondering what you were going to think about this– I knew you have herding Groenendaels.
Peggy –
I read that four or five times to let it all soak in. Thanks.
I write what I do in my blog because I think it’s the truth, and it’s often discouraging to me that so few people will agree in public. Maybe my non-fiction just isn’t as entertaining as the fairy tale that conformation culture thrives on or the “inspired by true events” world of sheep trialing.
I’m amused that so many in the sheep trialing world know OF me, but don’t actually know what I really say. Just that I’m eeeeevil. Which is ironic, because everything I have to say is published and free to read by all. I’m afraid that until people who have credibility within the system and not just powers of logic and observation, start saying the same things I do, things aren’t going to change at all.
A female who produces 4 good boys is only twice as influential in total as any individual son. 4*(1/2) = 2.
I haven’t seen anyone run the numbers on your breed, but the numbers have been run on Border Collies. And as you say, people have written books about influential females, but their fame and the perception of their influence exceeds the reality of their influence.
http://www.bcdb.info/article1/WSN1c.htm
“For bitches it is more difficult to become a ‘key dog’ because of the limited direct offspring they can produce themselves. Only one bitch meets the key criteria. John Kirk’s Nell 3514 is even on a prominent third place, despite the fact that she never ran an International. Only 5 other key dogs did not compete in an International, see table 1.”
“Some of the key bitches mentioned by Sheila Grew have a really small influence.”
I will read it.
I still thing girls are just as important. Perhaps I’m biased, being a bit of a bitch myself at times.
The contributions of One FEMALE:
For one litter:
Important: YES.
Influential: YES.
… to say otherwise is sexism.
For the breed genome:
Important: Yes.
Influential: NO.
… to say otherwise denies observable facts.
It’s not sexism at all. Male dogs just have more sperm than bitches have eggs.
The number of sperm vs. eggs isn’t the issue. It’s the number of puppies that an individual can produce. A bitch is unlikely to have more than a few litters (responsible breeders usually limit the number to two or three litters during a bitches’ lifetime,) but a dog can sire hundreds of litters.
Popular sires or frequently used sires can have a huge impact on a breed.
Here’s a list of all ISDS border collies with over 100 puppies.
http://www.bcdb.info/pupsperdog.htm
What we need is a documentary called “The Dog Culture Exposed.”
Forget about Pedigree Dogs Exposed. That’s just one subculture.
That’s exactly right.
Thanks to some popular studs, breeds have illnesses they have inherited from their super-dads.
I think it is not good to use a stud 200 hundered time or so. It is, simply, milling.
Milling is a problem, but this problem comes from serious hobbyists, people who actually know about dogs.
Of course, Peter Griffin thought dogs laid eggs.
Flat’n flabbie, that importance of sire and “the founder effect” is purely artificial of course, ie. man-made by judging the valuable standards and selecting the best dogs along those.
In the nature, or if dogs would breed freely, no such an effect could come out of course. The dam and sire are have the equal importance, what comes to the size, the look, the abilities etc. of the pups.
Um – Bridget? It’s flattie-n-Labbie .
Ooh, really? I’ve made that same mistake before! I tho know have problems with personal names in everyday communication.
Appologizes goes here to flattie-n-Labbie!
That made me laugh.
I’m not flat, but I’m pretty flabbie! I wouldn’t worry about it, Bridget. :)
You’re too kind. Me flabby too!
Yeah. You need have a lotta material to rank and choose from!
The history of dog breeding is a factory, aiming to produce a perfect product to meet the tastes of the judges and audience.
In a factory, you need a lot of raw material (dogs) and as much control (sertification and the breeding operations).
Some experts have said that important genes are lost when concentraiting on few studs within a line / breed.
That’s exactly what has happened. Golden retrievers in particular.
You don’t need to be an expert, you can just run the numbers. Inbreeding causes a decrease in the actual genome versus the number of actual individuals. For instance, you can have 10 dogs in your gene pool that are all very diverse genetically. Another breed can have 100 dogs but still only have the genetic diversity of 10 dogs.
Don’t quote me, but I sort of remember that the Border Collie genome is comparable to the genomes of 8 individual dogs. JUST 8 DOGS.
http://www.bcdb.info/article1/WSN1c4.htm
When you linebreed so much, you create rather interesting situations. For instance, you might say that you are 50% related to your father and 50% related to your mother.
This is a pretty good ASSUMPTION if you’re dealing with a diverse gene pool. While it’s true that you always get 50% of your genes from each parent, it doesn’t mean you’re 50% related if some of the genes from mom match what dad would have given you in his half.
So…. if your father is also your mother’s father (happens all the time in dogs), then your mother is 50% Father, and she’ll pass on ~25% of that to you. Your father gives you 50% and boom, suddenly you’re more related to your father than normal.
Technically, a father could have two sons who are both 100% related to him, and 0% related to each other. That would happen if all of the father’s genes were Aa, and one son was AA and the other was aa. This is not going to happen though, because the purpose of most inbreeding is to remove “carrier” status and have all genes homozygous, so that parents are guaranteed to pass along every trait.
This drives up that “related” number higher faster too.
I knew it was a problem.
I didn’t know how severe it was!
Serious business. After making a “good” product, the next step is to put up a factory and start the line to copy, copy, copy..
“Copy, copy, copy,… ” you say?
Why yes, I have that one covered too:
http://www.astraean.com/borderwars/2008/09/embrace-cloning.html
If they figure out gene splicing, I would be even happier.
True that. I’ve said a ton of times that the only real way to save most of our breeds is going to be gene splicing.
Actually with that “copying”, I was referring to the so called stud-effect.
And I’m against the dam-effect also, as you can guess.
The problem with dams is that too few are used in total. Very few female dogs in any population (at least here) get to breed.
So what you have is a few studs producing most of the puppies out of a very small number of bitches.
The most-sued stud effect is much more common and noticeable.
Very few dogs are bred on from, period. In the UK it is only twenty percent of each litter. That is one of the reasons why those population studies that show how many dogs the entire population is equal to, genetically, have such small numbers: the really small number of dogs in any given population that are actually ‘breeding dogs.’
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A small nitpick: lure-coursing, and I assume oval track racing though I have no experience with it, does not necessarily reward problem solving. The dog that cuts across to grab the lure is not rewarded, although in a hunt that would be the smart thing to do.
I think sighthounds may be somewhat different from other breeds like retrievers, in that relatively little training is involved for most venues. Training to the box for racing. There is no retrieving in lure-coursing, since there is no prey. No real need for a good recall, either.
The whole field vs. show is is being revealed in another way in a recent discussion among Irish Water Spaniel owners. I will admit I started the latest incarnation of this discussion because I am annoyed.
My Cooper is a hunting dog. We hunt in the grass, cattails, and brambles of Eastern Washington and Oregon. If he were to have a long show coat, with its long fluffy leg fur, he would get absolutely embedded in seeds, weeds, brambles, stickers, and you name it. So, we clip his legs, belly, chest, and back to about 3/4″ — with his curls and undercoat, that’s enough to protect him while making his coat easy(er) to get the crap out of at the end of the day.
When I have asked about why I am being discouraged from showing Cooper that way, I’ve been told that it would be insulting to a judge to show him in that condition. But in my mid-century books, IWS with short clips are pictured with their show ribbons. I understand that over the last 20 years or so, judges have come to expect to see long leg fur that’s been fluffed out so it stands almost horizontal. So bringing a clean, brushed, neatly trimmed dog, fit for the field, into a ring for dogs bred to retrieve birds won’t just lose me the points, it’ll insult the judge to boot.
When I complain about this, some hunt test people pipe up and tell me that they take their dogs out into the field in show coats without any problem. Right. Their dogs are out for an hour at a time. I just don’t see how this is equivalent to my dog’s hunting all day with a show coat on.
The logical extension of this line of thinking is that we’re going to divide the breed into show dogs and hunting dogs, and if taken to extremes, that the show IWS will end up looking like show poodles.
Patrice
http://patricedodd.wordpress.com/
PS: Which is not to say I hate show coats altogether. My Tooey is a show dog — she has a show coat. If/when she starts hunting, she won’t have a show coat any more.
Patrice –
Do IWS routinely get their show championships at under 2 years old like what I’ve noticed in Border Collies (and many other breeds)?
It seems to me that in general, the vast majority of dogs who are shown get their Ch’s long before they could be expected to be trained in the field anyway. In Border Collies who go on to getting Agility and Obedience titles as well, it’s almost always the case that their first title is a show title.
In some respects it’s like Jean Bennet … puppies getting Chs before their structure is even apparent.
Not only do I agree with you that the status quo has moved away from any sort of hat tipping to field work (mind you that the earliest shows in some breeds, the conformation was a one-day side show for the several day field trials) but that it’s now so firmly in the camp of hairdressers that I routinely see campaigned dogs pulling out of the big competitions simply over a blown coat.
If anything a dog with a blown coat is easier to examine structurally! But ah, yes, it’s not as regal and pretty.
This also affects goldens, which aren’t mature until they are 2.5 to 3 years of age. A dog that has a championship at an early age with the bone structure that should be on a 4 or 5 year old dog is going to continue to develop. This is one factor that drives the development of golden Newfoundlands.
You see it in Salukis and Afghans, too. There are some countries (though it may be under FCI, can’t remember) where large breeds cannot complete a championship until they are eighteen months old. Which I think is still too young, especially for males.
Don’t get me started on the coat thing. I just got a bunch of pictures of Russian ‘Aborginal’ Afghans (Russia recognizes two types, Aboriginal and the appropriately named Decorative Afghan), plus a picture of a lovely Afghan type bitch in Pakistan. I’m looking at my big hairy beasts that are going to have to be clipped down soon, as it’s getting hot here, and thinking “Why the hell would you want to change them so much?!”
In goldens you get this problem, too. A lot of the American show dogs have too much coat, which has to be trimmed to make them less likely to get entangled in the undergrowth. Yet the breed standard is very clear that trimming should be minimal.
Glad you brought up “lure coursing” Jess–here is a classic case where the sport diverges from the actual activity(hunting by coursing) so much that dogs(do I DARE call a Saluki a “dog”?!) that are good at one will be penalized for the other. My brief experiences with “official” lure coursing were at the Saluki specialties, and ignorant hillbilly that I was, I was picking the dogs who cut corners and CAUGHT the lure as the “winners”–they were the ones I would rather hunt with, anyway, especially if I was hunting to fill my belly! But no, it was the “dogs” that followed the lure exactly in line, and didn’t “cheat” that got the highest scores! Which of course won’t provide you with any game, as the sighthounds need to use every trick in the book to catch hare/antelope(er whatever you may be hunting!). I’m not knocking lure coursing because it is GREAT excercise and fun for the dogs(some of the only fun they have at such shows), but it is in no way much of a substitute for real hunting(and I am crouching down now to avoid the inevitable slings and arrows that are sure to come for DARING to say that!)…..