Canis lupus hominis

Posted in dog breeding | Tagged border collie, Border Wars, popular sire effect, Wiston Cap | 23 Comments

23 Responses

1. on November 25, 2010 at 5:55 am bill

   Your numbers and conclusions are all correct. You and Chris are right about everything.

   The reason that it seems like no one cares is because the dogs are just so darn sound right now. No one is going to care until typical dogs begin to drop like flies and can’t do the work. It will be much too late for the breed at this point, and both farmers and trialers will have moved on to a similar, and now clearly more capable breed.

   It seems clear to me that working and gun dog breeds have a functional “life cycle” that goes from foundation>functional era>decline>museum piece. Our grandchildren will have healthy, sound dogs that go like hell, but it’s not clear what we’ll call them.

   There is nothing special enough about “field bred english cocker spaniels” that I would try to convince the masses to put aside their desire to own the best dogs, for the sake of the breed. If more people worked their dogs, gun dogs would get better. It’s just impossible to envision the specific path that will take.

   Until then, im going to save my bile for dogs that can’t breathe, run, whelp, stay cool, or fit their brains into their skulls.

   
   
   • on November 25, 2010 at 1:56 pm retrieverman

     I have plenty of bile for both, because if I hold my bile back on one, then I can’t say anything about the other.

     
     
   • on November 25, 2010 at 3:32 pm Christopher@BorderWars

     Sadly, the dogs are not sound. In Border Collies, litter sizes are down, HD is ~25% of dogs, cancer is about the same as other purebreds — i.e. nothing to brag about, seizure spectrum disorders from EIC to Epilepsy are present and not insignificant. Of course the eye issues.

     I could go on.

     We don’t have the conformation disasters like the brachycephalic dogs, but that’s really another issue entirely that only compounds those crap breed’s ill fate.

     And as for saving your breath, you’re welcome to. I’d rather be a Cassandra who keeps my temple healthy as best as I can than a Doubting Thomas or a Judas who waits too long to realize that he’s thrown away the best thing he ever had for a little fortune.

     When it’s too late, it IS too late. I don’t care much for making fun of the already ruined breeds, there’s little point except to use them as an example of what not to do and what awaits all breeds in a matter of time.

     I’ll note that the extant problems in Border Collies do prevent them from breathing (allergies), running (hip dysplasia and DJD), whelping (smaller litter sizes), staying cool (EIC, heat stroke).

     It’s already there. It’s already here. We can deny or appease, but neither actually helps the dogs.

     
     
     • on November 25, 2010 at 8:49 pm HDP

       Chris could a line of Border Collies who are not also Wiston Collies be compared, healthwise, to the Wiston Border Collies?

       These health problems might have already been in the breed prior to Wiston Cap taking over the breed – and they pretty much are Wiston Collies now, aren’t they?

       It seems that the cause of popular sires is dogs being used in competitions. It doesn’t matter what the competition is, people flock to whatever dogs win.

       Although some people say that racing greyhounds are different. But look at racing whippets. Like Wendy the Whippet, whose photo is all over the internet as an example of bully whippets, breeding dogs for extreme ‘best’ can also produce extreme …….uh, how can I be polite?……. un-best?

       My dad knew a family like that. Some of the children were very able and bright, but some of the others …..well, in dogs they’d be called………well, let’s just say that most of those children never left their farm, even though town was within walking distance for the average 6 year child, because they couldn’t hardly find their way home from the barn, let alone from town.

       But if one were choosing parents as breeding stock, their parents would have been chosen, because they were so smart and good in school. The parents produced uneven quality. Idiot-savants, one brilliant person, a few normals, and a farm load of people who never did step off the farm. Not a well-rounded family.

       There is/was a common belief that genius is linked to insanity or stupidity. Like if you have one copy of this gene, then you are better than normal, but if you get 2 copies of this gene – you loose a lot of what you should have been born with.

       When I fist read what you have been writing, I though about the Morgan horse. They all are said to come from one stallion (but a bunch of different mares), but now I wonder if perhaps the palomino would be a better example?

       Palomino is a color dilution in horses where the black hair is turned white, and the brown hair is turned gold colored. It is a co-dominant gene – just one copy of the gene will turn a brown foal into a palomino.

       But 2 copies of the gene produce a creamello, an almost albino horse, not able to safely eat some of the weeds growing in the west.

       And are some of the traits which make a dog a winner perhaps linked to, or directly associated with, health problems? In other words are competitions directly choosing dogs carring harmful genes, or is it just inbreeding alone?

       
       
       • on November 26, 2010 at 8:29 pm Christopher@BorderWars

         A line of Non-Wiston Cap Border Collies doesn’t exist, at least not in the UK. The American registries don’t publish their books so there’s no way for an outsider to run the sort of analysis that could tell us if there are any Wiston Cap free Border Collies in the US or in Australia/New Zealand.

         
         
       • on November 26, 2010 at 8:33 pm Christopher@BorderWars

         Racing Greyhounds are only different in that they have selected against Hip Dysplasia so much that it’s not really seen in the breed.

         I suspect that any disease that would cripple a dog after its racing career is over (at what 3-4 years?), would not have been selected against.

         Racing Greys don’t suddenly become the epitome of good breeding just because they bred out one disease. They might have inbred heavily to do that, and thus they might be worse off overall. Who knows?

         
         
         • on November 26, 2010 at 10:50 pm Jess

           Sighthounds in general have a low rate of dysplasia, due to general conformation and musculature. Greyhounds have been used in several studies regarding heritability of traits associated with dysplasia, where they were cross-bred with Labradors and German shepherds. The abstracts are interesting reading.

           Now, those were racing Greys, and two things racing Greys are not bred for are TRAD (tremendous reach and drive) and exaggerated rear angulation. Draw your own conclusions.

           
           
       • on November 26, 2010 at 8:39 pm Christopher@BorderWars

         Regarding the Palomino and selecting for dangerous traits, this is probably true just on a logical level.

         What if what it took to win was an obsessive dog that was incredibly needy and so owner focused that no normal person could live with this dog?

         It only worked out because the owner could give the dog attention 24 hours a day.

         This could be true. This dog might be entirely inappropriate for huge numbers of other owners and breeders, but because of the wins, they’ll go there anyway.

         I think of “A Dangerous Mind”… a troubled, tortured genius. Would you chose that for your child?

         I’m not saying this is the case with any specific winning dog, but I will note that the NURTURE aspect of the formula is just as important and that doesn’t come with the dog.

         Wiston Cap’s most winning offspring were both owned and trained by the guy who owned Wiston Cap. Coincidence?

         
         
   • on November 25, 2010 at 4:08 pm souggy

     I suspect the reason why most people don’t care is because the ones who give a damn about the “popular sire” effect are the ones who are not buying show dogs or trial dogs… they are the ones who are buying farm-raised litters advertised on Kijiji or Used(insertcityname). It’s not those ones we have to worry about.

     The ones who are overbreeding their dogs are the ones who are in the frontline for the eventual collapse of the breed.

     
     
   • on November 28, 2010 at 7:19 pm Suzanne

     “The reason that it seems like no one cares is because the dogs are just so darn sound right now.”

     A succinct and accurate summation of the situation.

     However, just because you can point to breeds that are doing way worse doesn’t mean I’m not allowed to be worried about the long-term health of a breed I like. Especially when all that most of the breeders have to say is “but look how well my dog herds sheep!”

     
     
     • on November 28, 2010 at 7:33 pm Jess

       It is foolish in the extreme not to plan for the future. Once breed wide problems start to be evident, it is too late for some breeds, especially those that exist ONLY within the closed registry system.

       I find it very interesting that soooo many breeders are very into proactive health practices, regarding food, vaccines, etc. but so few are really interested in being proactive about the long term genetic health of breeds. And even those, if they want to work within the system, there is only a limited number of things they can do.

       
       
2. on November 25, 2010 at 5:07 pm HDP

   It is Turkey day, and what did I wake up thinking about? The political situation controlling dogs.

   From Anubis onward, dogs have been symbols and pawns used by groups of people TO CONTROL OTHER PEOPLE. The ‘wars’ about dogs, are not usually really about dogs.

   The issue disturbing my sleep involves my posting on blogs, and then wondering on the real motives which might be behind some of those blogs (not this one).

   One of the first places which I started to post on when I first went blogging was a group, not a blog. There was one poster who was very forceful against anti-pit bull laws.

   He had a group of fans who seconded what he wrote and added their feelings with various personal accounts. Then one day most of his fans suddenly went quiet – not a peep from them. What happened? I went looking to find out. He had posted something, which if you read between the lines, implied that he had gone to some sort of rooster fight.

   Since he hadn’t come right out and and mentioned it, I had let it slide by, without thinking much about it. But now that he had been abandoned en mass, I looked into it.

   Although he wrote in English, he lived in South America. And, he was really into making animals fight in a ring.

   His internet fans, however, were mostly people who seemed to work in public shelters where vast numbers of pit bulls were turned in, and euthanized – by those posters, who were interested in trying to get people to adopt those pit bulls so that they wouldn’t have to euthanize them.

   So the group who wanted to boost the image of the pit bulls, had become followers of a dog fighter. Once they found out what he really was – they dropped him like the much mentioned over-cooked potato.

   And him? He actually posted to the group, asking where his friends went! When someone pointed out his slip about roosters, he expressed confusion. He said that he believed that they were dog fighters too, that’s why they glorified that one breed of dog.

   Ouch. I went back through, re-reading his posts, and there was nothing in there to indicate that he thought these other people were rescuers.

   By that time, that I returned to the group, from reading his past posts, he had asked: What? Had dog fighting had been made illegal in the US?

   He said that he had heard that some people, in the US, were TRYING to make dog fighting illegal in the US; he thought that was what was meant by Breed Specific Legislation.

   He went on to explain that lots of people in his country want to do whatever people in the US did. He feared that if we outlawed dog fights, people in his country might want to out law them there too. He didn’t just attend dog fights, he owned a dog fighting kennel.

   He asked what the anti-pit bull laws were about, if not to make dog fights illegal? He was surprised to find that those laws were about banning breeds of fighting dogs!

   Then I started thinking about other posters. I guess other people were as shocked as I was (the group was a hodge podge of different types, with different pet topics).

   Come to find out, some of them were people whose employment hinged on keeping the staus quo, or in changing laws to their own profit.

   Ever since then, I’ve been a bit shy about trusting posters who claim that they too are on the dogs’ side, and are trying to help THE ANIMALS. I know that animal lovers are out there, but I am not as trusting as before, so finding new dog groups is stressful for me.

   
   
   • on November 26, 2010 at 8:54 pm Christopher@BorderWars

     BSL is designed to stop dog fighting. The “rescue” people are mostly fighting because they’re caught up in the “baby with the bathwater” sort of deal.

     I sort of see these people as upscale yuppies who adopt colored children and then complain about stereotypes. I seriously doubt that we see the same sort of “achievement gap” in adopted Black and Hispanic kids that we do in the inner cities.

     BSL isn’t trying to punish yuppies and their pitbulls. But what do you want, a provision in the law that says if you’re well meaning you get a pass?

     I don’t care too much either way on BSL yet because there are too many issues in my own breed to really care about a breed that, well, I don’t really care about.

     
     
     • on November 26, 2010 at 10:41 pm HDP

       I don’t usually get into comparing people and animals, because each species is different from other species in some way.

       Like in some garden flowering plants when you cross the red flowered variety with the white flowered variety, you get all red flowers; in other flowering plants red+white=white; yet in a differing flowering plant red+white=pink flowers; in an other flowering plant red+white= red & white striped flowers.

       There isn’t one formula to compare apples and oranges.

       People have very little genetic diversity. I view people like Labrador retrievers, they may have different colors, but they are all Labrador retrievers. We differ mostly in culture.

       Dogs have different breeds. They differ more because different criteria have been used in selection for each different breed.

       People don’t have where one woman has twenty babies, and 9 other women never have any. We don’t have popular sires like Wiston Cap where we all trace back to the same great-grandfather.

       Breeds of dogs have been produced to be bred apart. People don’t have 10% of people as breeders, and 90% of people as eunuchs.

       
       
   • on November 26, 2010 at 8:55 pm Christopher@BorderWars

     Oh, but I am reminded of the Shakespeare quote:

     “misery acquaints a man with strange bedfellows”

     in relation to your observation on that e-mail list.

     
     
     • on November 26, 2010 at 10:51 pm HDP

       Yes, and there are some STRANGE ideas in dog breeding. I read what some dog breeders post, and I think “I might be stupid sometimes, but I am not stupid enough to believe that hogwash!”

       The junk that some people post! Like that different breeds of dogs can not be bred together, but it is okay to breed more misformed, inbred dogs.

       Or the opposite, that all dogs are the same, and that they differ only in form, not instincts.

       They are dogs. Learning about people wont tell a person what dogs are like.

       
       
     • on November 28, 2010 at 12:45 pm HDP

       Chris, I think Shakespeare got it wrong – it makes more sense to say:

       “Strange bedfellows acquaints a man with misery”.

       But everybody already knows that – some of you might even be groaning from the truth of it.

       
       
   • on November 28, 2010 at 7:24 pm Suzanne

     If you’re interested in anti-BSL communities/blogs that aren’t full of idiots or hypocrites, I can point to you to a few.

     http://for-the-pits.blogspot.com/

     http://btoellner.typepad.com/kcdogblog/

     Are good for starters.

     
     
3. on November 25, 2010 at 5:27 pm HDP

   That’s the same mistake which I almost made with ‘working’ dogs.

   Okay, so the dog show crowd is not doggy enough. Too much love of the show, not enough for the dog’s themselves.

   But I want to find a group of people how are for the dogs themsleves. So where do I look? Trials.

   What do I find? That they seem to either be about winning the competition, or they are show people with show dogs, showing off their dogs at some game, where winning at the game is not important, only because the people are already 100% into dog shows and so have little interest in other dog sports.

   What groups are there that are for the dogs themsleves? And not led by a person or group of people who have their own hidden reasons?

   
   
   • on November 26, 2010 at 8:48 pm Christopher@BorderWars

     When you find the answer to that question, let me know.

     I’ve found only two other bloggers, Jess and Scotty, that are even on board with criticizing these cultures fairly and who are still active.

     There are a few more people out there that seemed to be onboard, one was Mrs. X, but no new posts in a long time.

     Dogs are pawns in a much more human centric power play.

     
     
4. on November 25, 2010 at 5:36 pm HDP

   Bill, I like your observation about the stages of decline in working and hunting breeds as:

   foundation>functional era>decline>museum piece.

   But where will grandkids get healthy breeds that run well?

   Unlike pre-WW2 era dogs, most puppies sold now come from inbred purebreds from show lines.

   Tthe original “purebred, but never show bred” lines (which a child could recognise from the show lines of the same breed) are mostly gone, or are called “heirloom” dogs.

   Mixed breed dogs are not the same as mutts.

   
   
5. on November 25, 2010 at 9:14 pm HDP

   Does anyone else feel like there is a spat between the show dog breeders and the trial dog breeders, but these 2 competition breeders join together to battle the puppy mills breeders –

   and those 3 groups of breeders (or their clubs) gang up against the independent breeders: the useful dog breeders, the working dog breeders, the hunters’ dog breeders, the hybrid breeders, the backyard breeders, the heirloom breeders, the mutt breeders, ……..?

   I feel like it’s the doggie primaries, with the incumbant vs the 2 canidates running for the other ticket —— but I’m an independent with no canidate to follow.

   I feel like I not only don’t have a canidate, I don’t even have an organized party!

   
   
   • on November 26, 2010 at 12:17 am Pai

     The dog world is incredibly tribal.

     
     

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