Ti Ti, a pekingese painted by Maud Earl in 1913.Â
And here are photos of the winner of the Westminster Kennel Club dog show in 2012, Ch. Palacegarden Malachy:
The great “breed improvement” contests that have gone on for the past century have certainly done their magic.
What was once a pretty hardy little dog is now a little lion trying to be a marmoset.
It’s now so short-legged that it waddles around when it walks, and we’ve now seen the creation of the ultimate heat-retaining little dog that has both the extremely distorted respiratory/cooling system of the flat-faced dog and a thick undercoat of something we’d expect to see from the arctic.
I don’t know how sane people allowed this to happen, but my word, it is has.
My dad’s dad bred pekes of the old type before World War One, in the north east of England. He would ‘turn in his grave’ etc. This is a constant theme of yours, retrieverman so what’s new, we all agree already.
Clondaw,
current breed-enthusiasts will spout claptrap about
the modern Pekes’ improved coats, gorgeous furnishings
[petticoats, feather, ruff, etc], & splendid improvements in
“Type”.
Kennel-blind or stable-blind refers to owners who cannot
see the flaws in their own dogs or horses – that’s why we
have a judge to supposedly impartially compare the dogs
as they are, to an imaginary standard: an ideal version.
[be aware that BARN-blind refers to horses who’ve lost
their vision after being kept in a dim barn for months or
years – that’s a different subject.]
The Peke-breeders who cannot recognize the deformities
inflicted on current-day “winning” Pekes are breed-blind:
they are incapable of seeing the damage, let alone admit-
ting that changes must be made.
Their blindness is not to flaws in their own dear dogs, but
to the deliberately-exaggerated traits in their chosen breed
as a whole, which are life-limiting or even life-threatening
to the individual dog, & thus detrimental to the breed.
People even slightly interested in this subject are well aware of the present state of degradation reached by the pekingese (and of course other breeds) but it’s where they go from here that matters. The English kennel club are supposed to have arrangements in place to discourage the showing of unhealthily constructed pekes, (and others) but they do not seem to be careful enough to ensure that judges are only being appointed who are wholly in cooperation with this aim. It is disappointing so far, really.
You could almost say I’m a hypocrite, since we have shih tzus, an achondroplastic and brachycephalic breed related to the peke (Mary’s choice of breed, says he defensivly). However, like most shihtzus, ours seem to function well enough to enjoy playing into older age, breathe easily and walk the legs of us humans over our local hills and woods. It is also a breed with a longlived tendency.
We rake out the undercoat daily, keep ends neat, but otherwise we only trim to keep hair out of the eyes. This leaves them with the usual breed image but comfortable, at least for most days in the British climate. During our incredibly rare hot periods on latitude 52 we walk them only in the cool depths of the forest. However,does my over full explanation convince you or does it betray a slight sense of guilt, maybe?
Where is his ice pack?
Oh excuse me his “ice pillow”. I kid you not.
What to do? Oh what to do for the Pekingese?
Give him an open airway so he can breathe for Christmastime. Give him a normal nose so he can play! Let him take off that heavy coat, so he can sit inside without having to rest on his pillow of ice.
Let him have longer legs, oh let him have longer legs, so he doesn’t waddle and struggle to trot. Let his legs be healthy not bent, and not hidden from view with hair.
Let his tail wag freely like a silken flag. Let his tail not be broken back, limply resting on his spine, but give it the natural language of dogs so he may speak to his own kind.
Let him be a dog.
“The great ‘breed improvement’ contests that have gone on for the past century have certainly done their magic.”
^
evil
(Insert “evil” between “their” and “magic”.
There seems to be 2 schools of thought on what to do about breeds with genetic health problems.
One group believes that it would be best to outlaw qualzucht breeding, as Germany has. The various kennel clubs would de-register or unrecognise those breeds (or turn in those who bred these illegally suffering dogs). I read recently about veterinarians who are behind this solution.
The other school of thought is to outcross the qualzucht bred breeds. This seems easy enough. The problem is that the people who would be doing the outcrossing would be the very same breeders and clubs who couldn’t or wouldn’t get it right before.
If a breeder has been breeding pekes for 5, 10, maybe 40 years and not only hasn’t noticed, or cared, about their dogs’ handicaps or suffering, are they going to be any better at learning how to outcross?
Outcrossing and selecting new traits isn’t too difficult but it takes several years to get what you want and produces many puppies you don’t want in your breeding program.
But most importantly the breeder has to really want to change, she has to have a vision of a healthy, happy, pack of peke type dogs, each a bit different from each other but equally loved and valued, running and running, racing and playing down the beach, dashing up a path, sniffing through abandoned lands, finding the forest, waiting for their friends and then the pack of variously mixed pekes, happy follow a scent trail together with their people scampering to keep up at the back of the pack. Without such vision will the peke breeders even try to get it right? Without a beautiful vision to aim for, do they have any chance of succeeding?
For some breeds so riddles with UNSEEABLE health problems it seems kinder to not try to save the breed, rather than produce a vast lot of crossbreds who carry so many terrible qualzucht mutations. Perhaps persons wanting a healthy Cavalier King Charles Spaniel would be better off buying a healthy English Springer Spaniel and crossing her with a nice Maltese stud dog.
If the CKCS was to go on as a breed, it might be better to wait 15 years, not breeding any of them, then start anew. Not that a team of intelligent breeders with a great desire for healthy CKCS couldn’t do it from existing stock and outcrossing, but it would take a huge amount of kennel space for years especially dealing with more than one late onset invisible genetic disease, and there would be all those puppies who got dealt the trait combinations you didn’t want. And again, who could be entrusted to stick to the vision of a healthy CKCS, when so many of the breeders have been breeding unhealthy dogs for shows.
Here in the UK, May, there is an arguably healthier tendency these days towards bespoke crossbreds: labradoodles and cockerpoos for active owners and small bichon type crosses for those who want lapdogs.
I met a lady vet walking through the woods two days ago whose labradoodle bitch had just said goodbye to her litter of nine. The bitch was an F1 and, here’s the interesting part, the F2 stud dog she chose had been fully dna tested. Maybe this was an expensive but responsible way ahead I thought. It doesn’t totally guarantee that no harmfjul recessives get passed on since the bitch was not similarly dna tested (this would be too expensive for most bitch owners I suspect) but for someone like me who bred dogs back in the pre dna era it seemed a wonderful step forward.
I’m all for cross-breeding for genetic diversity and to get a less extreme type, but with breeds like the Cavalier King Charles Spaniel, I question what happens after the F1 generation.
I like cockerpoos, ‘doddle types, puggles, and such, but breeds with serious invisible genetic disease should not be bred without a very sensible breed plan to avoid reoccurring doubled harmful recessives in the F2 generation.
I am glad to hear about DNA testing being done in one of the ‘doodles. Testing will likely become more and more common. There are still many more genetic diseases to be identified in dogs. Perhaps when every dog (and person) has their full DNA typed, much of genetic disease will be extinct.
But now the subject is known to be to be more complicated than previously though. It isn’t just which genes are inherited, but also which genes are turned on or off. It is believe that the environment of the parents from before their birth through the birth of their offspring will flip switches in the DNA of the puppies.
It is called epigenetics, and scientist think they can manipulate it with chemicals, switching on and off genes in adult dogs.
Many scientists doubt the importance of epigenetics. The evidence for it isn’t good. See
http://www.wiringthebrain.com/2013/01/the-trouble-with-epigenetics-part-1.html
At first I strangely thought they where kinda cute,despite not being a small dog person. They reminded me of my sisters past angora rabbit that got killed by loose dogs. Then I saw one that couldn’t even walk around the show ring,had to be picked up. So in realization a angora rabbit would be a better choice,although they’ve gotten more extreme in coat length during the past decade as well. Or a Tibetan spaniel of course,the one that didn’t get the short end of the stick in the show world.
I was hoping people would disagree with me, and tell about still breeding heirloom peke breeders, that someone would comment on how well pugpins and puggles are selling in their area, of how much healthier various new bulldog breeds are, of how people might restore the GSD and Boxer by crossing them with each other or with a Doberman pinscher, of strides the KC plan to take in the proper direction to restore fitness to dogs, of how the AKC plans on acknowledging problems and looking for ways to improve. (If any of those things are true.)
So is that it, everyone thinks it is best to end qualzucht breeding by dropping these breeds? Nobody with heirloom dogs?
There are “heirloom dogs”, but they’d be more likely to be called “backyard breeders”. Look at any so-called poorly bred pekingese and you’ll see less hair, more leg, and more muzzle than the typey show dogs. It takes effort to keep dogs looking so undoglike.
I’m not talking about puppymills – I mean people who have a nice pet, and decide they’d like to make more nice pets. To the fancy (and people involved in rescue), this is a horrible goal. The noble breeder doesn’t breed for pets, they breed for three goals:
– to create a dog which looks nice trotting and standing still.
– to breed a dog that resembles a vaguely written description.
– to only breed dogs which are related to one another.
The whole written standard fetish is kind of silly. It tells you nothing about the important aspects of a dog – what games does he play? In new surroundings, is he curious or frightened? Does he housebreak easily? Will he welcome cats and babies into the house? Will he wait quietly in the car on errands, and enjoy riding in a canoe?
Less extreme dogs are common in show dog litters, too. One of my own collies is champion-sired and the sibling of a grand champion – but her coat isn’t full enough, her head too wide, and her eyes are too big to be showable. A generation or two of dogs like that would bring back the old “farm collie”.
actually, I always thought Star Trek was responsible for this as it engendered an attempt to recreate a real tribble. Seriously, the issue with such dogs is to provide people with a reasonable, healthy alternative and SHOW them why they should choose the alternative. As for heirloom dogs, google “agility Pekingese” videos and you’ll find they ARE out there.
Will breeders of 40 years change? maybe, maybe not. But most breeders aren’t in a breed for 40 years and any that are do eventually die or retire out of breeding. The trick isn’t to continuously argue about how bad some (or even the majority) in a breed are, it’s also necessary to show the alternative. I am against a law “mandating” breeding to some criteria — as sadly shown too often, the Government in the US doesn’t always come up with good logic nor good science and often enough the enforcement can be wildly variable, and lastly, someone may someday decide that something else is “harmful” when it isn’t (say ee color which isn’t in wild wolves but is in plenty of domestic dogs).
Peggy Richter
Such a long list of dogs being bred poorly because humans are so stupid. Cocker spaniels, Cumberland Spaniels, bull dogs, to mention just a few. How did the Cocker Spaniel go from a lively field dog to a mop just like the Pekingese anyway? Makes me so angry. I used to have a Cocker Spaniel many years ago. Can’t find one like it anywhere today. It was a great dog.
I agree totally with what is being said here. I have a purebred Irish terrier (a breed that doesn’t win at Westminster and stays pretty well off the radar) and a smallish saluki/terrier cross (a lurcher). Some people on the NW Coast are have been breeding Northwest Farm Terriers for more than 20 years now (see their group on Facebook). NWFTs are a mix of Irish terrier, border collie, Airedale and Jack Russell. They are breeding fairly true to type now and are an interesting breed. I had English bull terriers for more than 20 years and breeders in the 1920s and 1930s nearly eliminated deafness in the all-white breed by outcrossing with colored Staffordshire terriers. (I had the colored type).
It isn’t exactly TIME which has been unkind to show Pekes, the evil curse done to them has no mysterious source, its been from Peke breeders, Peke exhibitors, Peke breed clubs, Peke judges, dog shows and dog registries with closed stud books.
You know the fairy tale where the kind girl kisses a frog, and he becomes a handsome man? It is like the reverse. A cute little dwarf dog was taken by women who claimed to love him, but look at what they did to him!
That’s not love. That is vile and cruel madness.
I looked long and hard to find an old style Pekingese when our Gizmo died. I finally found one, but it took some work. My avatar is a picture of Baxter and he is incredible and tough as nails. You can see him actually defending his owner and tearing someone to shreds if they jumped in your bed.