How do we breed dogs with stronger immune systems?
Also, see this post at DesertWindHounds. (Don’t freak. The background has changed. It is the same blog.)
MHC and the Immune System on the Pedigree Dogs Exposed blog
December 4, 2010 by SWestfall3
10 Responses
I got bored.
The question is not so much HOW to breed dogs with good immune systems, it is how to get dog breeders to care about the health of the immune systems of their dogs, instead of the dogs’ ability to win in dog shows or dog events.
(There are also the for profit breeders but they often use the more prestigious show lines for breeding when they can, but the larger for profit kennels have some very small selection for health, in that they like females who can produce large litters and who can produce lots of milk – which takes some health).
As far as I believe, the answer is in changing the dog shows themselves so that it is the participation, not the winning, which is important – that the dog is able to “pass” the test or event, not to win it.
That weeds out the bottom of the gene pool without causing popular sires, and popular kennels.
Even if show dog breeders started crossbreeding to other breeds, if they then only bred to those hybrids who won dog shows, we would be back to where we started with the next generation of puppies.
That’s the whole thing in a nutshell: competitive events motivate dog breeders to all breed to the same small group of dogs – the dogs who win best of their breed.
heh. if only it were that easy. Take any breed, say, Goldens. You don’t “care” about bench, but you do care that the dog be able to function as a decent retriever. Breed to what? There’s a lot of choices — other retriever breeds, setters, European HP breeds, even a few hounds, if one is daring, as well as other Goldens. But how do you determine if the dog you want for your bitch has a “better” immune system? Currently there is NOT a DNA test for “excellent immune system”. Basically you can only use the method Leon Whitney suggested decades ago — breed to the oldest dog in a good line. Old because healthy longevity is STILL about the only means one has to determine if a given dog has a “good” immune system. And by the way, that presumes that all the dogs have been equally “challenged” for immune capability (which is not usually the case).
There ARE plenty of show people who have their eyes and ears closed to breeding for better health in their dogs. There are also plenty of “field” people with the same attitude. But there are, equally, a few in both venues (and some who try to do both) who would be delighted if there were some test to determine immune system capabilty. In my own breed, I’ve been waiting for more than a decade for a decent DNA test for epilepsy and for one for stomach cancer. Neither are likely to be available any time soon. Breeding “outside” my breed — one doesn’t just want to pick another breed that will only bring in MORE problems in the F2, F5, etc generations. Health has to be beyond F1. It’s easier to “fix” things like appearance and structure, because one can SEE them. For things like genetic disorders, there are SOME tests (and mostly, those tests exist because dog breeders are ponying up to pay for them) but not nearly enough for a breeder to do what they might want regarding ensuring sound, healthy dogs.
Peggy Richter.
Hi Peggy, no it isn’t easy, but what endeavor is?
In some breeds like Golden Retrievers, there still are a lot of choices.
I won’t name the breed, but it was a gaint breed, where I met a woman with what looked to a very very very old dog. She said he was 5 years old, then she thought about it, and said that he was almost 5 years old.
She said there was a saying in her breed about: 2 years a pup, 2 years a dog, 2 years a senior. Then she said most of her dogs didn’t live that long, and that many didn’t live to be 5 years old. She said that they didn’t all die of the same thing.
I had met the grown daughter of a breeder of this breed who said in all their years of breeding them, they had never got more than 3 litters from any one bitch.
Her mother added that they had had one bitch who had died while pregnant with her 4th litter. They also said that they tried to get as many litters as they could – both from show winners and from any bitch who would live that long.
The history of their dogs’ health problems was a awful.
They said they didn’t breed their females until their second heat. That having a litter was so hard on their bitches that the bitches had not recovered enough to breed them 2 heats in a row. The mother described seriously run down mother dogs.
So skipping every other heat, allowed the mother dogs to recovery enough health to be bred again. But many of them died before having their second or third litter. And 3 litters had been the most a female ever lived to have.
In some breeds, an shift from breeding for shows, to breeding for good health and a long life, would seem to be the wise choice, but many dog breeders only breed dogs so they can show them – if their were no more dog shows, they would quit breeding.
I don’t have an answer which will make everybody happy, but if the breeds are to continue, the issues of canine health must be talked about and read about.
Hi again Peggy, I will try to add what little I know about breeding for immune system health in dogs or cats.
Mostly that there isn’t a gene for “good immune system”.
Think of it like: Pick 7 days to make up the best typical “proper” week.
Well, a proper week doesn’t have 6 Saturdays and one Sunday. A proper week has one Monday, one Tuesday…..
I think the basic idea is that you want one each of a wide range of alleles.
Like one F and one f, one G and one g, one H and one h….. except that would be within the immune system, not what those letters are used to represent in some other breeding systems.
In a nutshell: heterozygosity is usually good, so long as it doesn’t include harmful genes.
Heterozygosity – having two different genes for the same trait. For Example: having one color but carrying the trait for a different color – that means the same thing as being heterozygous for color.
That is one of the reasons why you can’t inbreed to get a good healthy dog.
Also, there is some science behind the idea that homozygousity causes mutations.
Just asserting that heterozygosity is “the answer” isn’t an answer. Take Belgians and German Shepherds. Lots of general similarities in form and function, at least in the performance dogs. In fact, the “Dutch police dogs” frequently are a combination of GSD/malinois/Dutch. But I have NOT heard that they live longer, are better in temperament, have better hips, etc, once one gets past that F1 generation. As with the LUA Dalmatian, it wasn’t “heterozygosity” that was the answer. It was careful breeding to fit dogs (with a test available) over several generations. And I’ll note that while these dogs aren’t “AKC”, they are certainly to be found (I have a friend who has one) entirely because some breeders DO care to keep trying, even against some pretty steep opposition.
I readily agree that the F1 gives you heterozygosity and may make it possible to avoid double recessive problems. Past F1, you get better results for low HD by looking for a line of dogs that have good/excellent hips in the pedigree. In fact, that line is probably homozygous for “good hips”.
“Immunity” is very vague. There’s no test for it that I know of (unlike HD or LUA). A lot of dogs that don’t exhibit say, flea-bite allergy, may simply live in an area where there aren’t fleas. And sweeping condemnations of breeders doesn’t help. Yes, there are GSDs out there that walk on their leg bones. And there are those that are structured a whole heck of a lot more like what Von Stephanitz had in mind. There are breeders who do care.
I personally support “appendix breeding” (I’ve mentioned it before on other posts). But if one is going to do that, it has to be done with a fair amount of knowledge (as was done with the pointer/Dalmatian or the corgi/boxer crosses).
As for bench show dogs, well, some of the field people ought to get together and swamp a show with their red field Goldens. It’s not going to change as long as one is on the outside looking in. Or, if one really finds the AKC bench stuff silly, then don’t do it. Recognize that those who do are, in fact, looking for an entirely different dog than you are and that your looking down your nose at them isn’t going to change what they think. One can certainly condemn dogs bred to have bad health (but as we’ve seen, that can occur in field breeding as well — racing greyhound cancer rates, the posts about CEA in bcs, incidence of heat /exercise exhaustion in some malinois lines). It’s another matter to argue that “their” goldens need to look like “your” goldens (or Dobermans, or GSDs, or whatever). Once one eliminates the worst cases of physical exaggeration (and again, one does see some of that in field dogs too), the rest is pretty much personal preference. If your field Golden has more in common with a field Flat Coat than with a bench Golden, so be it. That doesn’t mean that the bench Golden doesn’t have a right to exist. I personally don’t like the over coated “collie” Belgians one sometimes sees in the show ring. It’s not a functional working coat. But those who like such dogs have as much right to breed what they like as I do, as long as what they are doing doesn’t actually HARM the dogs. I don’t like some of the “hyper” “field” Belgians either. I don’t think “John the sheepherder” would have cared for that kind of dog. But again, those who do like such dogs have as much right to breed what THEY like as I do to breed what I like. As long as it doesn’t HARM the dogs, I think that toleration of differing views is essential. Bench Aussies seldom look like working Aussies. Doesn’t mean they aren’t often just as healthy and perfectly good dogs. Just means that maybe better labeling is needed.
Peggy Richter
Hi Peggy, I feel that you think that we disagree more than I feel we do.
Maybe you disagree more with what I write than I do with what you write? But since I have haven’t been reading the comments here for too long, I don’t know how you might feel, or what you might believe.
I don’t think that heterozygosity can be “the answer” because I don’t think that there can just be one answer.
Unfortunately, many of the show dog breeders who I have met, and those who I have read online, believe that they know the answer, and for me, their answer doesn’t work.
HDP wrote: “many of the show dog breeders who I have met and those who I have read online, believe that they know the answer, and for me, their answer doesn’t work” —
==yeah, I can agree with that. I just get frustrated sometimes. I’ve got 3 generations dual champions in my breed (I think I’m still the only one). I’ve tried my best to be UTD on the latest genetic information and “who has what” in order to try and breed healthy sound dogs. And I know other breeders in my breed who make similar efforts. The biggest problem I see is that when one makes a wholesale condemnation of “all” breeders of purebred dogs, it gets those who ARE trying to do the “right thing” as well as the (often) more visible ones who maybe don’t care or “don’t see the problem”. I’ve dealt with a few of those types myself. People urge an “open health registry” and then act like sharks in a feeding frenzy towards anyone who admits even a cosmetic fault in their dog. OTOH, I’ve run into the “your dog isn’t good enough” in both the bench and field endeavors. In herding, to hear some talk, you’d think the “ONLY” herding dog would be those descended from Winston Cap. There’s no effort to recognize that different herding dogs vary in what they excel in and to provide appropriate venues. It’s a little like Déjà vu to hear similar discussions regarding “retrievers’” or “bird dogs”. On the flip side, one regularly hears the “I don’t want an ugly dog” used as an excuse to persevere in keeping on with conformation changes.
But things like Pedigree dogs Exposed tend to tar ALL breeders as bad, and they aren’t. If someone hadn’t cared about LUA in Dalmatians, the project would never have started and there wouldn’t be a continuing effort to include them as AKC registered dogs. It’s frustrating to see people so focused on “purity” that they are willing to continue damaged dogs – and frustrating to see folk blind as to serious health issues (the bulldogs being such a classic example). BUT it’s equally frustrating that those decrying the health issues/ functional issues tend to paint “ALL” purebred breeders as being willfully ignorant and close-minded. Or insinuating that a “Goldendoodle” is somehow a vast improvement on every Golden alive.
I’d like to see a bit more support for those who ARE trying to “do the right thing”. That’s all. There are some of us out there. I’ve even seen some posts by them on this blog.
Peggy Richter
Peggy, thank you for saying all this. There certainly ARE breeders, in many breeds, who are deeply concerned, and trying very sincerely to “do it right”.
And they are putting their money behind it too, with funding of efforts such as the Morris Animal Foundation, the Canine Health Foundation, dozens of breed club Foundations that help fund research and education, and dozens of university veterinary research organizations– too many to name here!
I wonder how many “labradoodle” breeders contribute to such?
Labdoodle and goldendoodle breeders are a joke. I honestly appreciate their logic for breeding such animals, but I don’t know any who follow through with what they said about their crosses.
Yes, I know they’re suppose to be hypoallergenic, but are they TESTED for it? Most people don’t ask their breeders to ensure the dogs and the person in question are compatible.
Better genes? Have they been screened, tested and compared to the original stock populations? I haven’t heard of any that do.
I apologize if there are people out there who do test for these things, but they’re certainly not the forerunners of what advocates are trying to put across.