The Westminster Iditarod Team

From The Onion.
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A Report from Westminster (with photo goodness)

You want to read what the Westminster Dog Show is really like?

Here's a fine report with photo goodness from reporter-photographer Barry Petchesky, who has been attending Westminster for the last four years.

This is much better reporting than the "Sadie looked so devine" crap you normally get from the "dog press," where no one wants to step on anyone else's toes, and where the freak show of deformed dogs and strange people has been completely normalized by people who regularly attend shows populated by deformed dogs and strange people.



For those who want more, you can read last year's report. As Petchesky notes about the picture, above:

She's putting eyeliner on a fucking dog. Now that our country has gotten over tarted-up preschoolers in child beauty pageants, maybe we can muster up some outrage over this. You know how a woman will look real good when you take her home, but then you see her in the morning in her natural state? If you fell in love with Uno the Beagle last year, just know that you fell for a lie.

Want more? Read it all, and see it all, at the "DeadSpin" links here and here and here and here.

Of course, it's always hard to beat The Onion where they have titled their article: Chinese Crested Dog's Beautifully Descended Testicles Bring Divided Nation Together.


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Ironic Updates on HSUS and Westminster Winner

Ironic Update #1:

Remember the story about HSUS importing a not-quite-vegetarian dog food from Uruguay?

If you recall, the dog food is over-priced, low-standard stuff made in an un-named foreign factory, and it is wastefully packaged and shipped vast distances across the equator while burning up tons of fossil fuel on the journey.

Well guess what?

It seems agenda item #79 at the Humane Society Legislative Fund is "Pet Food Safety"

Here we are told HSUS wants to "increase enforcement" and "develop certification system for oversight in foreign countries or other mechanism for enforcement of U.S. standards in products imported to this country; support legislation for mandatory recall authority."

OK. I'll go along with that.

But first how about if HSUS tells us the name of the company that is actually making their dog food?

Real dog food has a real maker, and one suspects there might be a problem if no one wants to say where the factory is, or who is running it.



Ironic Update #2:

Remember the story about the Scottish Terrier, Sadie, winning Westminster?

We gave a detailed account of the health problems facing the breed (a higher than 45% rate of cancer!) and the shortened lifespan and increased ownership costs that result.

Lisa Paddock followed up noting that "The last Scottie to win Westminster did so in 1995. A little over a year later she was dead of liver cancer or lymphoma sited in that organ. She was 5 1/2 years old."

Anyone want to start a "dead pool" on Sadie? She'll be 5 years old on April 2nd, and her in-bred pedigree can be found here.



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And YES, I am probably using the term "ironic" improperly, but if Alanis Morisette can get away with it, I figure I can too!
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Drinks After the Westminster Dog Show

Out of town dogs visiting the big city ...

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A Healthcare Basketcase Wins Westminster

It is with shame and sadness that I report that a Scottish Terrier won the Westminster Dog Show last night.

It is with shame, because the breed is a dog that has never worked and in fact is constructed so poorly -- with a massive chest and too short a back -- that it can never get down a fox hole.

A terrier that cannot get down a fox hole?

What's next, a bird dog that cannot find birds? A retriever that cannot retrieve? A herding dog that cannot herd? A guard dog that cannot guard? A bulldog that cannot grab a bull?

Well yes, all that and more could be seen at Westminster yesterday. Such is the state of American Kennel Club dogs.

It is with saddness that I report a Scottish Terrier won Westminster, because the Scottie, as a breed, is a health care basket case.

• This is a breed in which 45 percent of all dogs die of cancer.
  
  
• This is a small breed dog where the average lifespan of the dog is just 10.15 years -- not the 15 years it should be.
  
  
• This is a breed where a person buying a professionally-bred Scottish Terrier is twice as likely to have that well-bred dog die at two years of age as they are to have that Scottie live to age 16.
  
  
• This is a breed where AKC show breeders have demonstrably less healthy dogs. As Joesph Harvill, editor of Great Scots Magazine notes, professionally bred Scotties are more expensive than casually-bred dogs, but they are not healthier. He concludes that "The empirical evidence indicates that the best shot — even if a long shot — at a long-lived Scottie is from a non-professional breeder."
  
  
• This is a breed in which the health of the dog is in rapid decline. When Joseph Harvill, the editor of Great Scots Magazine compared health survey results between 1995 and 2005, he found "an alarming trend" that "may signal the rapid declension in a gene pool which can happen when inbreeding depression reaches critical mass in a small, closed population."
  
  
• This is a breed where owners spent an average of $492 per dog per year on medical bills — and 12.9% spent between $1,000-$5,000 per dog per year.

As Great Scots Magazine notes on its blog:

What is killing us and our dogs are ‘typy’ good looks that hide recessive genes and late-onset diseases. However, the contamination of our Scottish Terrier gene pool can only worsen until we grasp this elemental truth of population genetics: kinship-increasing breeding practices, sustained over time, in a small breed population, lead inexorably to what population geneticists call “inbreeding depression.” Classic signs of inbreeding depression abound in Scottish Terriers today: (1) shorter lifespans (2) weakened immunology (3) smaller litters (4) increased whelping problems (5) spread of genetic diseases. Take one example: Scottie longevity. In 1995 the STCA did a small health survey limited to their registered breeders and pegged the average Scottie lifespan at 11.2 years. In 2005, a decade later, Great Scots Magazine sponsored a comprehensive Scottie health survey, encompassing over 1600 case studies comprising both show bred and pet Scottish Terriers, and found the average lifespan is 10.15 years. Assuming the STCA numbers from 1995 were accurate (those are the only longevity numbers the national club ever produced in their 95-year history to that date)—assuming their numbers are accurate, it shows our breed’s lifespan dropped by 10% in a single decade! That’s equivalent to humans losing perhaps eight years or more off our life-expectancy.

The tragedy here is simply this: a purebreed system lacking the perspective of biological conservation and driven rigidly by the aesthetics of ‘type’ is a system obsessed with a small portion of the genetic picture and functionally blind to larger gene pool dynamics. Despite manifest signs of a troubled gene pool, we persist in our bargain with the devil for ‘typy’ good looks blind to the fact that handsome, ‘typy’ Scotties that have high coefficients of inbreeding can only deepen our inbreeding depression.

Worse still, our kinship-raising/diversity-reducing breeding practices now are normalized and ensconced as responsible practice setting in motion the irony of breed guardians who believe they are saving the gene pool by holding for rigid showring ‘type’ when in fact they are adding to the ravages of depleted genetic diversity in our best dogs.

The Scottie gene pool, it turns out, is poisoned most by our own contaminated values, traditions, and rituals and our proud breed has most to lose at the hands of its staunchest friends. The mind-set and the ‘typy’-motivated line-breeding traditions which have brought our dogs to this predicament will continue to justify patch work band-aid fixes until the stark reality of our dogs’ jeopardy is driven home to the public. Until it informs us and frightens us and angers us it won’t motivate us to change the way we breed and buy Scottish Terriers.

Read the whole thing here. Subscribe to the magazine here.

Of course Sadie, the Scottish terrier that won, was not bred by the owner, nor was she even walked around the ring by the owner -- a professional "handler" was paid to do that.

The handler was interviewed by the media -- not the owner or breeder.

Handler Gabriel Rangel described his relationship with the dog as "like a marriage" -- pushing the owner and breeder far back into the weeds of existence.

Mr. Rangel explained that he and Sadie like to "have dinner together at the hotel and watch Animal Planet."

The Owner? The Breeder? Who are they, and what do they have to do with this dog?

Nothing!

So forget Mary O'Neal at Anstamm Kennel who bred the dog, and kick to the curb Amelia Musser who owns the dog.

The portly Mr. Rangel, the "handler", did all the interviews, took all the bows, and injected his frame into every shot.



And of course, there was no mention of work.

Dig on the dog? You must be kidding. Neither dog nor handler were in any shape to do that!

Just to add a final spritz to the clown car of ego, disease and deformity that is Westminster, Sadie's brief moment in the limelight was interrupted by two protesters from PeTA.

Nice.

And why not have PeTA at this circus? They too are all about ego, and have nothing to do with dogs.

In fact, why not remove the dog from the picture entirely and have professional dog handler Gabriel Rangel and PeTA President Ingrid Newkirk battle to the death over a microphone?

I would pay cash money to see that, and I bet you would too!
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This is the Shame of Westminster

Look at those hocks! Flat on the ground. This is the best America has to offer? Pathetic! Watch the video here.
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Nightline: AKC Terrified of Dog Health Topic

More than 45 percent of Bernese Mountain Dogs die of get cancer. Is that a problem?

From ABC's Nightline, March 11, 2009

Best of Breed?

Pedigree Dogs Face Disease
Critics Say Purebred Dogs Have Health Problems
Because of Inbreeding, Show Standards

By: Nick Watt, ABC Nightline Special Investigation
Watch the Video - Click HERE

The Westminster Dog Show is the showpiece for a multi-billion dollar industry, a festival of primped pooches, prestigious prizes and perfect pedigrees. This year's big winner, a Sussex Spaniel called Stump, became an instant celebrity.

The owners love it. But whether such competitive shows are good for the dogs is debatable.

Consider the Bulldog ring at Madison Square Garden last month, where the show's smushed-face dogs were getting a cooling spray.

"In the heat and the lights of the show, they can overheat and actually go down in five minutes," one handler said. "They have, instead of a long snout where it's an open airway, it's smashed like a Coke can and the breathing has to go through many, many curves and many turns." That's the desired look for a Bulldog to win ribbons at dog shows. In other words, it's a world in which dogs are bred with exaggerated features to please the judges, features that can cause extreme discomfort and serious distress, some veterinarians say.

Backstage at the Garden, a German Shepherd breeder explained how show-winning traits can be passed from generation to generation. Something called "line breeding" is common practice. That's breeding, for example, a grandfather with his granddaughter. Mating of direct relatives, or inbreeding, also happens.

"That dog I kept, out of the brother-sister breeding," Susan Legg, the German Shepherd breeder, said. "[It] was one of the best stud dogs I've ever owned and produced over 80 champions."

Competitive dog breeding has been a popular sport since it was imported from England more than 130 years ago. The first Westminster Kennel Club show was in 1877.

"These dogs are some of the most pampered pooches that there are," Tony Carter, a Chinese Shar-Pei owner, said at Westminster.

Every breed has specific genetic defects. "All Cavaliers are carrying the potential for mitral valve disease," said Jennifer Wehking, a breeder of Cavalier King Charles Spaniels.

According to the Web site www.CavalierHealth.org, half of Cavaliers will suffer this heart-valve defect before their fifth birthday.

Similarly, Meg Callea, a Dalmatian breeder at Westminster, said, "We have a very unique stone-forming disease in our breed. It's uric acid, which is very similar to gout in people."

Male dogs that suffer from the condition can't urinate properly.

Breeders and the American Kennel Club have long admitted that pedigree dogs do face health issues. They say they do all they can to tackle them.

The club declined to be interviewed for this story. The organization also e-mailed its members and recommended "politely declining" requests for interviews, although it said in a written statement that the group conducts hundreds of kennel and breeder inspections each year and donates millions of dollars to improve dogs' heath.

The club and some of its members appear to be circling the wagons largely because of a British documentary called "Pedigree Dogs Exposed," which aired last year. The filmmakers showed dogs in distress, allegedly stricken by genetic diseases. They likened pedigree dog breeding to the eugenics principles of Adolf Hitler and questioned the practices of inbreeding and breeding to a "standard."


Pedigree Dogs Face Health Challenges

"I'm heartened by the reaction to the film," Jemima Harrison, the producer, said. "We always knew that what we were doing was going to have a huge impact. Our fear was that it would have a huge temporary impact." The effect was anything but temporary. After 42 years televising Crufts in the U.K., the world's biggest dog show, the BBC just pulled the plug in protest, Britain's Kennel Club has reviewed its "breed standards," and Britain's Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals recently released a report titled, "Pedigree Dog Breeding in the UK: a Major Welfare Concern?"

The report makes the following conclusions: "Many different breeds now experience compromised welfare. ... The desire to produce an unusual, exaggerated or spectacular conformation have often produced dogs which tend towards abnormality."

In the United States, the American Kennel Club, founded 1884, is the authority. It recognizes 161 breeds, registers purebreed dogs, oversees many dog shows and is guardian of the so-called "breed standards." According to its breed standard, the venerable Bulldog must have "very heavy" shoulders, "very short" forelegs, a "very large" skull and an "extremely short" face.

"Characteristics of the breed, say, in the 19th century were much less accentuated than they are now," said James Serpell, director for the Interaction of Animals and Society at the University of Pennsylvania. "I think it was rather like the cartoonist; you know how a cartoonist can accentuate features of someone's face and make them look even more like they look."

The Bulldog of today looks very different from the Bulldog of 150 years ago. With their exaggerated, show-winning proportions, most Bulldogs can't even mate on their own. They need the help of a cradle, which can be bought on the Internet. Also, many Bulldog bitches can't give birth naturally because the puppies' heads are too big. "They do need to be artificially inseminated, and C-sections," Linda Johnson, a Bulldog breeder at Westminster, said. Ed Sayres, president of the ASPCA, said, "If an animal can't reproduce, that's obviously a message that it's headed for extinction."

Pedigree dogs face two potential health challenges. The first is breeding them to fit their "breed standard": The Bulldog's large head, for example, and the Boston Terrier's short muzzle, which results in 25 percent of them having difficulty breathing. Some major airlines have, for health reasons, banned Bulldogs, Bostons and other breeds from flying in warm weather.

"Take your own nose and pinch it, then try to breathe," Patrick Burns said of the feeling for a Boston Terrier or Bulldog with breathing problems.

Burns, who hunts in Maryland's fields with terriers of fuzzier pedigree and longer snouts, and blogs voraciously as "Terrierman," is scathingly critical of the dog-show world. "Most of the breeds don't have a function," he said. "They're not running dogs, they're not catching rabbits. That's fine. There's nothing wrong with that. But if their only function is to be a pet, then they have to put health first."

The other potential issue for pedigree dogs is inherited disease. For example, pure bred Flat-Coated Retrievers have a high incidence of cancer. And line breeding, which some say accentuates the problem, is standard practice for show dogs.

"There's nothing to say that a close breeding on one occasion would produce anything but superior stock, not inferior stock," Tom Bradley, show chairman at Westminster, said.

Many academics disagree. "If they didn't practice all this inbreeding and line breeding to begin with, those genetic diseases wouldn't be a problem," Serpell of the University of Pennsylvania said.

Although the American Kennel Club declined to be interviewed, it did e-mail a statement:

"The American Kennel Club is the nation's leading not-for-profit organization devoted to canine health, breeding and responsible dog ownership. The AKC's breeding policies and high ethical standards have made us the most widely respected registry in the world. Each year, the AKC performs approximately 5,000 kennel and breeder inspections to ensure the proper care and conditions of dogs and has led the charge in regards to advancing canine health, including founding the AKC Canine Health Foundation in 1995. Since that time, $22 million has been given to more than 500 research projects at 74 vet schools and research institutes worldwide to improve the health of all dogs. For More Information Visit: www.akcdoghealth.com"

Are Mixed-Breed Dogs Better?

With funding from the Canine Health Foundation, vets and researchers have begun isolating disease-causing genes.

"To be fair to the Kennel Club, they are doing quite a lot to try and fix some of the problems that are there," Serpell said. "So they created the AKC Canine Health Foundation. ... But for me, that's a bit like closing the gate after the horse has bolted."
One approach the Kennel Club and others are trying is to first isolate a defective gene, treat the dog that carries it and stop breeding from the dog so the gene isn't passed on.

"I think 95 percent of the people who exhibit dogs here are responsible breeders," Bradley, the Westminster show chairman, said. "They want their dogs to be healthy."
But, as seen at Westminster, not every breeder stops breeding from a dog that they know has a problem. It's not quite that simple.

"I have bred one of my girls to a dog that heard in one ear," Callea, the Dalmatian breeder, said. "And I knew that when I did it. But he was an exceptional dog with a phenomenal temperament and he had a lot of really good things to offer."

But not every breeder will breed with a Dalmatian that hears in only one ear, she said.

"My hearing is real strong on my end," she said. "Otherwise, I wouldn't have done it on that dog." Many breeders at Westminster raised the million-dollar question: Are mixed breed dogs any healthier?

"The misconception out there is that mutts are healthier," Legg, the German Shepherd breeder, said. "That is not true."

It is a gray area. But the records of a Swedish company that insured 200,000 dogs between 1995 and 2002 found that of the 80 most popular breeds, the dog requiring the most medical care was the pedigree Boxer. A "mixed breed" category came in at 68. Healthiest was something called a Norbottenspitz, a Scandinavian hunting dog.

Breeders of pedigree dogs say that at least with a pedigree, you know what ailments your breed is susceptible to. You can treat them.

With a mutt, Legg said, "You don't know what's in the blood line, you don't know the temperament behind the dogs, you don't know anything."

Backstage at Westminster, owners and breeders said the problems are not on the show floor.

"The problem isn't with the standard, the problem isn't with any of the breeders in this room," Phoebe Booth, a Bulldog owner, said. "The problem is with people who see the dollar signs and want to market these breeds as commodities."

Such so-called puppy mills, or high-volume breeders, produce up to 400,000 pedigree dogs every year, according to the ASPCA. In some, the conditions are terrible and dogs aren't screened for disease. "Some of these dogs are only 8-months when they're first bred," Bob Baker of the ASPCA's Anti-Cruelty Unit said as he walked among dozens of dogs he says were rescued from a puppy mill and are waiting to be adopted at the society's headquarters in New York City. "And many of them, by the time they're 5 years of age, they're burnt out. And the breeders take them out and shoot them."

Baker, who often goes undercover to investigate conditions in puppy mills, said that the dogs are often treated like livestock. "Greed takes over," he said. According to the ASPCA, around 25 percent of pedigree dogs bought in the United States every year come from puppy mills or unscrupulous backyard breeders. The ASPCA claims that every single dog bought from a pet store, not direct from a breeder, comes from a breeder they would deem "irresponsible."

ASPCA president Sayres said, "A responsible breeder would no more sell their puppies through a pet shop than a responsible parent would sell their children on eBay."

The ASPCA and the Kennel Club do carry out inspections on breeders, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture is the ultimate authority over large-scale puppy breeders.


Putting Health Before History

But health problems are not confined to the puppy mill dogs. In Philadelphia, Dougie the French Bulldog, bought from an apparently reputable breeder, cost his owner $4,500 for an operation to correct a severe breathing problem. "I tried to look for the best of the litter," owner Lauren Brown said. "But, obviously, with him we couldn't predict."

The ASPCA said its main concern is abandoned dogs. According to its figures, up to 4 million are destroyed every year because they can't find a home. For the ASPCA, dog shows and pure bred health issues are a low priority, but still a concern.

"Yes, some of the dog show stuff is silly and some of it is definitely detrimental to the health and welfare of dogs," Sayres said. But Sayres does not want to see a vitriolic battle, such as the one now being waged in Britain. "I'm much more solution oriented," he said. "And I think that has to come from a dialogue."

Dr. Lisa Esposito, a volunteer from the Veterinary Medical Association of New York City who was on duty at Westminster agreed. "I think [there should be] some dialogue concerning the standard," she said. "For example, the tight tails, the tight nostrils." Serpell at the University of Pennsylvania advocates cross breeding: Sacrificing purity for health. Why not cross a Boston with another terrier, he says, give it a slightly longer snout, let it breathe more easily?

"It would still have the basic features of the Boston Terrier," he said. "It wouldn't have such a squashed face."

Burns, aka "Terrierman," said, "Let their faces come out a little bit. They don't have to have a lot of muzzle to be able to breathe. But they have to have some. That's all it is. Give the dog a little bit of face." And, in Philadelphia, Brown, the French Bulldog owner and vet student, has had similar thoughts. "I think that would be met with a lot of resistance," she said. "But, overall, I think, in time, the health issue would win over history. I think it would be better for the breed. I would like to see that happen."

Many Boston Terrier have a hard time breathing. Is that a problem?

The AKC Skates on Thin Ice to the Apocalypse

YES, a product of frozen semen, was the top poodle at Westminster.

Miki broke the story on this blog which The New York Times missed, which is that top Standard Poodle at Westminster was not only sired from frozen semen, but that this long-dead dog has sired hundreds of dogs, as well as more than 10 that reportedly grew up to be dogs with Addison's disease, a serious endocrine disorder.

Does the sire of the top poodle at Westminster carry a genetic load that perhaps should not be passed on? Who knows? A case can be made that nearly ALL living creatures carry such a load, and that this is a very good reason not to inbreed dogs.

This idea is so fundamental that it was obvious to illiterate shepherds living in the deserts of the Middle East more than 4,000 years ago, which is why Christianity, Judaism, and Islam all have prohibitions on incest (see Leviticus Chapters 18-20).

So how inbred is the Westminster Poodle? Quite a lot!

The good news here is that the late John Armstrong, who founded the Canine Diversity Project, did the work on CH Eaton Affirmed (aka "Snapper"), the sire of the current Westminster Poodle winner, and he even drew out a family tree, which, as you can see below, twists back on itself more often than a cable-knit sweater,

The bottom line is that Snapper's 10-generation coefficient of inbreeding is over 30 per cent.

What does that mean? Consider this: In an effort to keep birth defects out of the human population (and to avoid the attendant social costs of providing care to the mentally and physically disabled), we ban marriages between First Cousins in this country.

• Marriage between First Cousins is a 6.25 percent coefficient of inbreeding.
  
  
• Having a baby with your Grandmother would result in a 12.50 coefficient of inbreeding.
  
  
• Having a baby with your Mother or Father would result in a 25% coefficient of inbreeding.

But Eaton Affirmed, the sire of the top poodle at Westminster has a Coefficient of Inbreeding higher that 30 percent!

Thirty percent!

And this dog has not only sired 150 champions (God Himself has no ides how many puppies he has helped shoot into the world) -- there are plans for him, even in death, to sire more thanks to the miracle of frozen sperm and artificial insemination.

In fact, as The New York Times makes clear, the owners of the current Westminster Winner, Ch. Randenn Tristar Affirmation (aka "Yes") are thinking of impregnating her with frozen semen from her own father!

Whiskey. Tango. Foxtrot. Doubling down on an already-inbred pup-sicle.

When will the madness stop?

Not any time soon, that's for sure.

In fact, the American Kennel Club, which is desperate for money due to a 53% decline in dog registrations over the last 15 years, is talking about cashing in on a "frozen kennel' program they call "The Future Program"

AKC President Dennis Sprung outlined the plan at the December 16, 2008 AKC delegates meeting:

How many of us have dreamed of breeding to Shirkhan, Ceiling Zero, Dictator or the Brat?

The first priority of the Future Program is the collection of frozen semen for the breeding of outstanding dogs. The second priority is to generate significant revenue for AKC and has four elements: 1. fully subsidize all program expenses; 2. fund an endowment to ensure its continuation; 3. be significantly profitable to AKC; 4. provide any residual income to benefit existing programs – for example: CHF, Museum, the Humane Fund and legislative initiatives.

Do you see any mention in there of health testing?

Any mention of limits on Coefficients of Inbreeding?

Any mention of self-restraint, or even a nod to popular sire problems in existing Kennel Club breeds?

No, of course not!

This is all about the Kennel Club making money.

What does the health and welfare of DOGS have to do with it?

Not a thing!

And so, it is "carry on to the apocalypse."

Why are people no longer buying Kennel Club dogs? It's a complete mystery to Dennis Sprung!

• Related Links
  ** The Eugenics Man and the Kennel Club
  ** Inbred Thinking
  ** Rosettes to Ruin
  ** Making and Breaking Dogs In the Show Ring
  ** Is There a Kennel Club Road to Reform?
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An Instructive History of the Destructive Show Ring

The Westminster Kennel Club show starts next week, and so it seems fitting to review the history of that show, which is the biggest and most famous in the U.S.

The Dog Show by William Stifel (2003, Westminster Kennel Club) is a very well-done coffee table book celebratrating the 125th anniversary of the Westminster Kennel Club.

It also -- rather unintentionally -- tells the story of how rapidly the white foxing terrier, which we now know as the Jack Russell Terrier, was destroyed by the vagaries of Kennel Club matrons. A quick summation:

• The first "Best in Show" winner at Westminster was awarded in 1907 to a smooth Fox Terrier that looked very much like today's Jack Russell.
  
  
• Fox Terriers won again in 1908, 1909, 1910, 1911, 1915, 1916, 1917, 1926, 1928, 1930, 1931, 1934, 1937 and 1942.
  
  
• A Sealyham (another working breed ruined by the show ring) won in 1924, 1927 and 1936.
  
  
• Airedales made Best in Show in 1912, 1919, 1920, 1933, and 1936.
  
  
• A Bull Terrier went Best In Show in 1918.
  
  
• A Welsh Terrier went Best in Show in 1944.
  

As you can see, almost all the early winners were terriers, and most of them were Fox Terriers.

It was during this period of time that the face of the Fox Terrier was elongated and the chest enlarged by show ring breeders.

Prior to World War II, if you were really intent on wining the top award at a dog show, you got into Fox Terriers.

Probably no breed could have survived such intent attention without being wrecked by fad.

The Fox Terrier certainly did not.

Today, Fox Terriers are not found working in the field because, with few exceptions, their chests are too big to get to ground in a tight earth.

In 1990 the U.K. Kennel Club admitted on to its roles a dog they called the "Parson Jack Russell Terrier," a name just invented for the occassion.

The dog was, in fact, nothing more than a Jack Russell Terrier -- the unimproved Fox Terrier that had existed prior to the Kennel Club's creation.

In 1999 The Kennel Club changed the name of the dog to the "Parson Russell Terrier," (another name invented whole-cloth by Kennel Club theorists) to distinguish the Kennel Club dog from working Jack Russell Terriers still found in the field.

Today, Parson Russell Terriers, in both the U.K and the U.S. are rarely found at work in the field.

Why? Simple because once again their chests have grown too large.

• To read more see:
  ** The Real Jack Russell Terrier: A Complete History
  ** A Wrench That Doesn't Fit

The Genetics of Iditarod and Crufts

A promo from the 2007 Iditarod race

Two very different dog competitions are going on right now. One, the Iditarod, is a 1,150-mile long dog sled run through some of the toughest and most beautiful country on earth.

Powered only by teams of 12 to 16 dogs, the dogs pull the sleds over 100 miles a day, through snow and ice storms, in what is, without a doubt, one of the last great endurance competitions on earth. >> To learn more

On the other end of the world, in more ways than one, is the Crufts dog show -- the dog show started by a man who never owned a dog.

Crufts was originally called the Allied Terrier show, and it was this show, along with the Westminster Dog Show, which sped the destruction of terriers in general and fox-working terriers in particular. >> To read more

What can we learn about dog breeding from looking at the history and current reality of Crufts and the Iditarod? Quite a lot, I suggest, in an earlier post entitled Inbred Thinking.



Crufts at its best -- nonworking crap in a ring.
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Coonhounds, Ego and the Dog Show Circuit

The Washington Post has a front page story this morning about a fellow and his daughter who raise, hunt and show coonhounds. The piece is part of a series on why folks compete in things, and the title of this one is: Ego

In my opinion, that single word does not entirely sum up why folks attend dog shows, but it's a pretty good one word try, nonetheless.

The reporter details the trophy room:

More than 500 trophies were displayed on the floor, forming a sea of oak and metal that covered all but a four-foot-wide sliver of speckled tile in the middle of the room. The trophies ranged in height from six inches to six feet, and they all bore the names of dog shows held in the last eight years. More than 300 ribbons, plaques and certificates decorated the walls. A year earlier, Amanda had hired a cleaning crew to dust and shine each award.

How did all these gleaming trophies and ribbons come into being? Well, it involved a wealthy father and a LOT of money. A whole lot of money.

To their credit, the Alexanders are not puppy peddlers, and do not breed a lot of dogs, and they take unbelievably good care of the dogs that they have.

Also to their credit, the Alexanders DO work their dogs, though it should be said that with 60 dogs in the kennels, no one dog may see much action in a year.

The Alexander's hounds sometimes chased down possum, deer, bobcats or bears. Other times, like tired athletes, Curt said the dogs gave up and barked at the base of a random tree, just so the hunt would end and they could go home. On the worst nights, the hounds injured themselves while tearing through the woods at 15 mph. A dog once ran out of the woods with a porcupine quill poking into the center of his eyeball -- a wound fixed, by veterinarian recommendation, with Krazy Glue. Another dog tripped and slipped a disk in his back, necessitating 12 trips to a specialist in Columbus, Ohio.

The Washington Post story is ostensibly about competition and what motives people to success in their respective sports. Whatever it is (and let's set aside whether showing dogs is a sport), it appears to be a powerful internal force.

Amanda, 27, spends all but two weekends each year driving to dog shows in places such as Brazil, Ind., and Saluda, N.C. Bob has spent more than $400,000 purchasing dogs and then lavishing them with accoutrements generally reserved for elite athletes: truckloads of performance-enhancing food; a heated indoor swimming pool for winter cross-training; personal drivers to shuttle dogs to distant appointments with nationally renowned veterinarians.

You can do the math: $400,000 for 60 dogs, 500 trophies and 300 ribbons. That works out to about $6,600 per dog, or about $800 per trophy. In fact, those numbers are not too far out of sync; some folks spend more than $10,000 $100,000 a year campaigning a single dog.

In the dog show world, of course, one chooses both a breed and a registry, and young Amanda seems to have chosen the American Kennel Club. I have little doubt that the reason she saddled up with the AKC is that a young female "pay to play" show dog person found the new AKC coonhound cartel more socially promising than the older, more male, and more experienced coonhound club at the UKC. Apparently, it did not hurt a whit that the AKC encourages exhibitors to dress up in nice clothes and put makeup on their dogs.

In her grooming shop a few days earlier, Amanda spent 90 minutes readying the four Plott coonhounds. She trimmed and filed their nails, shaved surplus hair from their underbellies and rubbed the inside of their ears with Q-tips. But as she stepped out of her camper and looked around the infield, Amanda wondered if she'd prepared enough. All around her, groomers sprayed dogs with hair color, lined their eyes with mascara, whitened their toenails with chalk and smoothed their coats with flat irons.

Of course the UKC has had coonhounds forever, and the AKC only came to the show when they needed to bolster their sagging finances. So how do you explain abandoning the UKC for the AKC without it reflecting on the pure ego of a young campaigner who wants to be a big-and-rich fish in a smaller pond? Simple: you blame it on something defective with the UKC.

Until recently, Amanda had competed almost exclusively in the United Kennel Club, a less formal, less prestigious organization popular among coonhound owners. At UKC events, she said dog feces blanketed the ground and hound owners spat chewing tobacco in the show ring. At AKC events, including the renowned Westminster Kennel Club dog show, professional handlers wear three-piece suits in the show ring.

Dog feces blanketed the ground? That's not a description of any UKC event I have ever been to, and it's not one anyone else seems to recognize either. But never mind. What's truth got to do with it? The message here is that there's a "civilized" club for people who put party dresses on themselves and makeup on their dogs, and an "uncivilized" club for tobacco chewing, shit-flinging rednecks who drink corn whiskey from a mason jar. I get it.

On The Washington Post web site, a commentator on the article notes that:

"Coonhounds are uniquely American. Dr. Thomas Walker was one of the first breeders of coonhounds in this country. Hence the name, Treeing Walker Coonhound. Walker also introduced horse racing and was one of the first settlers of Kentucky to go through the Cumberland Gap."

Well yes, that is all true ... maybe.

Without a doubt Walker was one of the first breeders of fox hounds in America, but there's some question as to whether the Walker Coonhound is named after him or another Walker that came many years later.

For anyone interested in reading more about Dr. Thomas Walker and his discovery of the Cumberland Gap, I suggest "Gateway: Dr. Thomas Walker and the Opening of Kentucky," by my father, David M. Burns. It's not about dogs, but then (suprisingly) not everything is.


'

A Wrench That Doesn't Fit

This post is a reprint from December of 2005

Histories are always an interesting thing, as are breed standards and the all-breed dog books.

I have found that all of these things seem to copy each other, with one bit of idiocy begetting another, so that now about half of the all-breed books say a border terrier is 10 inches tall. I suppose we will soon discover that John Russell bought a dog named "Milkman" from a man named Trump, and that a Border Terrier was named after the "South of the Border" franchise!

In that vein, I was on the web site of the breeders association for the AKC "Parson" Russell Terrier, and found an interesting history that made me laugh. There are several things poorly phrased in this history, but I will not quibble with the small parts, but focus on the main.

The PRTAA breed history begins, "The Parson Russell Terrier was first bred in the south of England in the mid-1800's to hunt European red fox ..."

Good up to there, I suppose, though the dog predates John Russell (he had no problem finding a white foxing terrier to mate to Trump!) and was not called a "Russell" terrier (of any type) until after the Reverend was stone dead. In the mid 1800s they were fox terriers or foxing terriers until the Kennel Club ruined the breed and disgraced the name.

I suppose that one should also note that there is no such thing as a "European" red fox; there is only a red fox, and it is the same animal all over the world, from Israel to England, and from Canada to California. The fact that the American red fox is the same as the "European " variety -- and is in fact an import from the U.K. -- will no doubt come as a surprise to the theorists in the Kennel Club.

The history goes on to note that "Rev. Russell was a founding member of England's Kennel Club in 1873, and in 1874 he judged fox terriers for The Kennel Club."

Well yes, this is true, but there is a bit more isn't there? Russell was 78 years old when the Kennel Club was created -- an old man broken by poverty who had been forced to sell off his pack of hounds because he could no longer afford to keep them. He judged one of the very first Kennel Club shows, but his remarks at that show are notable. As he somewhat humorously described his own terriers after going to the show and seeing the Transvestite dogs being paraded around the ring: "True terriers [my dogs] were, but differing from the present show dogs as the wild eglantine differs from a garden rose."

Russell never did register his own terriers with the Kennel Club, noting that the things selected for at shows (color of the nose, placement of the ear, etc.) were of no use to a working terrier in the field. As far as I can tell, he judged only one show, found it an amusing disgrace, and never repeated the mistake!

The PRTAA history goes on: "The first breed Standard was drafted in 1904 by Arthur Heinemann, who founded the Parson Jack Russell Terrier Club in 1914."

In fact what Heinemann founded was the Devon and Somerset Badger Digging Club, and he founded it in 1902, the same year he bought the Cheriton Otterhounds. Heinemann never met Russell (he was only 12 when Russell died) and his dogs were not descended from Russell's dogs (Russell had only only four very old terriers at the end).

The PRTAA web site goes on: "The JRTAA standard was based upon the Heinemann standard and was written to represent the Parson Russell Terrier as a working terrier to red fox and red fox alone."

Really? A digging club called the "Devon and Somerset Badger Club" wrote a breed standard for an animal they were not working??? What an odd thing.

In fact it is pure bunk invented by people who do not dig and who have have conveniently cut down the history to fit their nonworking dogs.

In the world of show dogs fantasy feeds more than substance, and more dirt is thrown with a computer keyboard than with a shovel in the field.

The world of the working terrier allows for different sized dogs for different earths, situations and quarries. Different wrenches for different nuts, so to speak.

A badger sette and a fox pipe are not the same size, nor are the animals that dig them. A fox may put up in a badger earth, in which case a larger dog can be used, or it may put up in a drain, in which case a larger dog can be used, but a European badger earth and a natural fox den are not the same size. If you are hunting fox you need a dog capable of following an animal with a 14" chest -- it's that simple.

The true history of the AKC breed standard seems to be that they have a breed standard written by a badger digging club that they are now presenting as a breed standard for working red fox in a natural earth.

No wonder there are so few Kennel Club dogs found in the field! It's a bit like an American mechanic showing up at a Volvo factory and wondering why none of his wrenches fit!

• Related Posts:
  
  Heinemann and Russell: A Chronology
  
  The Transvestite Terriers of Westminster
  
  If John Russell Were Alive Today
  
  A Terrible Beauty: The Ugly Side of Dog Shows
  
  The Accuracy of the Internet

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Fru Fru Fidos In the Terrier Ring at Westminster

The latest news out of the Westminster Kennel Club show in New York City is that a Dandie Dinmont won the terrier class. I cannot help but laugh, as this is a breed so far from it's origins and so far from being a true terrier as to be a joke on four legs.

Of course, this Dandie Dinmont will now get a lot of press coverage since it is co-owned by comedian Bill Cosby. Does anyone else think Bill Cosby's ownership might have been a small (or large) consideration in the judge's mind? What a great way to launch a small ring judge into the spotlight -- and get a picture with a celebrity as well! Plus the folks at Westminster will love you for it -- star power publicity is always good for business.

Cosby has been showing terriers for years, of course. Or, should I say, he has has been paying people to breed dogs and show them for him. He is neither the breeder nor the handler; he is the person with a lot of money, if not much time. Of course, neither Cosby, his handler, nor his breeder has ever heard of a locator collar. Who has in the world of show ring terriers? These folks are involved in a different "sport" -- the sport of writing checks, deciding which dog has sex with which dog, and parading the resulting progeny around a ring. How this is a sport is a bit of a mystery to me, but that's what they call it.

For those of you who are regular readers of this blog, you might remember that I wrote about Dandie Dinmont's back in November ("Danger: Market Forces at Work") and that I promptly received emails from two show-ring Dandie Dinmont breeders in the UK (Hilary Cheyne and Paul Keevil) who said their breed of dog was not wrecked by the ring, and of course it still worked.

This is complete hogwash, of course, and everyone who digs on their dogs knows it. And to underscore the point, I extended a small challenge to Ms. Cheyne and Mr. Keevil:

".... to find even one picture of a Kennel Club Dandie Dinmont that was dug to in the last 50 years. I want a photograph of a Dandie (wearing a locator collar) and his fox or badger standing next to a hole freshly dug. No roadkill photos now!"

Three months later and I am still waiting. Mr. Keevil sent me old illustrations of dogs standing in the counryside, etc. but he did not even have an illustration of a Dandie being dug to or working a fox -- an amazing thing since he is in the graphics arts business. I suggested to Mr. Keevil that he might try to get a picture from Alf Rhodes' family, but in truth Rhodes (who is dead) only claimed to have ever dug six foxes with a single Dandie Dinmont he had back in the 1970s. So much for Dandie's as a working breed!

As I have often note, there are more pictures of Sasquatch and the Loch Ness Monster than there are of most Kennel Club terrier breeds at work, and the Dandie Dinmont is no exception.

The Transvestite Terriers of Westminster

People who care about working terriers are generally dismissive of the Kennel Club, for the simple reason that they know what the Kennel Club has done, through either omission or comission, to the working terriers they care about.

The simple fact is that no working terrier has ever been created by the Kennel Club, but every working terrier breed that has been drawn in, has been destroyed there.

The Reverend John Russell noted the negative impact of dog shows on working terriers -- he judged only one show (when he was a very old man), and he swore he would never do it again!.

Though the destruction of working terriers started with the Allied Terrier Shows run by Charles Crufts in the U.K. (Crufts was a dog food salesman who never even owned a dog himself!), the Americans quickly got into the game as well.

A quick historical tour of "Best in Show" winners at the Westminster Kennel Club Show in New York City suggests the intense attention given to terriers at the turn of the 20th Century.

• The first "Best in Show" winner at Westminster in New York City was in 1907. This first "Best in Show" winner was a smooth fox terrier that looked a little bit like today's Jack Russell.
  
• Fox terriers won again in 1908, 1909, 1910, 1911, 1915, 1916, 1917, 1926, 1928, 1930, 1931, 1934, 1937 and 1942.
  
• A Sealyham (another working breed ruined by the show ring) won in 1924, 1927 and 1936.
  
• Airedales made Best in Show in 1912, 1919, 1920, 1933, and 1936.
  
• A bull terrier went Best In Show in 1918, and a Welsh Terrier in 1944.

As you can see, almost all the early winners were terriers, and most of them were fox terriers. It was during this period the face of the fox terrier was elongated and the chest enlarged by show ring breeders. Prior to World War II, if you were really intent on wining the top award at a dog show, you went into fox terriers.

Probably no breed could have survived such intense attention without being wrecked by fad, and the fox terrier certainly did not.

A popular line of rhetoric within the Kennel Club crowd is that individual breeders ruin the dogs, not the Kennel Club itself. This rhetoric is designed to absolve the Kennel Club of its responsibility for the genetic decline of working dogs. In fact, the rules and selection bias of the Kennel Club are a very large part of the problem -- every much a part of the problem as individual breeders (who have no power to reform the Kennel Club itself).

The genetic destruction of working dogs begins with the fact that the Kennel Club mandates that each breed club "close" its registry after an initial influx of "pure bred" dogs. In fact most breed clubs start with a very small base of dogs, and then move to close breed roles as quickly as possible in order to create economic value for the breeders that are "in" the club.

A closed genetic registry results in increasing levels of inbreeding and increased concentrations of genetic faults. In fact, Kennel Club dogs are so deeply inbred and rich with genetic defects that mapping the genome of Kennel Club dogs was one of the first tasks undertaken by genetic scientists eager to crack the human genetic code in order to eradicate diseases.

If you are looking for the gene associated with genetic deafness, it is rather hard trait to find in a random-bred human, cat or chimpanzee, but thanks to Kennel Club inbreeding, there are entire lines of deaf dogs, with deafness common to 25% or more of all puppies from some breeds. Genetic defects associated with ataxia, cataracts, dysplasia, and dwarfism are similarly easy to find by simply comparing one breed, or line of dogs, with another.

Along with a requirement that breed registries be closed, the Kennel Club rejects the notion that there should be a morphological continuum witin the world of dogs. In fact, "speciation" of dogs based on looks alone is what the Kennel Club is all about. Under Kennel Club rules and "standards," a cairn terrier cannot look too much like a norwich terrier, which cannot look too much like a norfolk terrier, which cannot look too much like a border terrier, which cannot look too much like a fell terrier, which cannot look too much like a welsh terrier, which cannot look too much like a lakeland terrier, which cannot look too much like a fox terrier, which cannot look too much like a "Parson Russell" terrier (the non-hunting, show-ring version of the Jack Russell Terrier).

The show ring is all about "breeds," and all about differentiating one breed from another. In the world of the working terrier, of course, the fox or raccoon or groundhog does not care too much what breed the dog is! In fact, the fox or raccoon cannot even see the dog it faces underground, as there is no light inside a den pipe. What the fox cares about is whether the dog can actually reach it at the back of the sette. The good news (at least as far as the fox is concerned!) is that a Kennel Club dog often cannot get very close to the quarry . The reason for this? A Kennel Club dog is likely to have too big a chest.

The overlarge chests you find on so many Kennel Club terriers are a byproduct of putting too much emphasis on head shape and size. By requiring all the terriers to be morphologically distinct from each other, the Kennel Club puts tremendous emphasis on heads. People who do not dig much (if at all) imagine that a big head is important to work. In fact, it really is not; most small cross-bred working terriers have heads big enough to do the job, and are well-enogh shaped to boot.

An over-emphasis on terrier head size almost invariably leads to a larger chest size on the dog -- a bigger chest size is needed to counterbalance the larger head, since one is attached to the other. A large chest size, in turn, results in a dog that cannot easily get to ground in a tight naturally-dug earth.

The end result is what we see in the Kennel Club show ring today -- transvestite terriers. These dogs may LOOK like they can do the part (and they are so eager!), but when push comes to shove, most of them lack the essential equipment to do the job, whether that is chest size, nose, voice, brains or a game and gritty character.

Westminster & the Death of the Fox Terrier

A repost from July 2004

 

 
I came across an interesting book in the stacks at Borders Book Store today -- "The Dog Show" By William Stifel (2003, Westminster Kennel Club).
 
This is a very well-done coffee table book celebrating the 125th anniversary of the Westminster Kennel Club, the biggest dog show in the U.S.  
 
I did not buy the book, but I read a bit and discovered an amazing thing that helps explains the very rapid degeneration of the fox terrier between 1900 and World War II. 
 

• The first "Best in Show" winner at Westminster in New York City was in 1907. This first "Best in Show" winner was a smooth fox terrier that looked very much like today's Jack Russell.


• Fox terriers won again in 1908, 1909, 1910, 1911, 1915, 1916, 1917, 1926, 1928, 1930, 1931, 1934, 1937 and 1942.


• A Sealyham (another working breed ruined by the show ring) won in 1924, 1927 and 1936.


• Airedales made Best in Show in 1912, 1919, 1920, 1933, and 1936.


• A bull terrier went Best In Show in 1918, and a Welsh Terrier in 1944.

As you can see, almost all the early winners were terriers, and most of them were fox terriers.

It was during this period of time that the face of the fox terrier was elongated and the chest enlarged by show ring breeders.

Prior to World War II, if you were really intent on wining the top award at a dog show, you were into fox terriers.

Probably no breed could have survived such intent attention without being wrecked by fad.

The fox terrier certainly did not.