How Much is That Bulldog in the Window?

Back in 2006, I wrote of the English Bulldog:

The famed English Bulldog... is mostly Chinese pug -- a show ring creation with legs so deformed it can barely walk, a jaw so undershot it cannot grab a Frisbee, and with a face so bracycephalic it cannot breathe. Add to these problems a deformed intestinal system (a by-product of achondroplasia or dwarfism) which makes the dog constantly fart, and a pig tail prone to infection, and you have a dog that considers its own death a blessed relief.

I have not changed my opinion, but you do not have to listen to me to hear about the congenital defects inherent to the breed.

Listen to what a top AKC show breeder told ABC television's Nightline program in April of 2009:



Why should anyone care that English Bulldogs are genetic and conformation wrecks?

Well for one, because this dog is a Top Ten AKC breed, along with the Golden Retriever, whose health care costs I have previously described.

We are talking about scores of thousands of dogs that will spend a lifetime in misery, struggling for breath even as they sleep.

And this struggle is not some sort of accident or an unintended genetic aberration.

This is perpetual torture by design, and it is common to one of the most abundant dogs to be found in the American Kennel Club.

Then there is the expense of taking care of these dogs. As with Golden Retrievers, the financial costs can be jaw-dropping.

Consider some of the common health care expenses that Embrace Pet Insurance has documented with this breed:



Embrace Pet Insurance pulls no punches in their description of the health of English Bulldogs:

The Bulldog may be perfect in spirit, but in the flesh is a different story. These dogs are intolerant of warm weather, and may die if over-heated. Too much exercise or stress can make it difficult for them to breath. Without exception, Bulldogs must live indoors, and need air conditioning in all but the mildest summer weather.

More than 90 percent of all Bulldogs are born by C-section. Because breeding them is expensive, the puppies are, too. Love is an expensive proposition when you own a Bulldog....

...Bulldogs' hips and spines are often malformed, as are their mouths. They suffer from a long list of respiratory ailments. Their many wrinkles and folds, and tightly curled tails, mean lots of skin infections. Cherry eye, inverted eyelids, cataracts and dry eye are just a few of the eye abnormalities that can affect the Bulldog.

...Many conditions have no screening tests, even though they're known or believed to be genetic. These include seizure disorders, allergies and skin problems, several kinds of bladder stone, a long list of airway defects, birth defects, infertility and cancer, and more. Bulldogs are also at high risk for "bloat and torsion," where the stomach twists on itself, trapping air inside, and requiring immediate emergency surgery.

Of course, more could be said.

Embrace Pet Insurance mentions the high cost of Cesarean births, but they do not mention the rape racks that are used in mating because this dog is so deformed and defective that it can only rarely breed on its own.

Do you still want an English Bulldog?

So you still think they are "oh so cute?"

Are you still reading all-breed books that leave all the important information out?

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  ** Kennel Club Dogs: Unnatural Selection for Defect
  ** The AKC Top Ten: A Sad & Grim Joke
  ** Deformity and Disease Due to Exaggeration
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AKC and Pfizer Partner on Defective Dogs

The American Kennel Club and Pfizer are going to partner on dog research.

How perfect is that?

The AKC makes diseased and defective dogs, and Pfizer makes medications to treat the same.

And of course, the AKC also sells pet insurance so that pet owners can afford to buy all those Pfizer medicines that are needed to treat the diseased and defective dogs that are being cranked out by AKC breeders.

As the press release notes:

The partnership might also help Pfizer curry favor with veterinarians and win loyalty to brands such as its Vanguard vaccine against distemper and other viruses.

Medicines for pets and livestock have become a hot area for huge pharmaceutical companies trying to diversify in an effort to combat the potential loss of billions in annual revenue as their blockbuster drugs get cheaper generic competition.

Treatments for pets are particularly appealing because they rarely face generic competition and prices are not negotiated down by insurance companies and government health programs, as with drugs for people. In addition, global sales of animal drugs and vaccines have been rising at a steady rate of 5 percent a year, partly fueled by bigger livestock herds as the growing middle class in emerging markets eats more meat.

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Time to Move Beyond What the Kennal Club Offers

Kennel Club judge Steven Seymour writes in Dog World:

"It is my absolute belief that if put to the vote today, there would be a huge majority vote in favour of major structural change in the way we breed and register puppies in this country."

"Dogs’ health and welfare are being left waiting on the shelf at present, while the power brokers decide what will produce the best outcome; maybe the best outcome for themselves. This is simply not good enough.

"The calls from the mainstream of dedicated breeders could not be any louder. They want the KC to take a proper stance against those who breed without regard to health, and equally they want action to ensure those who volume breed are strictly monitored and inspected on a regular and profession basis.

"Imagine any corporation or business today being able to receive millions a year in income and not be called to account for the product its brand endorses. Each and every day the KC registers puppies which are bred from unchecked parents. Its system of registration allows this to continue unregulated. Everyday someone will buy a faulty product which the KC has endorsed as being purebred and KC registered."

Read the whole thing!
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A Question of Breed

This is a repost from October 2005

The quarry does not care what breed a dog is so long as it is doing the job.

Yet breeds do matter to humans for the simple reason that the more we know about breeds, and lines within breeds, the more likely we are to get a dog that is of real use to us in the field. There is always a chance we will get a dud, of course, but we can reduce that risk if we pick the right breed, select the right breeder, go slow, and use a modicum of common sense.

There are more than 28 types of terrier, but only six working breeds worth talking about, and even fewer worth considering if you are looking for a dog in America, as of this writing (2005).

There are two closely-related white breeds (the Jack Russell Terrier and the Plummer Terrier), two closely-related black breeds (the Patterdale Terrier and the Jagt Terrier), and two closely-related red breeds (the Border Terrier and the Fell Terrier).

Of these six breeds, only three are real options for U.S. earth work. Let us dispose of the generally unsuitable dogs first.

The Plummer Terrier is simply a color variant of the Jack Russell Terrier. I like the look of this dog, but in truth a good terrier does not come in a bad color, and breeding for coat markings has always been a dangerous thing.

The Plummer Terrier started off as a genetic mess — a point well documented by Brian Plummer himself. The good news is that thanks to culling and out-cross breeding, most of the serious genetic problems have been worked out of the gene pool.

The bad news is that a new problem has worked its way in: the dogs are generally too large, standing 13-15 inches tall, with 14- and 15-inch dogs very common.

Of course size is not a problem if you are ratting, which was Brian Plummer’s specialty and passion and mostly what the dogs are use for to this day. If you intend to dig to groundhog, raccoon, and fox in the U.S., however, a 14-inch dog is simply too big for our tight earths. The issue is moot, in any case; as of 2005, Plummer Terriers simply do not exist as a working terrier breed in this country.

The Jagt Terrier is another breed that fails the American working terrier size test. The Jagt Terrier was created in Germany in the 1930s with the idea of being an “all purpose” hunting terrier able to flush rabbits and wild boar from dense brush, retrieve shot birds, blood track gutshot deer, and go to ground on fox and badger.

Unfortunately, dogs are specialized for a reason, and the Jagt Terrier is, at best, a second choice in all of these tasks. When it comes to fox work, the standard for the Jagt Terriers (13" to 15" tall) calls for a dog that is simply too big for our tight American earths. There are some very small Jagts that do well, but the gene pool is dominated by larger dogs, and Jagts should only be considered, in my opinion, if it is a full-grown adult and significantly smaller than the standard.

The red Fell Terrier is a type of non-pedigree Lakeland Terrier found in the north of England. This dog would have much to recommend it if small versions of this breed could be found in the U.S. Unfortunately, as of 2005, there are only a handful of red fells in the U.S., and even fewer that are sized for our tight earths. If you can find a small dog, go for it, but the chances of locating such an animal are slim to none.

We now come to the three types of working terriers available in the U.S. which also have some hope of being the right size: the Border Terrier, the Patterdale Terrier, and the Jack Russell Terrier.

Border Terriers are wonderful dogs, but finding one that is the correct size and has a small chest is very difficult in the U.S. Few Kennel Club Border Terrier owners keep size records going back generations, and the chance of being able to select a small one out of a gene pool dominated by large dogs is about as likely a picking the trifecta at Belmont Raceway. The chance of finding one that has worked three types of quarry is close to zero.

Unfortunately, the other alternative — buying a small adult dog — is also virtually impossible as Border Terriers are not common in the U.S., and most dogs are placed as pups and never relinquished (hardly surprising after a sum of more than a $1000 has changed hands). As for finding a small adult working dog for sale -- forget it.

Border Terriers have wonderful winter coats, but these same coats tend to result in an overheated dog in summer when so much groundhog work is done. The dog that never gets cold in winter, simply flops over in summer heat.

Finally, it is worth mentioning that Border Terriers are, as a rule, slow to start. While a Jack Russell or Patterdale will usually start to work between 10 months and one year of age, Borders Terriers seem to start a full year later. There are exceptions to the rule, to be sure, but I have spent a fair amount of time around Border Terriers, and it’s best to plan on a late starter and be surprised than depend on an early starter, and be disappointed. Borders are not the “One Minute Rice” dogs so popular with young terrier enthusiasts today — one reason they may have experienced a decline in popularity in the field.

Patterdale Terriers are rapidly rising in popularity in the U.S. and they have much to commend them. Unfortunately, as Patterdales have grown in popularity, they have also grown in size. This is particularly true in America, I am afraid to say, where Patterdale Terriers have suffered a terrific genetic beating at the hands of young want-to-bes who have crossbred them with small pit bulls. Large numbers of these overlarge black dogs have been cranked out to be sold off on places like “Bay Dogs Online.” Here the ads read “will hunt anything.” “Has hunted nothing” is more likely the story. Pictures of chained out “yard dogs” may be offered at referring web sites, and dogs are sometimes swapped for auto parts or sold in groups by get-rich-quick failures who are now having “Kennel Reduction” sales.

Having raised a caution about size and breeders, it should be said that if you can find a nice small Patterdale, 12 inches tall or smaller, and with a nice tight chest of 14 inches or less, these dogs generally make exceptional workers. Caveat emptor, as with all terrier purchases, but if are flinty and properly focused on getting a small enough dog, you can do very well with a Patterdale.

Finally, we get to the Jack Russell Terrier. What a divergent mess of registries and types this breed has become! Some Jack Russellls have ears that are erect, some down, some are longer than they are tall, some are pure white, some are as parti-colored as a beagle. There are smooth coats, broken coats and dogs hairier that a Wookie straight out of Star Wars. A Jack Russell’s legs may be straight as sticks or as ornately curved as those of a Queen Anne bench. Its chest may be as small around as a lady’s bracelet, or as big around as a bowling ball.

How do you sort it out?

Simple: Get a dog registered with the Jack Russell Terrier Club of America, and accept no substitutes if you are looking for a working Jack Russell. Let is be said that I am not affiliated with the JRTCA in any way. I do not breed dogs, I do not show dogs, and I do not judge dogs. My reason for recommending the JRTCA is solely practical: The JRTCA records the size of dogs and also offers working certificates. The result is a documented track record of work and size that can be tracked across a five-generation pedigree. When you are looking for a working terrier, nothing is more valuable.

Buyer beware, of course. Most JRTCA dogs are show dogs or pets, and only about 5 percent hunt. The good news, is that with a JRTCA dog you can look through a pedigree and see whether there is a track record of work, and also ascertain the size of the dog’s dam, sire, grand-dam and grand-sire. With hundreds of well-documented working JRTCA dogs in America, the chance of finding an acceptable working terrier is higher in the JRTCA gene pool than anywhere else.
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The Humane Society did WHAT?

Has Hell frozen over?

You might think so.

You see, the Humane Society of the U.S. (HSUS) is quoting this blog in the cover story of All Animals magazine, which is HSUS's full-color bimonthly membership magazine which goes out to their 10 million members.

In a long, well-written, and fair piece, author Carrie Allan lays out The Purebred Paradox whose strap line is "Is the quest for the 'perfect dog' driving a genetic health crisis?"

Once upon a time, people believed that purebred dogs were naturally healthier than mixed breeds. How have we arrived at a point where it may be safer to presume the opposite? ....

.... The more limited the number of mates, the greater the chance a dog will be bred with a relative who shares similar genes. Genetic diseases are caused by recessive genes, so a good gene from one parent will trump a bad gene from the other. But if both parents have a bad gene—such as one that predisposes them to hip dysplasia or blindness—the likelihood of a sick puppy increases.

“What happens when you have a small and inbreeding population is that the probability of two negative recessive genes finding each other increases as the gene pool chokes down to a smaller and smaller pool,” says Patrick Burns, a Dogs Today columnist who frequently writes about genetic health issues on his blog, Terrierman’s Daily Dose.

A closed registry that allows no “new blood” into the mix exacerbates the problem, he argues: “In many AKC dogs, the founding gene pool was less than 50 dogs. For some breeds, it was less than 20 dogs.”

This year’s Westminster champion, a Scottish terrier named Sadie, hails from one of these tiny gene pools and is “very heavily inbred,” says Burns. The limited ancestry for AKC-registered Scotties, he adds, helps explain why 45 percent die of cancer.

“We do not need to have a closed registry to keep a breed,” Burns says, pointing out that breeds existed long before there was an organization to track them. “We did not create the dogs we love in a closed registry system—we have only ruined them there.”

Read the whole thing. The HTML version (multiple jump pages) is here, and the PDF version (8 pages) is here.

This is one of the longest and best articles done so far on the American "dog mess" that is a confluence between disease, deformity and defect caused by inbreeding and contrived and twisted breed standards, and the sick internacine economic relationships that exist between puppy mills and the AKC.

This article also details what has been going on in the United Kingdom since the advent of Pedigree Dogs Exposed. As Carrie Allan writes:

[I]in the United Kingdom, at least, there seems to be momentum for change. Whether that momentum will gather steam in the U.S. remains to be seen

Spread this article around!

Remember that if you want the Humane Society of the U.S. to move in the right direction, you need to click and treat.

I assure you this is the right direction. They have not taken any gratuitous swipes at pedigree dogs or dog breeders. Quite the opposite, in fact.

Take this line for example. Anyone think this is not fair and well-said?

At The HSUS, we’re big fans of adoption. By going to a local shelter or rescue group, you stand a good chance of both saving a life and finding a purebred — after all, they make up an estimated 25 percent of dogs in shelters.

When you can’t find the dog you’re looking for, however, responsible breeders are another option; they are devoted to their animals’ well-being and committed to placing them in loving homes. And if every shelter dog were adopted and every puppy mill were shuttered, there would still be a need for good breeders to supply dogs to American households.

Full applause to HSUS for this article, and to author Carrie Allan in particular. This is a big subject, and she has done an extraordinarily good job of wrapping herself around it and presenting it in a cogent and fair manner.

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Puppy Mills, Veterinary Bills and the AVMA

This aisle of dog feces did not result in a direct violation from the USDA.

If I told you the current head of the American Veterinary Medical Association had been in charge of puppy mill inspections at the U.S. Department of Agriculture at a time when inspectors rarely issued a citation for even the most horrific situation, would you believe me?

Would you believe me if I told you this same gentleman -- Ron DeHaven -- is now a cheerleader for veterinary bill padding?

The good news is that you do not have to believe me.

I have video tape and records from the U.S. Department of Agriculture itself to prove it.

Let's start with the USDA's "Animal Care" division.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture's own Inspector General released a report last month admitting the Agency has done a very poor job of enforcing the Animal Welfare Act, the law designed to make sure that "commercial breeding facilities" for dogs and cats are something less than centers for horror, pain and misery.

You can read the entire report yourself right here [PDF], complete with graphic pictures.

The report starts off noting that:

In our last audit [2005] on animals in research facilities, we found that the agency was not aggressively pursuing enforcement actions against violators of AWA [Animal Welfare Act] and that it assessed minimal monetary penalties against them....

And guess what? Things did not improve!

As The Los Angeles Times summarized in its story on the USDA's Inspector General report:

An internal government report says dogs are dying and living in horrific conditions due to lax government enforcement of large kennels known as puppy mills.

Investigators say the Department of Agriculture agency in charge of enforcing the Animal Welfare Act often ignores repeat violations, waives penalties and doesn't adequately document inhumane treatment of dogs. In one case cited by the department's inspector general, 27 dogs died at an Oklahoma breeding facility after inspectors had visited the facility several times and cited it for violations.

The review, conducted between 2006 and 2008, found that more than half of those who had already been cited for violations flouted the law again. It details grisly conditions at several facilities and includes photos of dogs with gaping wounds, covered in ticks and living among pools of feces.

So who was running Animal Control during those years?

None other than Ron DeHaven, the current head of the American Veterinary Medical Association (AVMA).

DeHaven was deputy administrator for Animal Care (AC) from 1996-2001, deputy administrator of APHIS for Veterinary Services from 2002-2004 and head administrator of the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service from April 2004-July 2007.

In short, if commerial dog breeding facilities in the U.S. are a mess, that mess is parked right at his door.


Ticks on this dog were deemed to not be a direct violation, and so no follow up.



So what's DeHaven's message now? Watch the video below to find out.



Isn't that wonderful? Ron DeHaven is the new face of veterinary bill padding; a pusher for contrived crisis and the "dependency model" of veterinary care.

The current head of the AVMA is the same fellow who gave a "big wink" to the kind of puppy mill abuse the USDA's Inspector General found so shocking only last month.

This is who represents your veterinarian on Capitol Hill.

Nice!

You know what you won't find the AVMA talking about?

You won't hear them talking about contrived standards in Kennel Club dogs.

You won't hear them talking inbreeding and disease in Kennel Club dogs.

And why would they? For veterinarians, silence has been golden.

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What the Hell Is a Congo Terrier?

Click to enlarge. Art work by Kevin Brockbank (note dog in a pot at right!)

This piece is from the July issue of Dogs Today.

Out of Africa

A single breed - the Congo Terrier - sums up the history of dogs.


Have you noticed that in the world of dogs, names and places never quite line up?

Look at Welsh Terriers.

I know digging men in Wales, but none that use a Kennel Club Welsh Terrier to hunt fox to ground.

I know digging men in Scotland, but none that use a Scottish terrier.

Afghans?

There are no Kennel Club Afghan dogs coursing in South Central Asia.

Show line German Shepherds?

Not too many of those herding sheep in Germany!

And in central Africa, the locals are not using "Congo Terriers" that have Kennel Club papers.

A Congo terrier?

What on earth is that?


The Kennel Club's Pariah Dog

The “Congo terrier” was discovered by explorer Georg Schweinfurth on an expedition to Africa in 1869.

He called the dogs "Niam-niam dogs," which described the tribal region where they were found, and he noted they were often quite fat, as the Niam-niam people loved dogs so much they thought nothing of tossing them into the stew pot for dinner!

The dogs themselves were spitz-like and barkless, with erect ears and curled tails, as is often the case with primitive dogs. Where the Niam-niam dogs were different was in their relatively small size, their short coat, and the fact that they often featured a white band of fur around their neck.

Though Schweinfurth called them Niam-niam dogs, similar animals were found across a wide belt of central Africa, stretching from Liberia in the West, to Sudan in the East.

Like many other primitive landrace pariah dogs, the Niam-niam dog had only one estrus a year and rarely barked, but instead vocalized with howls, yodels, and whines similar to those of the wolf, coyote, dingo, or jackal.

Of course, a largely silent dog in thick cover is not necessarily an asset. No matter; this deficit was corrected by African hunters who attached a wooden "bell" or clapper to the necks of their dogs so they could more easily drive small game out of thick cover.

In 1895, the Niam-niam dog was displayed at the Crufts dog show as the "Congo terrier."

The name did not last too long.

In the late 1930s, the Congo Terrier was formally brought into the Kennel Club and renamed the "Basenji" -- a Bantu name that meant "village dog."

The first order of Kennel Club business was to craft a narrow appearance-based "standard" for the Basenji. This was not hard to do, as only seven dogs were initially admitted.

Clearly these seven dogs were perfect specimens of their type!


Inbreeding to Failure

Seven dogs, of course, is not much of a gene pool. In fact, the gene pool of the Basenji never grew much bigger than this. Over the course of the next 60 years, no more than 30 dogs comprised the entire founding stock of the breed in the U.K., the U.S., and Europe.

Inbreeding within this small stock of foundation dogs quickly led to a crushing genetic load and a rise in disease.

The first issue to raise its head was Hemolytic Anemia. When testing was started, twenty percent of all Basenjis carried this recessive gene. What to do?

The answer: Cull.

And cull they did, with about 18 percent of Basenjis weeded out of the American Kennel Club gene pool over the course of a decade.

Of course, this deep reduction in an already narrow gene pool sped up the inbreeding merry-go-round.

Within a decade, another health problem had popped up: Fanconi syndrome, a type of kidney failure. A health survey found 10 percent of all American Basenjis had Fanconi syndrome, and of these dogs, 76 percent were being bred.

What to do?


The Outcross Solution

The solution, of course, was an outcross.

The good news was that there were was no shortage of excellent dogs in Africa. After a 1988 visit to the Congo, AKC judge Damara Bolte reported that:

"In five days and 800 kilometers of driving, we saw at least 200 dogs of which only three were not Basenjis."

Could anyone driving down the road see the same number of Welsh Terriers in Wales, or Scottish Terriers in Scotland? Impossible!

In 1990 the Basenji Club of America successfully petitioned the American Kennel Club to open the AKC registry to African dogs, and 12 were admitted.

The addition of 12 African imports helped, but it was not enough. With popular sire selection, inbreeding within the Basenji gene pool continued. And how could it not, with less than a dozen dogs comprising over 95% of the Y chromosomes in Kennel Club dogs across the U.S., Europe and the U.K.?


Form, Function and Fantasy

As noted earlier, Basenjis have always been found across a wide swath of central Africa. The early dogs came from the Sudan, Sierra Leon, Liberia, the Cameroon, and the Congo.

In 1998, an American Peace Corps worker in Benin reported the country was awash in Basenjis, and that they could be acquired for as little as a dollar.

In 2004, an American imported six of these dogs, and they were shown at the 2004 Basenji Club of America Nationals. By then, however, the AKC registry had once again closed.

The Basenji Club petitioned the AKC to reopen the registry. This was done in January 2007, with a new closing scheduled for 2013.

Will opening the AKC Basenji registry a second time really matter?

Yes and no.

It will not matter to the Basenjis in Africa, which have never needed saving.

The hunting dogs of Africa are protected by those who hunt them. In this regard, they are no different from the working terriers of Wales and Scotland, the coursing dogs of South Central Asia, or bird dogs the world over.

But the Basenji community will not be dissuaded. They insist they are "saving" a breed.

But what is it that they saving, and who are they saving it from?

One thing is clear: Basenji enthusiasts are not trying to save hunting dogs in Africa.

You cannot save dogs in Africa by removing them from the continent, and you cannot save a hunting breed by not hunting them at all.

So what are the Kennel Club enthusiasts really trying to save?

Mostly, they are working to preserve a romantic notion of their own making.

For their breed to be special, a Basenji has to be more than another village dog, even if the word "Basenji" means just that in the Lingala language of the Congo.

And so, Basenji owners tighten down on what they see as the “special essentials” of their breed.

They insist no Basenji should ever bark, and never mind if some always have, and that a barkless dog is such a liability that the Africans themselves bell their dogs when they hunt.

And, of course, all Basenjis must have a tightly curled tail, and no matter that a tightly curled tail serves no function in the field.

Function? The American and European Basenji is not about function! This dog is about form and fantasy.

Hunting? What does hunting have to do with the Basenji? Nothing!

Why should Basenjis be held to a working standard when the Kennel Club Welsh Terrier and Scotty are not? This is the Kennel Club, not the African bush. Form trumps function; everyone knows that. And form is maintained by inbreeding right up to the edge of genetic failure. Why should the Basenji be any different in this regard?

And so Kennel Club Basenji enthusiasts hold tightly to a breed standard invented in England based on seven dogs. And when shown pictures of small hunting dogs in central Africa that do not quite conform to every aspect of "the standard,” they sniff disdainfully.

“Those aren’t Basenjis. Those are nothing more than village hunting dogs."

Right. No irony there!

Just ask any Welshman with mud on his boots, calluses on his hands, and a terrier at his heels. What does he know of Welsh terriers? Not a thing!

And so we come to the ultimate irony: What are Basenji enthusiasts trying to protect their American and European dog from?

Why inbreeding within the closed registry system of the Kennel Club, of course!
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The Real Numbers are Numbing Enough ....

I don't think anyone has ever accused me of being a defender of inbreeding.

I'm against it, and I am not shy about saying so. In fact, I have been pretty vocal on the subject for a pretty long time.

Having said that, it's important to note that sometimes folks wade into debates a little too quickly. While their heart may be in the right place, their enthusiasm may exceed their attention span.

Such is the case in an article from In These Times, which was forwarded to me this morning. The author (a summer journalism intern) writes on the perils of canine inbreeding, noting that:

In some breeds, dogs have a 75 percent inbreeding coefficient (the indication of how related they are), according to Susan Thorpe-Vargas, a breeder of Samoyeds who holds a Ph.D. in genetics. (A brother and sister have a coefficient of 25 percent.) John Armstrong, a veterinarian with the Canine Diversity Project, reports that certain lines of standard poodles have an inbreeding coefficient of 70 percent.

According to data from the University of Pennsylvania school of veterinary medicine, three-fourths of puppies with a 67 percent or higher coefficient will die within 10 days.

I have to say I paused here. You see I saw a couple of obvious red flags.

The first is that there is NO breed of dogs that has a coefficient of inbreeding of 75%.

None.

The average coefficient of inbreeding (COI) of pedigree dogs is not 70 percent or 60 percent or 50 percent or 40 percent. The average COI is not 30 percent of even 20 percent. It is less than 15 percent. [see Golden Retriever example with sample of over 275,000 dogs].

The second red flag is the notion that a COI of X percent will result in a specific neo-natal mortality of Y percent.

Not true. Things are not that simple.

If a couple of dogs with no negative recessive genes at all (a very rare thing) are bred together, a very high COI can be achieved without a jaw dropping level of neo-natal mortality.

YES, as a general rule, the higher the COI the more likely there are to be both generalized and breed-specific health problems, but there is no specific mathematical health outcome like neo-natal mortality.

Things are not that simple.

The third point is that John Armstrong is dead and has been for a number of years.

This is a small point, I know, but it jumped out at me as "reports" is an active verb and John Armstrong is not doing much of it these days.

Armstrong, of course, did write about the health outcomes that befell a particularly inbred strain of standard poodles, but that example was chosen because it was an extreme example of inbreeding, not because it was an average.

So where did this young reporter get her information?

It appears she gleaned it from a not-too-well written online "genetics tutorial" put out by the University of Pennsylvania School of Veterinary Medicine.

I went to the link supplied, and found no footnotes and no author. By backlinking, I discerned it was an online tutorial to provoke thought (and perhaps discussion) among young veterinary students.

A quick Google, and I found that the beagle colony example given (it was not all dogs as suggested in the In These Times article) applied to only a single heavily inbred beagle colony at the Argonne National Laboratory.

As for the reference to Scott and Fuller, I assume it is to their book, entitled "Genetics and the Social Behavior of Dogs." You can read that book yourself, but it does not quite say what the In These Times author or the University of Pennsylvia veterinary school web site suggests. In fact, the evidence is a bit contrary.

For example Scott and Fuller note that Basenjis are among the most-inbred dogs in the Kennel Club (at the time they had a COI of .25) , but they also note that they also had the lowest neonatal mortality rate of the five breeds listed -- half that of beagles, and even less than half that of shelties, cocker spaniels and fox terriers.

Whoops!

Did Scott and Fuller say hybrid dogs (cross- and mixed-breeds) had lower rates of neonatal mortality than pure bred dogs? Of course!

No one is arguing that hybrids are not generally healthier than pure breeds, or that higher coefficients of inbreeding are not related to defect and disease.

But numbers and data exist for a reason, and the case for Kennel Club change can be made without misusing data or ignoring it.

Of course, error of fact exists from one end of the Internet to the other.

So why have I not rolled over and just let this one go?

Well for one thing, the article is sufficiently shocking in message and sufficiently "science sounding" that it has already popped up several places.

And yet it is wrong.

And it is not just a little wrong. It is very wrong.

And it is not just wrong in fact, it is wrong in message.

You see, if you read this article and believe it, you might think there is no hope for pedigree dogs.

After all, if pedigree dogs have a 75 percent inbreeding coefficient, as this article suggests, then everything about the Kennel Club has to change, and yet we all know that is not going to happen.

But suppose you know that the average coefficient of inbreeding in pedigree dogs is around 10 percent, and that only a "sick minority" of breeders are producing dogs with a COI of more than 20 percent?

What then?

Well then, there is hope!

Then there is no excuse for the Kennel Club not taking action.

After all, if they ban the registration of new puppies that have a coefficient of inbreeding (COI) of more than 10 percent, it will not flip the boat, but only change its course.

They can embrace a common sense policy, and do right by the dogs without engaging in economic suicide.

Perfect!

So let's ask them to do that.

In fact, let's demand it!
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When Cancer Comes With a Pedigree

Picture source and story.

From The Wall Street Journal:

Cancer is all too common in dogs, especially golden retrievers: 60% of them die of it, more than twice the average rate for all breeds. That includes lymphoma, a cancer of the white blood cells; osteosarcoma, a cancer of the bones, and hemangiosarcoma, a particularly nasty cancer of the cells that line the blood vessels whose first symptom may be sudden death.

"A dog can be literally chasing a ball in the backyard, come in for a drink of water and collapse and be dead within minutes," says Rhonda Hovan, research facilitator for the Golden Retriever Club of America.

While it's tempting to see cancer as the Curse of the Golden Retriever, all breeds have their health scourges. Bulldogs have respiratory problems; dachshunds have back issues; Labrador retrievers have heart disease and diabetes and even with a much lower rate of cancer, die at roughly the same age as goldens.

... All purebred dogs are essentially inbred. And the genes become more concentrated with each generation, because most pet dogs aren't bred and breeders select only a few dogs with the most desirable traits to reproduce.

"It's possible that some trait that we desire in goldens is linked to something that puts them at risk for cancer. We just don't know what it is," says Ms. Hovan, who has also bred goldens in Akron, Ohio, for the past 30 years.

A couple of bits here: The American numbers seem to be quite a bit higher than the U.K. numbers, where just under 40% of Golden's die of cancer, not 60%.

The second bit is the notion that "all breeds have their health sourges" is nonsense. Not true.

Some breeds of dogs are famously healthy, while some breeds are notoriously unhealthy. For example, the Border Terrier is a very solid and healthy dog that lives, on average, to age 14, while Bull Terriers are dead, on average, between the age of 6 and 7.

Does that mean that any dog lives forever? Of course not. But the idea that it's a "pick your poison" kind of situation, or that all decisions are equal is parent nonsense.

You want to pick a healthy breed? Here's a simple set of tips that will save you money, time and grief in the long run.
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Will Crufts Lose Its Discount Sofa Sponsor?

The Crufts dog show is like an old couch kicked to the curb and left out in the rain: a broken down thing that looks bad, smells worse, and is now looking for a place to die in peace.

The problems started a long time ago, of course, back when it was the Allied Terrier Show.

Perhaps a clear warning was that it was always a commercial venture. Charles Crufts himself, believe it or not, never even owned a dog.

Crufts has always celebrated the bizarre and contrived; dogs with pushed in faces, bug eyes, and coats so long and thick they satisfy the pent up needs of even the most frustrated of wannabe hair dressers.

And of course, work was never celebrated, and inbreeding was not only encouraged, but required in breed after breed.

How could anything but disaster come from this?

Everyone saw it, but it was not until Pedigree Dogs Exposed put it on tape and explained it, that the consciousness of consumers was properly shocked.

In rapid succession, companies pulled out of Crufts, not the least of which was the BBC and Pedigree dog food.

Who wanted their products identified with animal abuse, defect, disease and deformity?

No one!

Finally, the Kennel Club found Graham Kirkham, a wealthy breeder of Dalmatians (a breed famous for deafness and a uric acid disorder that requires some dogs to have a hole drilled into the base of their penis).

Kirkham had a company that sold discount furniture, and in exchange for Crufts adding a couch to its logo (no, we are not making this up), he agreed to have his corporation underwrite the Crufts fiasco show.

Now, however, Dog World reports:

THE FUTURE of DFS’ sponsorship of Crufts may be in doubt following owner and chairman Lord Kirkham’s decision to sell the Yorkshire-based company.

Kennel Club member and Dalmatian owner Graham Kirkham is believed to have pocketed about £300m from the sale to private equity firm Advent International.

DFS sponsored this year’s Crufts and told DOG WORLD at the time that the arrangement between the company and the Kennel Club was based on an informal arrangement with no contractual commitment.

DFS's contractual support for Crufts is assured through 2011, but after that, things are adrift.

Who wants to pick up this dirty, damaged and smelly couch and make it the center piece of their living room? Anyone? Time will tell.

• Related Links:
  ** The Defective Dog on the Defective Sofa
  ** Charles Crufts Never Owned a Dog
  ** The Farce That is Crufts
  ** BBC Pulls Out of Crufts!
  ** Pedigree Pulls Out of Crufts After 44 Years
  ** The Business of Diamonds .... and Dogs
  ** Basketcase: The Cavalier King Charles Spaniel
  ** The Transvestite Terriers of Westminster
  ** AKC In Bed With the Puppy Mill Industry
  ** Does the Breed Standard Require a Rape Rack?
  ** The Kennel Club Freak Show
  ** We Want Our Mutant Dogs, Never Mind Their Pain
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Terriers at the Tar Pit

Dogs from the early 1980s were decidedly smaller than the Plummers seen today.

Like all working terriers, a Plummer Terrier is a composite animal. The Plummer is made mostly out of Jack Russell, with a strong dash of beagle (added for nose, voice and coat color), and bull terrier (added for toughness and head size). A fell terrier was mixed in to improve the overall appearance.

This strain of terriers, first created by Brian Plummer in the late 1970s and 80s, started out -- by Plummer's own admission -- as genetic wrecks with shot jaws, an ugly appearance, foul tempers, and a tendency to be mute.

For anyone with a lick of sense, a caution flag should now pop up: Who in their right mind begins to breed from such a canine mess?

Brian Plummer did.

After a long period of outbreeding and culling, obvious genetic problems were worked out of the breed, but a new problem worked its way in -- today's dogs are often too big for truly tight underground work. Perhaps that is not a problem if you are developing a dog just for ratting, but was a new ratting dog actually needed?

In fact, is any new terrier breed needed? Is it too much to ask people to simply preserve and work the terrier breeds we already have?

It is not a question Plummer asked, and now the point is moot. The dog that has been created is attractive, and they certainly have their fans. The question now is whether the breed will make it as a worker among workers, will remain a generalized ratting terrier, or will be pulled into the Kennel Club to be little more than another show-ring trotter.

If salvation is to be had, it is in the hands of those few genuine diggers and dedicated ratters that are trying to size down the breed and keep it working (to one thing or another) on a regular basis. A proper nod to such people -- they certainly exist even if there are not too many of them.

If doom is to rear its head, it is in the form of internecine rivalries between breed clubs, hump-and-dump breeders, and rosette chasers that do not work their own dogs.

In fact, this is a threat to all working dogs of all breeds, and the Plummer terrier is no different.

As for Brian Plummer himself, he is dead, and presumably not too concerned with critics of his dogs, his books, or himself.

His books live on, and continue to be very fun reads, and deserve their spot in the lexicon of terrier literature.

They are certainly no worse than any others, and quite a bit better than most.

There seems to be universal agreement that Brian Plummer himself was a little odd. He liked to bait others into intemperance, and he was known to lift stories from others and present them as his own. He wrote an entire book, under a pseudonym, in which he variously quoted and criticized his own books -- a decidedly odd thing to do.

Plummer suffered from both depression (a true illness) and very marginal finances, and cranked out Cavalier King Charles Spaniels for cash even as he dabbled in recreating "lost" breeds like the Lucas Terrier and the Alaunt -- breeds that had slid into extinction in generations past because they no longer had a rational reason for existence or preservation. Today Plummer's "Lucas Terrier" is a scruffy show ring dog, while his "Alaunt" appears to be little more than a variation of the pig-working pitbull so common in the American South.

While he was alive, Plummer was drowning in dogs -- Bearded Collies, Alaunts, Lurchers, Plummer Terriers, Cavalier King Charles Spaniels, fell terriers, and White German Shepherds, to name just a few. He could not possibly have had time to work so many dogs, and those who visited his kennels reported they were often in a disgraceful state of upkeep.

That said, Plummer's books and dogs remain. Plummer terriers continue to rat and even work fox to ground if placed in the right hands.

The fact that some dogs do indeed work to ground seems to cause some distress to people that despised the man for his pretensions and slights. The fact that relatively few dogs work to ground, is similarly distressing to the other side. No matter. The dogs are what they are, same as the books.

The trouble ahead for the Plummer terrier appears to be a rush, by a foolish few, to usher the Plummer terrier into the tar pit of the Kennel Club, from which no other working breed has ever emerged intact and still working.

Tar pits look benign -- cool water tends to pool on top -- but nothing has ever come out of them but bones.

In the case of the Kennel Club, what has emerged, time and time again, are exaggerated dogs devoid of working instinct, nose, and common sense, with coats inappropriate for the job, and skeletal structures that are often inadequate for a day in the field.

No one who courses dogs looks to a Kennel Club dog to do the job, and the same is true for working sled dogs, herding dogs, cart dogs, pointers, setters, and retrievers.

Terriers are not an exception to the rule.

The key and recurring problem with working terriers drawn into the Kennel Club-- from Fox terriers to Sealyhams, Borders, Jack ("Parson") Russells to Fell ("Welsh") Terriers -- is size.

Why do working terrier breeds always seem to get too big in the chest after being listed on Kennel Club roles?

The answer is to be found in an inherent defect of the show ring, and a basic understanding of canine anatomy.

The essential elements of a working terrier are small chest size, strong prey-drive, a loud voice, a sensitive nose, and a clever kind of problem-solving intelligence.

Aside from size, none of these attributes can be judged at ringside.

In a judging field of 20 or 30 dogs, a selection filter of size alone does not provide the gradients required to articulate a reason for choosing a single dog or bitch as a winner.

The breed club solution has been to generate pages of cosmetic criteria which effectively devalue the only important attribute of a working terrier that can be judged in the ring — a small chest.

And it is no small matter that chest size is defined rather vaguely -- the span of a man's hand. Whose hand? Wilt Chamberlain's? In a world of micrometers, surely there is solid research on the true size of fox chests all over the world? Yet it is not used, because Kennel Club pretenders with hulking dogs find it easier to breed good-looking large dogs than small well-proportioned working dogs.

In the Kennel Club, head size and shape are deemed to be very important by theorists who assign a great number of points to this feature (see the Border Terrier for an example). It is head shape, after all, that gives each breed its distinctive look. It is the head that faces the quarry in the hole.

Surely the shape and size of a terrier's head is important?

In fact, when it comes to working terriers, head shape is only important to the extent that it leaves space for brains, produces a strong enough jaw to grip, and allows for unobstructed breathing.

Most crossbred mongrel terriers have heads shaped well enough to do the job.

As for size, in the world of working terriers, a bigger head is not necessarily better -- a point that is often overlooked by theorists who have spent far more time listening to show ring judges than they have their own dogs working their way through a tight den pipe.

Larger heads tend to be attached to larger chests — the latter being necessary to support the former. When terriers are bred for the "bully heads" that Kennel Club judges favor, the resulting dog is often large-chested as well.

It does not take too much gain in the chest for a dog to have quickly diminishing use in the field -- a point easily overlooked if you spend more hours at shows than you do with a shovel in the field.

Paths to destruction are often well-worn. The Plummer terrier is apparently sliding straight down the Kennel Club chute that so many other terrier breeds have gone down before.

The current rage is now to "out cross" Plummer terriers with bull terriers in order to "improve" and "strengthen" the head, which a few show ring breeders claim has grown "snipey."

Whatever.

It is their dog to breed and do with as they see fit. Each to his or her own, etc.

The fact that terrier breed after terrier breed has fallen into the Kennel Club trap of exaggerated heads and overlarge chests will not stop others from following on, any more than the predicament of a trapped Mastodon at the La Brea tar pits served as a warning to the Dire Wolf and Saber Tooth that followed.

Will the entire breed disappear into the tar pit? Time will tell. The tar is cunning, powerful and above all patient. It waits. Time will tell if it is fed.


A dire wolf and a saber tooth at the tar pit. "It looked like a good idea at the time."
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This post is recycled from April 2006.

Dubious Terrier Breeds

Only in America, the land of P.T. Barnum:
"Hairless Terrier" at left, "Tunnel Terrier" at right.

There is nothing new about the creation of terrier breeds, many of which have lasted just long enough to be named in a book before coming up "extinct" or renamed and then declared extinct.

The "Black and Tan" terrier, for example is nothing more than a Fell Terrier that the English tried to rename and claim as their own. The gambit failed and the breed "disappeared" in name, if not in fact. The Fell Terrier can be found in the Kennel Club ring as the Welsh Terrier, though the Kennel Club Welsh terrier has been "improved" to the point that few, if any, work in the field today.

The "English White" terrier was another attempt to create a breed, this time with a degenerated smooth Jack Russell that may have been cross-bred with a small lap dog. This breed also failed to catch on and disappeared shortly after it was created. Note this "English White" is not related, in any way, to the white molosser dog used for bull baiting two centuries earlier; same name, but an entirely different dog with different origins and histories.

The Glen of Imaal terrier is nothing more than a turn-spit dog given a fancy name and an invented history as a badger working dog. In fact the Kennel Club dog is totally unsuited to earth work due to its size and a propensity for muteness, though badger baiters tried to cobble together "trials" for this type of dog after badger baiting was banned. The dog all but disappeared before recently being given new life as a show dog -- admitted to the AKC on October 1, 2004.

The creation of new terrier breeds continues unabated. A few variations of existing terrier breeds occassionally catch on, but most do not.

The "Plummer Terrier" looks like it is here to stay and may, in fact, be getting a bit of a boost from the U.K. ban on fox hunting, as ratting moves a bit closer to center stage.

The Patterdale terrier is often described as being a black fell terrier, but in fact a Patterdale is visually quite distinct from a regular fell terrier. At this point, I think Patterdales Terriers stand as a breed apart.

Another terrier breed with a clear provenance in the 20th Century is the Norfolk Terrier which was popularized by a stable man and dog dealer by the name of Frank Jones right after World War I. Originally called a "Trumpington Terrier" and then a "Jones Terrier," the dog has since split into two breeds, the Norwich Terrier (ears up) and the Norfolk Terrier (ears down).

Most new terrier breeds do not catch on. Though a breed may flourish at the point of creation, most fade into obscurity rather quickly due to uglyness, uselessness, or failure to understand the politics, economics and genetics inherent to breed creation and maintenance.

• American Hairless Terrier: This is simply a mutant rat terrier -- a genetic anomaly that was born hairless. Someone in Louisiana figured "yippe" I can sell this freak to people with allergies, and it was off to the races.
  
  
• American Tunnel Terrier: This is nothing more than a cross between two non-working breeds, a Boston terrier and a Rat terrier. Despite the name, they are never found at artificial den trials, and despite the breeder hype of being a "verminator" they seem to have never done anything heavier than nailing a few rats and mice.
  
  
• Capheaton Terrier: This is nothing more than a smooth red fell terrier renamed by a woman too silly or stupid to know the breed already existed -- and has for generations.
  
  
• Atlas Terrier: This is nothing more than a Jack Russell terrier with a merle gene -- a gene most Jack Russell breeders breed away from since it is so often associated with deafness. The creator of this breed is waiting to go to trial on animal abuse charges in Philadelphia.
  
  
• Lucas Terrier: First bred by Jocelyn Lucas, this is nothing more than a cross between a Sealyham female and a Norfolk male, and was produced because the show Sealyhams were getting too big to work. This dog proved to be unpopular with the show set and the working set, and has largely disappeared. The "Sporting Lucas" terrier has cropped up in recent years as an attempt to revive this breed, but it is doubtful that it will succeed considering the state of hunting with terriers in the UK.
  
  
• Teddy Roosevelt Terrier: This is nothing more than a rat terrier with short legs, and is quite unlike the orginal rat terrier (Skip) owned by Teddy Roosevelt. The American Rat Terrier, of course, is nothing more than a degenerated version of the old working fox terrier, now known as the Jack Russell Terrier.
  
  
• Tenterfield Terrier: This an Australian toy fox terrier of dubious linneage.
  
  
• James Pocket Terrier: This is less than a breed and more like a chest measurement for a very small working Jack Russell terrier. There is no physical standard for this breed other than a dog with a very small chest (under 14 inches) and a desire to work.
  
  
• Shelburne Terrier: This dog never really existed other than in someone's imagination and Jocelyn Lucas's book. Created by the Shelburne Hunt in Vermont, it was a cross between a Norfolk terrier and Sealyham-Jack Russell cross, and it does not seem to have existed beyond a few litters.
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You're Doing It Wrong!

Click picture to massively enlarge.

This is an Efé camp in the Ituri Forest, Democratic Republic of the Congo.

It's so sad that these people are so ignorant about hunting that they are not even using proper Kennel Club dogs!

And this poor fellow in Benin says there is no other dog, but this type and this type in his area. How sad!

And the sadness is being felt all over central Africa. Its seems in 5 days of looking this poor woman (an AKC judge) found 200 dogs, and only three not of the Basenji type. Much the same is reported elsewhere.

It's so sad that the native lands of this dog are now so roaded, wrecked, raped and robbed that there is nothing left of them. Just look at the complete loss of forest cover in northern and eastern Democratic Republic of Congo!


Republic of Congo, 2008,


And look at the man below!

Why, this poor fellow's terriers look nothing like the dogs we see in the Kennel Club!



It's so sad that this man's culture has eroded to the point he no longer knows what his dogs should look like, or how they should work.

I am told the dogs have deteriorated in Wales to the point that most people say they have never seen a working Welsh terrier, while in Scotland everyone laughs and shakes their head when asked to be take to see a working Scotty.

It's so sad that Scotland and Wales are now so roaded, wrecked, raped and robbed that there is nothing less of them.




I am told much the same is going on all over the world.

In Afghanistan there are no coursing dogs left that look like this, while in Germany the shepherds no longer use German Shepherds to herd sheep for some strange reason.

Thank God the Kennel Club was there to save and protect these dogs!
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Canadian Kennel Club Going Broke

In the past, I have reported that the American Kennel Club is projected to go out of business by 2025.

Now it seems the Canadian Kennel Club may go out of business before that. According to a letter from Lee Steeves, Interim Chair of the Board of the Canadian Kennel Club,

At the March Board Meeting in Winnipeg, with reports from the Audit Committee and the CEO, it became apparent that the Canadian Kennel Club is in the midst of a financial crisis. Dropping registration numbers, a slight decline in entries and falling membership, all products of a worldwide recession in many industries, have combined in the last quarter of 2009 to leave the CKC in a deficit position that is unable to be managed with our existing cash flow.

.... Appeals are now being made to you, our membership, and to CKC Clubs to assist the CKC with donations, as they are able. This one time cash infusion will be applied to the deficit and will shore up the organization over the next two months. During that period, the Board of Directors is working with members and staff to analyze expenditures, cut services as necessary and reduce obligations to effect positive change.

This is a difficult time for the CKC. We ask you, as a member, to work with the Board to move forward. We need your help and we need your support. There will come a time to analyze the history of this issue and to deal with the lessons we have and are continuing to learn. That will happen once the crisis is averted. Until that time we must work together as The Dog Fancy in Canada. We very much look forward to your support.

The Canadian Kennel Club is asking for donations.

Not for the shattered children and families of Haiti devastated by earthquake.

Not to help dogs being shoved into kill shelters in Canada.

Not to help people that have lost their jobs or homes.

No, the Canadian Kennel Club wants people to send donations to help subsidize the people who inbreed deformed, defective, and diseased dogs within a closed registry system.

It has comes as a complete surprise to them that they have dropping registration numbers and a falling membership.

But they are boldly going to set things right now. They have decided to increase the recording registration fee by $1.50 Canadian, effective June 1st.
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When Breeds are Failures

Art by the ever-astounding Kevin Brockbank for Dogs Today (May 2010 issue)

Is it time to thin the herd?

It's been said that the dog is the most successful wolf in the world -- the wolf that got man to adopt it, house it, feed it, and protect it.

Relatively docile wolves were fed and bred until, slowly, imperceptibly, they evolved into something different -- the domestic dog.

For 12,000 years, that's about as far as it progressed.


An Explosion of Breeds

Two hundred and fifty years ago, there were only about a dozen broad types of dogs.

Breeds, as we know them today with narrow written standards, were not yet known.

Your breed claims an ancient lineage?

Unless it's a greyhound, I can assure you it's almost certainly nonsense.

The Pharaoh Hound? Invented in the 20th Century to look like the dogs found on the side of the Egyptian tombs opened at the time of Carter.

The Chinese Crested? Not Chinese! Invented in America in the 1930s and popularized by burlesque stripper Gypsy Rose Lee.

Terriers? Retrievers? Setters? Spaniels? Pointers? Shepherds?

Analysis of Mitochondrial DNA shows that while the type may be old, the breed is -- almost invariably -- of relatively modern origin.

It's not like we created just a few breeds in the blink of an eye, is it? No, we created hundreds.

How did we do that? Mostly by selecting for odd types and then inbreeding to "fix" those types until they bred true.

The first breeds, of course, were created by merely tweaking Mother Nature's process. Herding dogs, for example, were selected because of function rather than looks. Ditto for running dogs, pulling dogs, bird dogs, guarding dogs, and terriers.

Dogs that were best adapted to function prospered, while those that did poorly were culled from the pool. The only difference was that the hand of man was now engaged in unnatural selection -- replacing Mother Nature, which had previously been employed in the task of natural selection.

Form Trumps Function

With the rise of dog shows, however, function took a back seat to form. Now the primary value celebrated was variability. And, of course, to get maximum variability, you had to green-light more and more breeds that were extreme, and in many cases maladaptive, including dogs that were brachycephalic (flat faced) and could not breath well, and dogs that were achondroplastic (dwarfs) and had joint and heart problems.

Added to these dogs were other extreme examples -- massive giants that had weak hearts and intestines prone to twist and bloat, tiny tea cup breeds prone to hydrocephalia and broken bones, hairless breeds prone to dental and skins issues, dogs with extreme skin wrinkles, ear length, and coats, and dogs with various spinal oddities such as over-long backs, roached backs, and spines that ended in a tight mass of twisted vertebrae.

And, of course, through it all you had to inbreed and line-breed in order to set type, and you had to invent ancient histories in order to speed the sales of these new creations.

The result has been a mixed bag. Some breeds have managed to stay healthy, and a few have even managed to be useful for work.

Most, however, have come down with one or more serious health problems, and most have devolved from working dog to mere pets.

There is nothing wrong with pets. There is, of course, something wrong with breeding dogs with serious health problems. Even here, however most genetic problems are manageable and most breeds are salvageable

But is that always the case? Are there dog breeds that are not salvageable?

This is not a small question.

When humans began breeding dogs, we began to act as Gods, but we failed to accept the full mantle of the Gods.

God culls misfits; man puts his in the Kennel Club.

Canine Failures

Let's talk about canine failures. They are not hard to find.

The Dandie Dinmont is a good example of a dog that has simply failed in the marketplace. Last year, more Pandas were born in captivity than Dandie Dinmonts were registered by the Kennel Club.

Named after a fictional character in a novel, and forced to compete head-to-head with other poodle-coated mops, this dog has found few customers due to its odd-looking sway back, poor movement, and complete uselessness in the field.

Add in the health problems suffered by Dandies -- cushings, hypothyroidism, and a narrow-angle glaucoma that is unique to Dandies -- and you stand at the cusp of a question.

Factor in the fact that more than 40% of dogs are born cesarean, and the case is made for intervention.

The old working terrier from which the modern Dandie claims descent was not a product of the Kennel Club and did not suffer these indignities.

Perhaps now is the time to release this breed from the inbreeding mandated by a tiny gene pool wedded to a closed registry system.

Perhaps now is the time to release this dog from the bondage of contrived show dog standards.

Yes, let us release this dog "back to the wild" of its working roots. It has not done well in "captivity". De-list this dog from the Kennel Club's roles, and move on.

Other breeds should also be delisted, and for much the same reason -- the Skye Terrier, the Clumber Spaniel, the Sussex Spaniel, the Glenn of Imaal Terrier, the Manchester Terrier, and the Sealyham Terrier.

None of these dogs were created in the Kennel Club -- they have only been deformed, emasculated, and inbred since their arrival. Release these dogs "back to the wild". They have not done well in "captivity", and they have failed in the marketplace.

And what about those breeds that are true genetic wrecks beyond salvation?

There are not many, but let's face the problem head on, and end the nonsense.

There is no reason to try to repair a Disney castle built on sand, with a blown foundation, rotten roof, walls riddled with termites, and a dangerous boiler about to explode in the basement.

Take the Cavalier King Charles Spaniel. This was a breed invented at the Crufts dog show in response to a prize offered up by an American by the name of Roswell Eldridge.

Thanks to a bad gene pool at the start, and the incredible inbreeding that followed, more than 80 percent of today's dogs end up with serious heart problems, while more than a third have a genetic brain disorder affecting the nervous system.

With this level of defect, and this thin history, why not sweep it all aside and start again?

Ditto for several other breeds with serious health problems -- the Miniature Bull Terrier (50% cesarean, dead at 6 years), the English Bull Dog (90% cesarean, dead at 6 years), the Scottish Terrier (60 percent cesarean, 45% cancer rate), the Dogue De Bordeaux (dead at less than six years).

Are there other breeds that might be "returned to the wild" through delisting and/or delisting and recreation (i.e. starting again with a healthy gene pool, scientific breeding, and a commonsense standard)?

Sure, but I think I have been controversial enough for one day, don't you?!

The question stands: Is it time to thin the herd? Is it time to end the Kennel Club's preservation of defect and failure?
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