I can’t believe that an adult would write this crap.
The only think I agree with is that it’s impossible to find a dog without bad genes.
INBREEDING IS BAD FOR DOGS.
ANYONE WHO TELLS YOU OTHERWISE IS HAVING RELATIONS WITH HIS SISTER.
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My current dogs are out-crossed and so will be my future dogs. I understand that many breeders inbreed (they call it line-breeding) to create a “look” or to accentuate a feature in their litters but with the good comes the bad. I don’t believe in that tight cookie cutter dog that you see at Westminster. I am all for breed recognition but not inbreeding. Aside from the physical problems being brought forward, I know someone who was doing a study of the “Jackson Whites” (an inbred group of people living in north western New Jersey) and they found that the IQ of these people was lowered each inbred generation. I like the various breeds but I am fine with the variations found within each breed.
Just my two cents…
I know who the Jackson Whites are. They are a mixture of Hessian, Dutch, African American, and Native American peoples. I had not heard that they are inbred. Remember, IQ is a nebulous term.
The issue in dogs isn’t that inbreeding goes on. It’s that at the macro-level, there is no escape valve. Too few founders. Too few studs. And then you start linebreeding and inbreeding within a closed registry.
It’s a recipe for disaster.
If you’re in goldens, they are almost all linebred, but because they exist within this system, you will have problems. It’s not that linebreeding is the problem; it’s that the registries are closed.
And they aren’t the least healthy of dog breeds– not by a long a shot!
For my benefit, could you explain the difference between linebreeding and inbreeding? And maybe illustrate a context that might help a person understand when it is being used as distinction as opposed to when it is being used interchangeably?
Inbreeding in laymans terms….
Mom to a Son, Father to a daughter, Sister to a Brother.
Line breeding in laymans terms…
Cousins, Grandparents to grandchildren, Aunts and Uncles to nieces and nephews.
Bottom Line….
Its all the same.
Line breeding is when you breed relatives that are not mother-to-son, father-to-daughter, or brother to sister. However, this definition gets fuzzy when you talk about grandparent, uncle or aunt to niece or nephew, and cousin to cousin breedings. In general, those are not considered inbreeding, but both do truncate genetic diversity. It’s just one truncates it much more.
My problem is that the system seems to ignore genetic diversity at the expense of everything else.
Inbreeding, linebreeding, and closed registries all work to that end.
Linebreeding isn’t the problem. It’s the systemic problems.
I haven’t heard that about the Jackson Whites, but there is one family who’s inbreeding depression is well studied – the Habsburgs.
http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0005174
Lots o’ loops in that thar tree: http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_2QJSeWQoKyA/SeiB23BkGVI/AAAAAAAAGSU/oG13em7BtGs/s400/777px-Carlos_segundo80.png
This is a very interesting article. Shouldn’t breeders look to these types of findings? I’m sorry to have to go to the Golden Retriever constantly but that is the breed that I know best. When I look at the pedigrees of the Westminster entries each year, there are the same champions inbred into each dog. I use the term inbred because I think the term line bred was developed to “soften” the term. There really is no scientific difference between inbreeding and line breeding. I have spoken to many breeders about line breeding and not one has been able to tell me where that cut off point really is that makes the difference. I have looked up in books and cannot find it either. Working from today’s Golden, it is not impossible to find out-crossed dogs but you have to go outside the conformation champions. There are some Field champions that do the same thing… There is cancer in a number of the show lines. Gold Rush Charlie sired many litters and he has proven to have carried genes for cancer and PRA. Charlie had a glass eye for heaven’s sakes. It is hard to find a Golden in the States that doesn’t have Charlie in their pedigree at some point.
I was just reviewing these posts and saw one regarding the Cardigan. I’m curious about that one. …going back to reread and review… is this a super breed that never had any health issues residing in it’s genes? Were cardigan breeders just plain lucky that their prized dogs were not carrying any disease? Has the other shoe not dropped? I have to go back and read the post again…
Retrieverman, this has been a very good discussion. Thanks.
Field line goldens have Holway Barty behind them. They are no paragons of genetic diversity. Charlie and Barty are the most influential dogs on their respective types of golden in this country (and probably Canada).
No breed has no bad genes. All dogs have bad genes. We all have bad genes somewhere. A lot of these are recessive or are in some way recessive, and not being inbred prevents them from lining up together. That’s the main virtue genetic diversity has. You can stack the deck against these bad recessives from lining up.
The argument against opening the registries goes something like this:
All breeds have genetic disorders, outcrossing merely introduces them into the gene pools where they didn’t exist before. That is true.
In the short term.
However, if your goal is genetic diversity, in the long run, you can actually reduce the chance that two negative recessive or in some way recessive genes from lining up.
I don’t think the “well it will introduce bad genes” argument is a good argument for maintaining a closed registry system.
The goal ought to be to have a dyanamic and diverse gene pool in all of these different breed and strains. It’s not merely outcrossing and outcrossing.
The other problem is reduced genetic diversity is correlated with a weakened immune system. It’s not something that has to do with dominant and recessive genes. It’s just something that happens as genetic diversity is reduced.
So while in the short term you can inbreed and find the bad genes and cull for them, in the long run, you have no idea what you’re doing.
And I can give you cases after cases in which this has happened.
Shortened average lifespans are certainly an indicator in any specific breed.
BTW, did not know that Charlie had a glass eye!
Damn.
That’s like finding out there is no Santa Claus!
A good friend of mine knew Charlie and she is the one who told me. She was a little girl at the time and the glass eye kind of frieked her out.
I looked and the Cardigan does suffer from health issues: hip dysplasia, PRA, and various eye problems
Yes, but have you seen what goldens have? :
http://www.gaylans.com/diseases.html
I’m very familiar with diseases in Goldens. I know the Corgi is an old breed and it may be doing better at this time but I think it’s only because the breeders were luckier than with Goldens where dogs like Charlie have won so many prizes and were bred to too many other dogs. Everyone wanted a piece of Charlie. I am sure that Charlie was bred many times before they discovered he had an eye problem and his recessive gene for cancer did not show until his son Teddy was born and died at age 6. Some how I don’t think that Golden people are greedier than Corgi people, I somehow think that Charlie’s fame blinded his owners. I know a lot about this but do not want to write anything disparaging about a single breeder. The problem lies in that conformation ring. Dogs are awarded blue ribbons and championships with no consideration as far as the health of the breed. I fault the AKC. There, I said it. Look at Doberman Pinschers. I have friends who show their Dobermans and their show dogs do well to live to age 5. They are so tightly line bred that they barely reach maturity. So sad. Yet they win, win, win, in the breed ring. I found it hard to console my friend who lost her Dobie at age 3 since I felt it was her fault owning a dog who was so inbred. She has another one who is closely related… I just don’t understand this kind of thinking about inbreeding animals.
People don’t.
Of course, there is a flip side to this argument.
It’s not one I agree with.
Because in the long run, I think most dog breeds are going to be doomed if we don’t start changing things.
Here’s the dog we’re talking about:
http://www.gold-rushgoldens.com/charlie.html
The lifespan of a cardi is equivalent to that of a golden retriever…
hmmmmm.
Cardi (12.7 years): http://users.pullman.com/lostriver/breeddata.htm#Livestock%20Herding
Golden (12.04 years): http://users.pullman.com/lostriver/breeddata.htm#Sporting%20Retriever
There’s another study that the GRCA did with Purdue that had their lifespan in the US at under 11 years.
http://www.goldenretrieverfoundation.org/insidepagesdata/healthsurvey/GRCA%20Health%20Survey.pdf
I admit that I don’t know much about Cardis. There was one in The Accidental Tourist.
The Jackson Whites want to start a casino in Bergen County, sounds pretty shrewd to me!!
There are more Veterinarians who are in agreement with your thinking Retrieverman. I really think the times are changing for the better.
HMmmm…. maybe some longhair Vizsla in the Golden lines would help both those breeds. And why not…. the Vizsla clubs won’t acknowledge the long hair variant anyway except to say they occur.
What registries in the world do you know of that allow for foundation stock approval to establish new lines? I only know of Sweden and thats only after a long approval process. But at least they can also cross register with the AKC. So there is an avenue to do so. For now. And it will take 3 generations bred for type. So it really means being committed. Life long.
The Society for the Preservation of the Desert Bred Saluki is recognized as a registry by the AKC. COO foundation stock is inspected and declared a Saluki, and after three generations of known breeding, the pups are inspected and allowed full AKC registration. I have a third gen bitch here that is about 85% COO blood.
Azawakh are an FSS breed. AKC recognizes two clubs; one of them, AZCA, will register COO dogs and their offspring for the required three generations for FSS recognition.
The Swedish Kennel club is a very forward-thinking group of folks — the more I read about their policies and guidelines, the more I’m impressed with them.
Ultimately, how far back does one go? Is it “enough” to avoid breeding father/daughter or should one have “no common ancestors in the last 10 generations”? – many breeds can’t accomplish the 10 generation rule. Virtually ALL BCs go back to Winston Cap. You can’t avoid ANY “inbreeding” without breeding outside the breed. Moreover, the very traits that make a “Golden” a Golden and not an English Springer Spaniel are genetic. Mixing Goldens, Labradors, Chessies, Flatcoats, and Curly Coats would yield a more “generic” retriever, but it would be more difficult to obtain a dog with the more unique characteristics of any one of them. And they’d still be “inbred” to a degree, because they don’t have the genes typical of say, Whippets.
Inbreeding DOES occur in nature. Darwin’s study on Galapagos shows that — species ultimately are the result of an initial divergence from their most closely related “sister” on any clade. Tigers are related to lions and at one point there was a “most common ancestor”. At the point of divergence, tigers and lions were “small breeding pools” and by definition “inbreeding” occurred. What ISN’T addressed in the article you protest is that this occurred over THOUSANDS of years/generations and many animals likely died because they inherited a “bad” combination of genes as a result of the small breeding pool. Domestication compresses this species divergence by a factor of about 100 (less than 100 years for something in nature that took thousands). Problem combinations aren’t eliminated as in nature. Also, SMALL breeding pools make it continue — it’s not ONE single instance of inbreeding followed by expansion of population and gradually reduced inbreeding in each generation, but a continuous inbreeding in EACH generation. Each time there’s a “most popular sire”, the reduction is reproduced.
As with your greyhound article, “what’s a problem”? For those racing dogs for money, does it matter if the dogs die quickly after retirement? No, not if the goal is winning money on a racing dog. Others may find this morally objectionable, but the selection is perfectly understandable. If wrinkling and longish ears really do help bloodhounds scent trail better, is it good or bad if it also tends to cause more skin disorders and cherry eye? We walk better because we can’t climb as well as a chimpanzee. Are we defective compared to Chimps? Part of the reasons so many people have back pains is because of the spine curving the way it does to allow us to walk upright. Is that a defect?
Moral issues of short-nosed dogs that can’t breathe, PRA, etc are not the result of inbreeding per se. They are the result of people who were breeding these dogs either not noting the problems or not CARING – “non selection” while breeding for characteristics they wanted. Or they accepted the issue as part of accomplishing what they DID want (short muzzles do have jaw issues). We need to quit saying “inbreeding is wrong” when it’s breeding dogs with defects or carrying for defects that are now considered unacceptable that is wrong. It does not help reduce epilepsy in Groenendael to breed “out” if the dog that is bred “out” also has the epilepsy gene. Does the “doodle” craze help Goldens be better? It’s certainly more of an outcross than a Golden/flattie cross.
The problem with the issues regarding “inbreeding” / “outcrossing” on both sides is that both sides tend to be too simplistic. If you want a breed to be a breed, you have to do SOME inbreeding. If you want a total return to nature, you could cross to a wolf, but it’s not likely to result in an improvement in “doggy” characteristics. It’s lack of wise breeding, and a lack of understanding of genetics that is the problem. Regardless of what breeding partner you use for a dog, it ought to be done with some understanding of what the result is likely to be – for good or bad.
VR, Peggy Richter
Yes. Inbreeding occurs in nature, but it is not very common.
Wolves that were inbred because they were isolated on Isle Royale wound up with bad spinal deformities:
http://howlingforjustice.wordpress.com/2010/01/26/isle-royale-wolves-cautionary-tale-for-beleagered-northern-rockies-wolves/
Within wolf conservation, they are thinking very hard about genetic diversity. I think dog people ought to at least consider it.
A lot of people hold up Cheetah as an example of inbreeding without knowing that Cheetah are an extinction waiting to happen. One virus and poof! The reason Cheetah survived their bottleneck is because of very rapid breeding (huge population explosion) and because nature is a bitch: she culls hard and gives every survivor an opportunity to reproduce. Domestic dog breeders, most of them, don’t do that.
Inbreeding isn’t exactly a wonderful thing for cheetahs.
The males have very low sperm counts.
Habitat fragmentation is going to see that they are no longer viable genetically.
And if we go to war with Iran, a whole population of them will likely disappear.
The last of the Asian cheetahs is in Iran near the Afghan border! Occasionally, one pops up in Baluchistan.
Maybe bin Laden is hiding with the cheetahs.
The problem with lots of inbreeding is that you always destroy the immune system when you do it for enough generations.
And you really don’t have to consciously inbreed.
You just need to start out with a few founders. Close the registry. And breed from just a few studs every generation. You will get the same effect as if you’ve been inbreeding every few generations.
I read an article recently that said the two biggest problems vets see dogs for are skin problems and digestive problems. Both directly related to the immune system.
Yeah, but aren’t we supposed to inbreed to find out what kind of bad recessives we have?
LOL.
The immune system isn’t a recessive or a dominant, that’s the problem.
Bingo.
And that’s why any attempts to inbreed to bring up bad recessives to cull them are going to be risky.
It’s more likely to be a whack-a-mole game in which new ones continually pop up.
And the immune system issues are never addressed when these formulations come up.
It is as if that inconvenient fact is totally ignored.
Inbreeding is fine if you have an open registry system.
It’s just that inbreeding isn’t that common in any wild population that isn’t severely isolated– like the Isle Royale wolves or the Lions of the Ngorongoro Crater.
Don’t forget, we’re also ‘hairless mutant’ apes. I don’t think scientists have even figured out why we lost most of our body hair, either. I’ve heard one theory that it was simply because other humans found it novel and/or attractive. Go figure. =P
Humans are not a good analogy for dog inbreeding. We didn’t lose our hair through a few generations of intense inbreeding to purposefully fix that characteristic in the population to the exclusion of any other characteristic. Humans may have experienced an intense genetic bottleneck, but we had natural selection to bring us out of it.
All of the popular breeds of today started as a combination of various “breeds”. In the older breeds, it may be hard to find a comparable breed to those that made up each ancient breed but for the more modern breeds, there certainly are breeds that are similar. Great care would have to be taken to keep the breed type but it is possible to do.
Dogs and humans are both mammals-on a fundamental level the same principles of population genetics would seem to apply to both species:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article3342040.ece
A government minister has warned that inbreeding among immigrants is causing a surge in birth defects – comments likely to spark a new row over the place of Muslims in British society.
Phil Woolas, an environment minister, said the culture of arranged marriages between first cousins was the “elephant in the room”. Woolas, a former race relations minister, said: “If you have a child with your cousin the likelihood is there’ll be a genetic problem.”
The minister, whose views were supported by medical experts this weekend, said: “The issue we need to debate is first cousin marriages, whereby a lot of arranged marriages are with first cousins, and that produces lots of genetic problems in terms of disability [in children].”
Woolas emphasised the practice did not extend to all Muslim communities but was confined mainly to families originating from rural Pakistan. However, up to half of all marriages within these communities are estimated to involve first cousins.
Medical research suggests that while British Pakistanis are responsible for 3% of all births, they account for one in three British children born with genetic illnesses.
(…)
Awesome link!
There are a lot of studies that have been done on certain religious sects here in the US that tend towards close marriage, due to the much higher rate of defects that occur.
In my state, there is an actual statute that says, you cannot marry anyone more closely related to you than a second cousin.
I know that sounds like a weird law to have, but in the old days, when people didn’t leave their communities, and everyone lived in towns where last name was Johnson, you had to put that law on the books.
I don’t know what it is in other states, but you can’t marry your cousin here.
It would be awesome if we tried that with dogs,
But we can’t.
Because if you’re dealing with purebred dogs, you almost can’t afford to go that far out.
The registry system has them already bottlenecked.
But you could marry your cousin and statistically it wouldn’t cause any problems, unless you continued the practice and your kids married their cousins and their kids married their cousins.
That’s right.
Dogs can handle some inbreeding. Inbreeding happens in the wild. There are actual viable genetic bottlenecks. Our species. for example: http://www.sciencedaily.com/articles/t/toba_catastrophe_theory.htm
A dog breed as we know it, however, is a contrived genetic bottleneck.
And that causes ethical considerations.
Ones I don’t think are being considered fully.
Peggy, thanks for your perspective.
Examples of inbreeding in nature…… if it’s not occurring over thousands of years…. then its attributed to a limited range for those species in question. Galapagos again being an example. It’s closed off and unless another line of any species is introduced to that population by sweeping in with the tides then that isolated species are shut out from natural diversity by unfortunate circumstance not natural selection.
Lions and Tigers and lots of predator species by their very nature seek new territories and can cover hundreds of miles in doing so. And thus its also natures way of controlling inbreeding and allowing for diversity. It’s when you limit that range when you force the occurrence of inbreeding to occur more rapidly. Without the required territory the likely hood of even natural outcrossing is eliminated and further isolates populations in smaller and smaller pockets of wilderness separated by expanses of urban sprawl. Again the unfortunate circumstance here was created unnaturally by humans almost 90% of the time.
Dogs, were created by the very means you are are arguing against. they were typed through a selective process with enough variation to keep a stable level of genetic diversity not the 10% or less average we see today that puts pure breeds in the same tier as many endangered wild species today. And Humans did this for the most part within a century, not thousands of years.
Even in the beginning stages of establishing a breed. Our ancestors did some selective linebreeding, even inbreeding, but there was also enough variety in foundation stock to allow for that Coefficient of Inbreeding to be bred away from in three or four more litters.. That is extremely difficult to do today. Especially since in the beginning, breeding for type was a practice of mixing the best of various types of dogs then selecting the best of those results and then doing it all over again. The foundation stock was not a small pool of a specific type, but rather a windfall of choice from a melting pot of various types. That is all gone from the equation in today’s registry system.
Couldn’t have said that better myself!
“The problem with the issues regarding “inbreeding” / “outcrossing” on both sides is that both sides tend to be too simplistic. If you want a breed to be a breed, you have to do SOME inbreeding. If you want a total return to nature, you could cross to a wolf, but it’s not likely to result in an improvement in “doggy” characteristics. It’s lack of wise breeding, and a lack of understanding of genetics that is the problem. Regardless of what breeding partner you use for a dog, it ought to be done with some understanding of what the result is likely to be – for good or bad.”
I have a copy of Lord Tweedmouth’s stud book and when it comes to Golden Rterievers, there are clear records showing Labrador Retrievers, Tweedmouth Water Spaniels, black long furred retrievers, and red setters, being bred into the early litters. It looks to me that the inbreeding was rather minimal considering this was the beginnings of establishing a new breed. It seems that the Golden Retriever of today has had an increased amount of inbreeding, I think due to increased demand combined with the lack of ability to breed back in some of the related breeds due to the registry rules. Also, the demand today is for a pet rather than a hunting dog which was the original purpose of the breed. I like the hunting Golden Retriever but most people purchasing a Golden today I think are looking for a calm, pretty, trainable pet for their family. I think that is just as valid as wanting a robust performance dog but it has made for quite a difference in the breed. I see this type of difference as being true in other breeds as well. I don’t condemn one for the other, I am just observing the differences. I like a dog with a low COI and I will always try to purchase one with a low COI where I like the qualities of both parents.
You can keep breed types with low COI. That is what I prefer to see. Out-crossing doesn’t bring us back to the wolf.
You have to type a prospective candidate for an outcross Jan, weight the benefits of introducing that new breed into the picture and then backcross when the desired results are achieved.
A perfect example would be the Designer Dalmations.
Then you need to institute a practice of not culling over 80% of the litters born either through physical killing or by surgically altering them so they can no longer contribute. Only after inspecting for type and temperament much later down the road…well beyond 24 months do you consider whether a specimen has any positive contribution to continue with. And even then you may still choose to keep it in the mix if its completely healthy.
“You have to type a prospective candidate for an outcross Jan, weight the benefits of introducing that new breed into the picture and then backcross when the desired results are achieved.”
I totally agree that out-crossing needs to be done carefully but all breeding should be done carefully.
I believe that the parents need to be assessed and they need to complement one another in many ways. Dogs being bred need to be examined for physical and personality traits as well as ability. Dogs need to be tested for known health problems in a breed and the conformation and purpose of the breed need to be considered as well as the temperament of that breed.
Sometimes breeders achieve doing all that. Sometimes they don’t. I think most breeders are well intentioned but that there are many different agendas out there.
I am glad that there are so many people putting so much effort into the cause.
I certainly don’t disagree with that.
In fact, in the real world, I’d be totally opposed to any inbreeding in dogs.
But the fact that it goes on tells you something.
I read a study on ancient wolves from Belgium, the Ukraine, and Russia. Some of these wolves had doglike features, and for the study are coded as dogs. (It’s controversial because the oldest dog is 31,700 years old!) The study looked at what DNA they could get from the remains.
And they found that dogs/wolves were far more genetically diverse than they are today.
Wolf persecution has reduced that diversity, and the domestication process has reduced it in dogs.
Indeed, the way we keep dogs in the West has totally reduced genetic diversity.
I have a post coming up soon that will make this clearer.
You are very correct in checking out COI’s in goldens. They do have issues with genetic diversity, although I’d be lying to you if I said they were far worse than other breeds. It is very high– too high.
But it’s nothing like the bull terrier.
its appalling that many breeds have a functional-gene-pool of THIRTY to FIFTY individuals, yet with literally *thousands* of registered dogs. many of these dogs if DNA-profiled and compared, are 70 to 80% related – which i would have thought impossible, as *full siblings* are only – ‘only’ hah! — 50% related.
matador-breeding is a huge part of this insanity –
the current BIG Gundog-group winner, the Viszla at Crufts in the UK, had *already sired*!! 525 pups prior to his Crufts performance; thats over 10% of registered-get in that year-cohort of Viszla.
do U really think, now that hes won, they will breed
to him ** Less?!? ** thats extreme-illogic; he will be fought-over for a couple of years, as a stud.
the super-straight front introduced to American Boxers by JOHNNY back in the 1960s is still a highly-persistent structural problem, and his supposedly *gorgeous headpiece* would not even be seen as a decent Boxer of pet-lines, nowadays.
heads are easy to shape –
even easier to exaggerate – but stenotic nares, elongated palates, skin-fold dermatitis, cherry-eye, dropped haws, easily-injured prominent eyeballs, dental problems, sinus problems, intolerance for exercise, ad nauseum, ALL come along with those *gorgeous!* brachycephalic mashed-faces.
*Peke-faced Persian* used to be an insult – it referred to Persian cats so flat-faced they resembled the barely-breathing dogs once the royal-dogs of the Pekin palace.
NOW Persian-breeders *brag* that their cats are Peke-faced in ads — and they have created a new food, for these pathetic creatures, who cannot easily eat old-fashioned X-shaped cat food.
its a flattened, slightly-elongate diamond – an oval with rounded points on either side, and at both ends.
i cannot recall when i last saw a brachy-dog of ANY breed without slit-nostrils, AKA stenotic nares –
which are only the outward sign of a problem that runs from the nostrils clear to the throat and halfway to the esophagus, and from the floor of the nostrils to the lower jaw structurally.
reaming-out their sinuses surgically and trimming the flap dangling into the throat improves life enormously…
for that ONE dog of whatever gender.
it does not do squat for any progeny they might contribute – any more than braces on ones teeth in childhood make U produce straight-toothed children later, as a parent.
using shipped-semen to outcross within a breed internationally will help in *some* breeds – but even that, in some European breeds, will not suffice. French, Swedish, Brit, USA, etc, dogs of those breeds are all too-highly related already.
i think the outcross-to-similar-breeds + backcross scheme is the only viable one we;ve got.
some Hovawart in Goldens might do no end of good.
(i can hear Golden-breeders shrieking like the damned in Hell, already…)
someone will no doubt lob epithets, if not incendiary grenades, at me after this heretical statement – but somebody has to say it, and the breed fancy in the conformation rings NEVER, Ever! will.
i fear for our many breeds futures – not the 140 sliced out by the AKC, the approximately 600 global breeds and types. i think diversity both genetically within breeds, and diversity of function among breeds, are important.
i am afraid that but for petty considerations – size, color, coat length – dogs will become another White Leghorn chicken, good for only one thing – laying eggs – and that for a few years only.
stringy, scrawny pathetic birds, too tough to eat, too nervous for their own good, shrieking bedlam by the millions in thousands of chicken-houses… so alike they could be clones.
heritage-breed chickens are wildly divergent; Leghorns are single-purpose, production-line birds, the poultry equivalent of widgets… like hybrid-corn, trapping the farmer in a deal with the devil, MonDiablo… no more seed-saving, no more open pollinated local microclimate specialists, no more family heritage seed-stock.
i hope breeders snap out of their BIS + BOB narcotic haze, and it had better be soon.
— terry
terry pride, APDT-Aus, apdt#1827, CVA, TDF
“some Hovawart in Goldens might do no end of good.
(i can hear Golden-breeders shrieking like the damned in Hell, already…)”
the problem with the Hovawart being bred into the Golden is that even though they have some similarities physically, they are very different dogs as far as purpose and temperament. The Hovawart is a guard dog and does not have natural retrieving skills as far as I know. It would be better to follow the dogs found in the beginning of the breed… red setters, hunting type labs, flatcoats, and English Cocker Spaniel or Field Spaniel might be closest to the early breeds that make up the Golden Retriever.
However, I think that right now the Golden would do better than it is doing if breeders simply lowered the COI of two Goldens bred together. I don’t think the health issues are as bad as some other breeds that might at this point in time do well to out-cross outside of the breed.
JMO
look towards the Vizsla then. The long hair variant looks like a Golden and acts like one. Not a guard Dog. An HPR.
Vizslas are a very nice breed of dog but I don’t think that the Golden is that bad off at this point to have to go outside the breed.
If any of the breed diseases got too out of control, I would stick with out-crossing to related breeds. Viszlas are wonderful but they aren’t a related breed.
A Hovawart is a relative of the livestock guardians, not a gun dog. It is recreation that has GSD in it, which makes them very trainable.
Temperament-wise, though, it’s a very different dog.
I agree with Jan. Stick with related breeds.
If only Tweed water dogs/Tweed water spaniels still existed….
Perhaps the Tweed Water Spaniel no longer exists, however, a judicious use of American Water Spaniel and Chesapeake Bay Dog with selected Goldens certainly could re-create the Tweed. There are also related breeds in Europe (viz, that Portie with the retriever-like coat pattern), and other possibilities that could be used.
As for Goldens (my special interest), there is a plentitude of genetic material out there that only needs to be found. In fact, there are a couple of “back-yard bred” Goldens I see locally, that are better in basic construction, and coat quality, than many of the so-called “show dogs”.
And many of these dogs have very strong working instincts and are highly biddable.
It’s just they come from lines that aren’t established.
Here’s a Chessie/golden x: http://www.dogbreedinfo.com/images23/ChesapeakeBayRetrieverGoldenRetrieverDogsWithDaveHybrid3.jpg
I have seen maybe half-a-dozen purebred Goldens over the years who have coats very like that example or with even more curl. And they were about as unrelated to each other as one can find in a breed.
From a practical standpoint, it’s great quality for function.
You have gained a big fan in me M.R.S.
Kudos to you, for some real world logical thinking.
Breed clubs should sponsor programs to fund the import/export of semen, imo. Something like taking a percentage of dues or something to help their members outcross. If they built COI-control and monitoring into the clubs themselves, it could do great things. Of course, the membership has to admit that such things are even needed, which is the major stumbling block.
I’d suggest you write to JP and ask her to explain before you assassinate her character (or brain) on a blog. You’ll have to meet her with actual statistics and studies, though, because she will certainly have them for you.
You’re defining linebreeding and inbreeding somewhat incorrectly – in purebred-dog pedigrees, linebreeding is when an attempt is made to concentrate the genes of one individual or a set of individuals at the expense of other pieces of the pedigree. Inbreeding is when you concentrate both sides of the pedigree.
There is no accepted scientific definition of linebreeding, period; it’s all inbreeding when you’re talking about population genetics. Any time you use the word you’re borrowing it from breeding parlance. So you might as well use it the way breeders do.
So a full-brother/full-sister mating is an inbreeding; the original sire and dam are concentrated with equal strength on both sides of the pedigree. A half-brother/half-sister mating is a linebreeding; the shared parent is the one being concentrated and the non-shared parents are weakened.
A “tight” linebreeding is generally thought of as one that repeats dogs in the parent and/or grandparent level (and often other levels as well). A “loose” linebreeding would be one that gives you a double dose of a great-trandparent or, arguably, one that repeats a grandparent if the other pieces of the pedigree are totally unrelated.
Generally, you inbreed if you want to flush out either virtues or faults; it takes you to maximum COI the very fastest and pairs genes the fastest. So you learn if you have, for example, PRA, pretty dang quick. Linebreeding is an attempt to increase the resemblance of the puppies to either one dog or a group of dogs. In my experience it’s done just as often to try to increase longevity or work ethic or a particularly sound trait (like a really good shoulder) as it is to increase “type.”
Every dog breeding, except maybe if you bred a straight-from-Africa Basenji to an Akita, is a linebreeding in some form. In most established breeds it’s pretty close to impossible to avoid repeating some ancestors once you get four or five generations out. That’s why you can’t just say “go and outcross and that’ll solve your problems as a breed,” and breeders who think that’s what they’re doing actually end up hurting a breed. It’s what individuals you repeat, with what goal in mind, and with what level of understanding what the repeated dog(s) bring to the table, that allows you to say that a breeding increased or decreased the health (or working ability, or temperament, or soundness, or longevity) of a breed.
I’m not defining them incorrectly.
The line between line-breeding and inbreeding is nebulous, and it depends upon who you ask.
Although what you’re calling tight might actually be inbreeding.
So you’re basically giving an argument for opening up the registries?
That was my argument.
But you said it better than I did.
No, I’m saying that you’re actually not automatically going to better health if you open the registries – because all you’re doing is re-mixing dogs that were sharing genes freely less than 200 years ago. You’d be doing linebreeding, just looser. That’s why Labradoodles and the other sporting-breed mixes are no healthier (or smarter or more resistant to disease, etc.) than their purebred parents. You haven’t actually given any real diversity back to the population.
Nobody who knows anything about dogs IS going to breed an African-import Basenji to an Akita; there’s no reason to do it and no benefit in terms of suitability. They’d be breeding individuals who are actually quite closely related, just with different breed names. No benefit.
And, seriously, go e-mail JP. You certainly owe her that much before you make comments like this.
What I’m suggesting is a long-term macro argument.
These gene pools didn’t get screwy overnight.
And they certainly won’t get fixed by merely opening the registries.
What I am saying is that the closed registry system is one of the big picture problems that is messing up dogs.
I don’t know if you can access it, but here’s a study on ancient wolves in Europe (Belgium, the Ukraine, and Russia): http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6WH8-4TMBPXV-1&_user=10&_coverDate=02%2F28%2F2009&_rdoc=1&_fmt=high&_orig=search&_sort=d&_docanchor=&view=c&_searchStrId=1294319308&_rerunOrigin=google&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=16512fd66df5c782e0dc6c8e819fdc16
Now, this study is controversial because one of the samples they code as as dog is 31,700 years old from Belgium.
That’s not the part I think we need to look at for this discussion.
The part we need to look at is the genetic diversity of the wolf/dog samples.
They were far more diverse 40,000-10,000 years ago. This species, through persecution of the wild ones and intense selective breeding of the domestic ones, has lost a lot of its genetic base.
And we’re to blame for it in both cases.
I think we need to have long-term plans for developing sustainable gene pools in our dogs, and scrapping the closed registry system will allow us to do so.
The current system really isn’t about the long term.
I just read a study on African Wild Dogs, about how they don’t have a lot of variability in their MHC due to the fact that they used to have a very large range with large numbers and that has been whittled down to almost nothing. It might be one of the reasons they are so susceptible to disease like Canine Distemper.
One of the MHC studies in purebred dogs mentions that in some breeds, dogs in Europe have greater variation than dogs in the US. That will likely level out as blood exchange becomes easier. But I think a fundamental reason for the extreme loss of genetic variability in the last fifty years or so is the great change in dog breeding culture. In the Olden Days, many breeders kept large numbers of dogs, maintaining different lines, and bred a lot of litters. They had a lot of dogs to choose from to carry on the next generation. Today’s breeder keeps fewer dogs, doesn’t always maintain a couple of different lines, and may be restricted by local laws as to how many pups they can keep from each breeding. Breeding ‘too many’ litters is frowned on. So say your average ‘reputable’ breeder has a litter every two or three years, and keeps one or two pups to run on. Pressure is great to breed from that particular bitch pup, because you haven’t kept four or five bitches back from a couple of different litters to choose from. Some breeders keep their pick pups and place all the others on spay/neuter contracts, removing them from the gene pool. Bitches might be bred once or twice in their life time. Genes are lost from each generation. I would be willing to bet that if you went back in time fifty or sixty years, even though breeds would be closer to the founders, you would see greater genetic diversity because more dogs from each litter were being bred from.
I think the mantra that ‘a reputable breeder breeds as few litters as possible’ is one of the most damaging beliefs to hit the purebred world. The pressure to cull anything that isn’t instant-CH-worthy is so intense, that it isn’t doing any longterm good for the breeds with very restricted gene pools.
I also think that what might be driving some of our differences on this issue is that you have a breed that is an exception to the rule in so many ways.
Cardis don’t have many foundational dogs in their pedigree, but they are relatively healthy and long-lived.
Why this is so, I’m not sure.
Maybe the breed’s fanciers have done a good job in preventing it from becoming such a fad breed. Maybe they have thought very carefully for long term sustainability.
But not all breeds are like this.
I have no problem with line-breeding or inbreeding, provided you have some kind of escape valve, which is what they had in the early days of the fancy.
I have an article by a flat-coat fancier who tells the Lab people to add setter to their lines to make them better looking.
I came from Great Danes (JP Yousha is a Dane breeder, which is how I know her).
Cardigans are not in this good shape by design; they’re an example of isolation of good genes. What was left of the old landrace when the original breeders came upon them around the turn of the century was one old dog; he was bred to a bitch who was said to be half Cardigan; their daughter would be recognizable in any show ring today. It’s a breed with relatively few founding members and a TON of inbreeding/linebreeding, and it manages to be freakishly healthy and difficult to kill by any means.
Danes, which had a larger founding population (at least at the turn of the century) and have always attracted obsessive breeders who pedigree-study like their lives depended on it, who have many more opportunities for true outcrosses, who are routinely and exhaustively health-tested, can’t stay alive for love nor money. And they DON’T die of the things we test ’em for. Very little dysplasia, etc. They die of weird, bizarre illnesses that nobody’s ever heard of and they die of complications from spider bites and they die of bloat and they die of rare cancers and they just seem to want to throw themselves off cliffs.
That’s why I don’t think dramatically lowering COI as observed over ten generations is actually going to do much. I don’t have any problem with an Appendix stud book approach, but I think it would be the height of foolishness to think that allowing Pems (which have MANY more problems) or Lancashire Heelers or Collies into the Cardi stud book is going to do anything but HURT Cardigans. And Danes – where would you go? To the sighthounds, with the liver issues? To the breeds with hemangiosarcoma? To the heavier and less biomechanically sound mastiffs? Opening stud books allows you to successfully address specific SINGLE issues, like Fanconi in Basenjis or storage diseases in some other breeds. It should not be interpreted as some kind of savior of dogdom.
That may be the way things are working now.
However, it’s not always going to be the case.
If you have that level of inbreeding, at some point, you’re going to have recessives line up and you’ll get one of these diseases.
It seems to me that the Cardis, if this is true, are just lucky.
You cannot cull away from disease forever.
At some point, the bad genes will line up.
In goldens, they’ve so culled away from hip dysplasia, which is still not well understood, and they have reduced the disease significantly.
But what have they wound up with?
Even more diseases have popped up.
And the cancer rate is now near 70 percent.
And this from a breed that was once touted as long-lived.
What I think will happen is that breed clubs will keep limping along like they are now until gene therapy technology becomes more practical. Then, in theory, they could inbreed all they want and remove recessive genes without culling. I’m not sure if this would be a good or bad thing.
It will happen in horses, first. They’re always the first to pioneer human techniques. If they can eliminate things like HYPP without culling the expensive show horses that carry it, it’ll catch like wildfire.
Absolutely agree with you on that point. But , I kind of feel that it will still just be only one piece of the formula to fix it for dogs.
And some breeds may find that even with DNA based selective breeding there just isn’t enough variation in the breeding stock to accomplish this without the use of other measures like outcrossing anyway.
I think that there is some common ground in between and that both sides of that fence have some good ways to address the common problem.
Ah, but with future technology, you could remove all unwanted genes, add ones you like, or even build an animal from scratch.
Eventually, all these debates will be moot because you’ll order your custom pet from a catalog and it’ll be grown in a lab.
I read a lot of Cory Doctorow.
That’s a somewhat scary proposition.
LOL.
That’s been done already to the tune of 200k for a Yellow lab clone of a deceased champion. You just have to contact the labs in China to do so… Or ask the owner in Texas I believe for his contact information.
Favorite story about a cloned dog: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,397923,00.html
That’s not so interesting but who the story behind the woman who wanted him cloned is: http://stupidcelebrities.net/2008/08/09/joyce-mckinney-photos-dog-cloner-former-mormon-sex-kidnapper/
Well either way there’s a cool story there. ;-)
Family TV or the Porn Network, take your pick. LOL
If that kind of thing does happen in dogs it will NEVER be common. There is not enough money in dogs to make it worthwhile. Lots of money in horses. Much less so in dogs.
It’s not one thing that will save them, as I said before.
But it is one of several things that are needed.
Well…human beings have about as “open” a breeding program as could be imagined, and a lot of “diversity” (i.e., heterozygosity)– yet those pesky “genetic diseases” just keep popping up anyway. Random breeding is surely not the way to go.
Additionally, not all problems are due to recessives, and relatively few are due to single gene factors. Epigenes, and gene interactions, add more layers to what is already way more complex than most dog breeders understand.
You’ll never get rid of genetic diseases.
And it’s definitely true that not all of them are simple recessives.
Opening the registries merely works to solve those problems that are simple recessives.
That’s why I keep saying that it is part of the solution, but it is not THE solution.
Opening the registries will help deal with inbreeding depression, which is a lot more subtle and pervasive than a lot of people think it is.
I don’t know what extent of an inbreeding depression there is.
I suppose I would have to see non-inbred form or relatively non-inbred forms to get a fair comparison.
Can you share the link to that Flat Coat Article suggesting to introduce Setters into Labrador lines? And are we talking about Setters prior to the DNA discovery for PRA markers or after? Depending on when…. the introduction could have done more bad than good for the Labrador.
http://chestofbooks.com/animals/dogs/British-Dog-Shows/Chapter-XXIX-The-Retrievers.html
The paragraph that begins “Of late years.”
I link to this in a post, but I’ll give you the full link here.
Cox also has a critique of dog shows here:
http://chestofbooks.com/animals/dogs/British-Dog-Shows/The-Retrievers-Part-2.html
The paragraph that begin ‘The utility of dog shows.”
This book was published in the early 1900’s– like 1903 or something like that.
And already there was a critique.
Of course, Cox said nothing about retrievers or other gun dogs, mainly because most of these show dogs were also worked.
In fact, in the KC, a dog can’t be a full champion unless it gets a working gun dog certificate or qualifies for a trial.
However, I highly suspect that the number of full champions is very low.
Wait… I just looked and the average life span is 12-15 years and Cardigans suffer from hip dysplasia, PRA, and various eye problems.
12-15 years isn’t an enormous life span for a small dog. If we are calling that a long life span then we really do need to open registries and get to work.
An inbreeding article of note:
http://cc.ysu.edu/~helorime/purge.html
Inbreeding and the immune system:
http://cc.ysu.edu/~helorime/inbrimmune.html
The little rule on longevity in dogs is that it is often exaggerated– usually listed as too long. The actual data have confirmed this time and again.
Did you see on the link with cardis what the average lifespan of an Australian cattle dog is?
Over 11 years!
One of these lived to be 29!
Sengimage posted Examples of inbreeding in nature…… if it’s not occurring over thousands of years…. then its attributed to a limited range for those species in question. Galapagos again being an example. And then later posted: You have to type a prospective candidate for an outcross Jan, weight the benefits of introducing that new breed into the picture and then backcross when the desired results are achieved. leashedForLife posted: its appalling that many breeds have a functional-gene-pool of THIRTY to FIFTY individuals, yet with literally *thousands* of registered dogs.
This is exactly my point. You hear a great deal these days about the plight of tigers. Yet thousands are in private hands. They aren’t “usable” because many of them are “mixed”. They aren’t Tigers? Of course they are. What’s meant is that they have MIXED GENES. Sumatran/Siberian etc. Of course, ORIGINALLY, tigers weren’t umpteen different subspecies. They BECAME subspecies by isolation and (ahem) natural inbreeding to FIX those unique characteristics that distinguish a Royal Bengal tiger from a Sumatran. Yet biologists resist allowing “mixed genes” to be introduced to the wild. What is that other than trying to maintain a wild equivalent of a “closed stud book”? The furor over bringing in Texas Cougars to breed with Florida cougars is another case in point. Cougars originally spread right across the US (and points north and south, for that matter). There is no BIOLOGIAL argument that mandates that a California Cougar (the most diverse in comparison to Florida’s cats) shouldn’t be introduced as a counter to inbreeding in Florida Cougars. But those who want distinct subspecies (ie,”breeds”) would die first. Dog “breeds” are more or less a human –created equivalent to a subspecies. The problem in dog breeds is that so many insist on “most popular sire” EVERY generation. It isn’t the “inbreed” then diversify that typifies Nature. Tied to that is a “single focus” of one or two characteristics and ignoring most others. You end up with exaggerations with severe “issues” that no one cared about until it became a crisis.
I quite agree in the benefit of allowing an “open registry” or even “appendix breeding” (common in many livestock breeds where you bring in another breed then are on “appendix” for 3 or so generations before having full registration). I believe a registration system that allowed this, provided for documentation of health certificates on breeding certificates (OFA /Pennhip being the most obvious, but DNA tests and CERFS as well), and had some realistic “standard” tests for function without having “winner take all” would probably put AKC and UKC out of business. No one has seriously tried. The “alternate” registries (such as the BC registries) are often one breed only – insufficient for serious competition with AKC/UKC or don’t do all of the above. If such a registry banned use of a dog for breeding more than 10 litters, this might be even more of a “slam dunk”.
But just crossing “to cross” or asserting mixed breeds are “better” – not necessarily. Those greyhounds tend to have better hips than the average “mutt” as well as better than most purebreds. And they are certainly faster than the average dog. If having a “generic” dog is fine, then probably this doesn’t matter to you. But if it DOES matter, or if retrieving a shot bird, being an effective stockdog or even doing well as a sled dog in the Iditarod matters to you, then you are going to be SELECTING from among the available dogs for specific genes that provide those characteristics. It just needs to be done intelligently.
VR, Peggy Richter
You’re in one my favorite areas.
The nebulous subspecies and proposed species of interbreeding populations of wild animal.
Don’t laws regarding conservation have a lot to do with the extreme views on preserving rare species, though? I remember when they did the DNA tests on Red Wolves, and they showed Coyote DNA, there were fears that the Red Wolves couldn’t be protected because they weren’t pure wolves. They must’ve gotten around that but still…
The red wolf is a mess.
There isn’t even a consensus on what it is!
Check out my post on the Northern white rhino: http://retrieverman.wordpress.com/2009/08/12/the-end-of-the-northern-white-rhino/
It’s now extinct in the wild.
The Southern subspecies is very common now.
A lot of these subspecies exist and appear genetically distinct because humans have destroyed their habitats or persecuted them into fragmented populations.
It’s very true of wolves, which is why I cringe whenever someone comes out with plan to chop up Canis lupus into a bunch of species.
Yes, Peggy to a point you are correct. What you need to account for in those isolated populations, if I may borrow a phrase is “an occasional shuffling of the deck”. Those isolated populations still have or rather “had” a bounty of territory to call their own. And occasionally the shuffle occurred when by chance there was an opportunity for there to be a mixing of populations. Whether is it was a tsunami that washed a tiger stranded on anything that floated or iguanas or Mammoths that took a swim to a remote offshore island or fauna from one land mass that migrated to another over a temporary bridge of Ice or a shifting in the tectonic plates and were joined or not generations later by more species through similar circumstances. etc etc.
And if inbreeding is done in a smaller isolated pocket with very limited territory…Over time, if they haven’t already become sterile, those isolated groups will meet their demise if the populations cannot rebound from any sudden disease that hits the numbers to a point where a rebound just isn’t in the cards. Which as an example may be the root of the problem for the Tasmanian Devils. Or if the studies are correct the flesh eating disease may dissipate once populations from remote parts of their range begin to interbreed with the population in the expanding afflicted areas… It boils down to diversity in that situation. But, then is there enough remaining diversity to actually stop it or once it stops is the remaining population too small to rebound anyway?
If however there was a pocket of these species somewhere else, even in zoos, its possible to introduce diversity again, providing there is enough in the captive population to warrant such a rescue.
Simplifying it would be to assume that everything is finite and that there will not be the occasional shuffle of the deck. Well, the human factor kind of stifles that possibility as our population increases and encroaches continually on these animal populations. But lets just say…. drop a few of those cross bred tigers into the mix. dump them in …. India. then take a seat for about a century and see what happens with the diversity of the local populations. Then another century. Is it still a tiger? Is it still an indigenous species? Does it play its part in the ecology? Is there a booster shot for the species? Well, that depends if you’re a purist and say its no longer an Indian Tiger its a hybrid. Well, if it saves the Tiger then for me, Its still a Tiger. Provided it fills the role required in that ecosystem.
With the scientific understanding that we have in today’s world. Extinction doesn’t have to be just something we just accept anymore especially if we can do something about it.
Or we can just accept that over time things sort of wash away as distinct populations and eventually assimilate into another… Like the “Browning of America” theory.
But hats the human factor. When applied to anything it sort of screws things up. ????
You have to be careful when comparing natural selection and artificial selection.
Humans are selecting for very few characteristics over a short period of time. Characteristics that have nothing to do with fitness to live.
Natural selection favors characteristics that help a population thrive in their specific environment. It’s over a long period of time which allows for new genes to appear and add to diversity. So even if you start out with a genetic bottle neck, over time inbreeding depression will naturally decrease (as long as the population doesn’t go extinct right away).
I forgot one little thing.
This is a bulldog site.
Is there any pooch more screwed than the bulldog?
Do you have a list of controversial subjects guaranteed to get a lot of comments squirreled away somewhere, so you can pull one out whenever there’s a lag?
Yes.
Evil.
JP Yousha is a Dane breeder. http://www.chromadane.com/working.htm
Seriously, write to her; she answers e-mails quickly. If you can say it here, you can say it to her face, or at least to her monitor.
I’ve added some more -really old- Bulldogs to my historical breed gallery, btw: http://smg.photobucket.com/home/Pietoro/tag/bulldog
You know, I think it’s not so much their heads that have screwed them up as much as the complete squishing of their -entire bodies-. Even the earliest dogs I can find (1870s) had short muzzles, but they also have longer necks and legs, and the body of an athlete. I think the problem is that there were one too many detrimental exaggerated physical features piled onto that breed at the same time. The ‘Olde English Buldogge’ is a pretty fair attempt to roll back some of those fashion-driven changes to recapture the original breed.
Thanks, I enjoyed your historical photos.
I can’t help but think that these poor dogs have constant back aches…
Cool, It looks like the oldest pics show a substantially lithe dog in comparison to the specimens just a decade later. Which shows that human intervention and fads are extremely detrimental in a relatively short amount of time.
Thnx PAI. really eye opening.
There were leggier Bulldogs still popping up 25-30 years after the stubby fad started, and some are even labeled in books as good examples of the breed. It really seems there was a bit more diversity in type allowed to be ‘correct’ in the early days.
Is genetic drift still just a theory?
I learned a different term for it.
The Sewall Wright Effect.
That’s because that’s who came up with it. He was founder of population genetics.
I think it has generally been accepted as a reality, but its exact role in evolution is still contentious.
I didn’t learn it as anything – I came across several links in trying to find past writings about some indications the environment can change genes.
If you really want to bake your noodle look up epigenetics. From the POV of a dog breeder that’s a nightmare.
i LOVE epigenetics! :–)
its fascinating stuff – identical-twins start out identical, but by the time they are 20, 30, 50 years old… they are no longer * carbon copies*.
Reading about epigenetics is indeed great for baking your noodle, but I’m not sure science knows enough about it to really change how animal breeders operate just yet.
I mean, it still all comes down to caring for your animals properly, health screening, and choosing the best individuals to breed, right?
It does come down to that, and it comes down to not being stupid about weeding things out. I’d much rather something like retained testicles in my lines, that say, heart disease or cancer. But retained testicles is a no no, because you can’t show a dog with a retained testicle.
Epigenetics presents a problem to dog breeders because too many so called ‘responsible’ breeders not only guarantee their dogs for stupid shit that they basically have no control over, they tell puppy buyers that ‘they must get a good guarantee.’ So if you don’t guarantee your dogs up the wazoo, you’re automatically not ‘responsible.’ One really good court case could keep a small breeder from ever breeding again. It’s ridiculous.
These are living organisms. Unless it’s a simple recessive you can test for, there are no guarantees.
thanks, i will.
Another question: is it totally disingenuous to say that breed afficionados (show or field/work/sport) are breeding with their backs to the future?
How come is it that some Sir/Count/Baron/Mr/Mrs Hoity-Toity can “discover”, “breed”, “rescue”, “develop” a type of canine of particular form and function, and for the next hundred-odd years, the most important consideration is recreating the “founded” form?
For example, why would Scotty pass up a dog who, in every respect except pedigree, was the functional replica of Goldie? Is the pedigree more important than the dog? If so, start cloning: you’ll at least not be further diminishing the genetic base.
I would clone her, but then I’d be getting those cancer genes again.
Articles some people might find interesting:
http://dogdimension.org/dokuwiki/doku.php
Now THAT is a good site!
Ditto on that
Agreed.
Thanks.
I think that the links listed under “Possibly related posts: (automatically generated)” can be quite amusing!
Anyone notice?
I saw them.
I once did an Identify the Species query on the Short-eared dog.
But a few months before I did a post that used the same footage on the short-eared dog!
The query was spoiled.
I’m gettin’ in on this one late–but the article reminded me of a livestock breeder(mostly hoofed stock of various kinds) that told me inbreeding was “okay” until you started to get problems!!!!!!! To me, that’s kinda like saying pollution is okay until things start dying from it! Isn’t it more ethical to TRY to PREVENT that stuff from happening if at all possible, in the first place?