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?

• Related Links:
  ** Terrierman's Top Ten Tips for Avoiding Expense & Misery
  ** Ten Tips to Finding the Right Dog .
  ** Bulldogs: How Did We Come to Select for Defect?
  ** Does the Breed Standard Require a Rape Rack?
  ** Bull Dogs in Rape Racks & Canaries In Coal Mines
  ** We Want Our Mutant Dogs, Never Mind Their Pain
  ** The Kennel Club Freak Show
  ** C-Sections at the Kennel Club
  ** Complete English Bulldog Skeleton in a Bag
  ** Counterfeit Collies and Transvestite Terriers
  ** 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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Cocked Up Dogs

A repost from this blog circa 8-17-06

This morning I stumbled across the web site of Gun Dog Magazine which has a nice piece on it about cocker spaniels. The author, Chad Mason (aka C. Stanley Mason), writes:

"By now the observant reader will have noticed the recurring qualification: 'field bred.' I have thus cracked the lid on a can of worms, and might as well dump them out. There is a definite split in this breed, and space limitations compel me to focus on one side of that split. I do not mean to diminish the worth of show- or dual-type English cockers. Rather, I am ... making a judgment about which type of dog most readers of this magazine would be happiest with.

I am certainly no expert on show dogs, and will leave their discussion to people more qualified than I. (See 'For More Information' at the end of this article.) My modest firsthand experience with dual-type cockers leaves me convinced that a dual-type cocker is basically a show-type cocker that can pass a 'hunting test.'

More worms will squirm free with my encapsulation of hunting test in quotation marks, but I'm willing to bear the scorn. I've spent a quarter century hunting eight species of upland birds and 10 species of waterfowl in wild habitats from Georgia to Alberta, and I killed those birds over nine breeds of sporting dogs representing all major categories: pointers, retrievers, spaniels and versatile breeds.

I've also witnessed hunting tests for all these breeds conducted by several parent clubs and registries. Among the spaniel ranks, the difference between hunting tests and wild bird hunting seems analogous to the difference between passing a quiz and having a real job. "

A nice piece, and the article is worth a read . Though the dogs being described are not terriers, the words are very close to what can be said about "earthdog" trials and the "one and done" hunting certificates coveted by folks only interested in getting their dogs into the "working dog" ring at a show.

Some things, it seems, are the same all over. Mason has apparently written a book of bird hunting essays entitled Voices On The Wind, which is available from www.countrysportpress.com. I have not read it, but it looks interesing ...
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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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Some Call This Evolution

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You Will Know It By ... Her Master's Voice

In a world of 6.7 billion people, it seems only a trusted and much-loved member of the Kennel Club could chair the new Advisory Council on Welfare Issues of Dog Breeding in the U.K.

The new chair, Sheila Crispin, is a veterinary opthamologist who has spent decades in dogs and yet has never been vocal in criticizing the Kennel Club about it practices, and never mind the obvious pain and misery caused by those practices.

Is this opthamologist blind? We shall see.

Here's what I suspect will happen: a lot of movement and not much action.

Look for Crispin to tackle everything but the real issues of contrived standards leading to deformed dogs in misery, and inbreeding practices leading to jaw-dropping rates of disease.

Open the registries? Require working dogs to work in order to win rosettes? Those are words that will never pass her lips.

Instead, look for her to launch off on a campaign against puppy mills, and perhaps to initiate a drive to mandate microchipping.

Those are worthy problems deserving attention, but they are not why this Advisory Council was created.

They will be within her comfort zone, however.

Her comfort zone, after all, has always been close to the Kennel Club's hierarchy which has given her an honorary membership and tapped her as a member of its own "Breed Health and Welfare Strategy Group" which, you will remember, is the cause of the current mess.

Will I be wrong?

Nothing would make me happier if I am! But when it comes to dogs, I have learned to keep my expectations low, and this is a good example.

Patrick Bateson promised that this new Advisory Council on Welfare Issues of Dog Breeding would be appointed on the Nolan Principles. I am not sure how appointing a Kennel Club member and insider to "reform" the world of dog breeding fits those principles. In fact, let me say quite clearly that I think it does not.

Job One for Crispin, if she is serious (and I hope she is!), is to repudiate the nonsense put out by the Kennel Club which says that "the vast majority of breeds and dogs are healthy." This is demonstrably not true as even the most cursory examination of the Kennel Club's own health surveys make clear.

Truth and reform cannot start with lies and distraction. Let us see which way Crispin heads...
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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.

• Related Article:** Who Speaks for Dogs?
  .

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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The Always New and Continuing Evolution of Dogs

A repost from this blog, circa February 2007.

A lot of people want the undifferentiating affection of a dog, but are not entirely willing to pay the price: forced awakenings at 7 am, expensive fencing, veterinary care, shedding coats, barking, and strange smells in the living room.

Dogs are small tyrants that crap on your rug, chew up your glasses and steal your sandwiches.

If you own a dog, you can still ride off into the sunset, but you better be back by 8:30 to feed it, and by midnight to put it to bed for the evening.

In the era of schooners and candles, when people lived on large farms with slow traffic, things were probably a little bit easier. Back then a large dog could sleep in the barn and roam more-or-less at will.

Now a lot of folks live in condominiums and multi-story apartment buildings surrounded by six-lanes of traffic. Others are retirees looking for less work. The result is a growing market for small dogs that are as easy to take care of as a cat.

In fact, what is wanted today is a dog that acts like a cat, and a cat that acts like a dog.

Towards that end breeders on both ends of the spectrum are working towards a middle ground, with cats that have affectionate personalities and legs too short to jump up on the furniture, and dogs that do not shed, rarely bark, and are so small they can be tucked inside a handbag.

I suppose all of this is simply a logical extension of Robert Bakewell's earlier efforts to control sires in order to produce animals for a particular function.

Cats, of course, were slow to domesticate as prior to the rise of the "indoor" cat, felines were free to roam and cross-breed at will.

Dogs, on the other hand, have been the product of controlled breeding for so long that most Kennel Club breeds now seem to specialize in two or three genetic defects. As a consequence, more and more prospective pet owners are are now looking at cross breeds in some hope of avoiding expensive veterinary work to "fix" defective canine hips, eyes, knees and teeth.

Another factor, of course, is that a lot of the small "toy" breeds are so fru-fru that no self-respecting heterosexual man is eager to be seen walking one. A Toy Poodle? A Papillon? Please.

A cross-bred small dog at least offers the potential dignity of being something a little "outside the box."A small dog described as a "little mutt" or "attack rat" by the husband, can be described by the wife as a Shitpoo (a Shih Tzu crossed with a Toy Poodle), a Cockapoo (a Cocker Spaniel crossed with a Toy Poodle), a Schnoodle (a Schnauzer crossed with a poodle), a Bagel (a Beagle crossed with a Bassett Hound) or a Puggle (a Pug crossed with a Beagle).

Pardon me if I do not join the Kennel Club crowd which clucks and moans about "little mongrels" being cranked out by puppy millers and "back yard breeders".

How, I would ask, does that differentiate these new dogs from most Kennel Club breeds? After all, most of the dog breeds on earth today are less than 140 years old, and most were invented by puppy peddlers doing their business between 1860 and 1900.

The harsh truth is that most canine breeds were not forged by honest field work, but by professional breeders seeking to sell dogs for the pet trade.

In short, the true history of most dog breeds is one of "backyard breeders" creating contrived names and fake histories for their dogs and producing enough of the dogs in a short enough period (a puppy mill by any name) to create a "class" of dogs to fill a Kennel Club ring.

And it's not like the Kennel Club breeds cannot be improved by a little outcrossing!

The Yorkie has such serious teeth problems that they invariably require attention from expensive veterinary dentists.

The Pug's bulging eyes make it prone to eye injury, and nearly every one of them is born caesarian.

The Toy Poodle is a barker and often mentally unbalanced.

Dachshunds are prone to serious back and joint problems.

Papillons and Chihuahuas have all kinds of health problems, not the least of which are that their bones may be so light they can break jumping off the couch.

The Lhasa Apso is a walking mop requiring more grooming than a Hollywood starlet, and is often a mental case as well.

Of course, most cross-breeds are not all that successful, and only a very few show a marked advantage over a common pound dog.

That said, enough crosses are working out that a few crosses are developing into regular replicable breeds. The most obvious candidate for "new breed" distinction is the "Labradoodle" -- a cross between a Labrador Retriever and a Standard Poodle. In Australia, this very tractable dog has been standardized and now breeds true after more than 15-years of focused work. In the U.S., however, most "Labradoodles" remain hybrids which, when crossed with each other, throw a wide array of very different-looking pups.

Contrary to what many hybrid dog advocates will tell you, a hybrid dog is not always healthier that its purebred cousin. Genetic loads are never revealed in one breeding, and "hybrid vigor" is not a perfect curative for all canine ills.

A final note is that when dogs are combined, the positive characteristics of a breed are not necessarily those that are transfered.

The tale is told of the time when Marilyn Monroe met Albert Einstein and coyly mewed, "Professor Einstein, we should get together. With my looks and your brains think of the wonderful babies we could produce." To which Einstein is supposed to have replied: "Yes, but what if they have my looks and your brains? That too is an equal possibility."
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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.

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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The Stanley Milgram Dog Show

From the BBC comes this article about how the French have recreated the Milgram Experiment and put it on national TV as a game show:

A disturbing French TV documentary has tried to demonstrate how well-meaning people can be manipulated into becoming torturers or even executioners.

The hugely controversial Game of Death was broadcast in prime-time on a major terrestrial channel, France 2, on Wednesday.

It showed 80 people taking part in what they thought was a game show pilot.

As it was only a trial, they were told they wouldn't win anything, but they were given a nominal 40 euro fee.

Before the show, they signed contracts agreeing to inflict electric shocks on other contestants.

One by one, they were put in a studio resembling the sets of popular game shows.

They were then asked to zap a man they believed was another contestant whenever he failed to answer a question correctly - with increasingly powerful shocks of up to 460 volts.

I have written about the Milgram Experiment before. In that earlier post I raised the question as to whether a different kind of "Milgram Experiment" might be going on with dog breeds and breed standards:

People know that breeding very large dogs and very small dogs results in a very high, and very predictable, amount of painful canine pathology, ranging from cancer and bloat to syringomyelia.

People know that breeding achondroplastic and brachycephalic dogs results in a very high, and very predictable, amount of long-term breathing problems, joint problems, and heart disease.

People know that breeding Bloodhounds results in dogs that will often be in pain due to bloat, gastric torsion and cancer, and that more than half of these dogs will be dead by age 7.

So why do people do it?

Simple: they are simply "following directions."

The directions are written down in a "breed standard" created by a nameless, faceless group of people who claim "history" as their guide even when the history is entirely invented.

The directions say that no dog can be bred outside of the Kennel Club's closed registry system.

The directions say that a pure breed dog is better than a "mongrel" gotten from the pound

The authority is the Kennel Club.

The pain administered to the dogs is minimized by "expert breeders" and Club potentates who spend considerable amounts of time and energy denying, rationalizing and explaining away defect, deformity and disease in their breeds, and who also routinely lie to potential puppy buyers about breed longevity.

Deaf dog? Never had one.

Uric acid stones? Not in my line.

Heart problems? Oh, that occurs sometimes among "backyard breeders" but never in the kennels of the board members of the breed club.

Cancer, skin conditions and eye problems? That just comes with the breed.

In fact, only the best Chihuahuas have moleras, and only the best Finnish Spitz's have epilepsy, and only the best herding dogs have the merle gene which is so often linked to deafness.

Defect is proof of quality!

In a world in which people will administer killing levels of electric shock to other people on voice command alone, it should come as no surprise to find many people are able to rationalize breeding dogs that will be in pain or discomfort for much of their lives.

After all, it's not like every dog in even a deeply troubled breed will have a painful defect.

And if it happens, it can easily be fobbed off as a "bad break" . . . for the owner of the dog.

And yes, that is how we say, isn't it?

Oh your [cancer prone breed] is dying of cancer? I'm, so sorry for the terrible expense.

Your dachshund has to be put down with a spinal cord injury? I'm so sorry for your loss.

Are you getting another one?

Oh good! It would be a shame if you let that one dog change your opinion of the breed!

• Related Links
  ** Kennel Club Dog Owners "Just Following Orders"
  ** Does the Breed Standard Require a Rape Rack?
  ** Deformity and Disease Due to Exaggeration
  ** The Dalmatian Club Embraces Purity and Pain
  ** The Boston Terrier: Defective by Design
  ** The National Dog Show Salutes a Genetic Wreck
  ** Breeding Dogs for Intentional Defect
  ** Great Scots Magazine: Pushing for Better Health
  ** Massive Recall of Defective Pugs
  ** Inbred Thinking
  ** Making and Breaking Dogs in the Show Ring
  ** The Kennel Club: When Truth is Inconvenient, Lie
  ** Kennel Club Inbreeding: Data Revealed
  ** The AKC, Facing Extinction, Banks on Misery Pups
  ** AKC Registrations Down 53 Percent in 15 Years
  .

Will the Kennel Club Go the Way of the AKC?

Wanted for crimes against nature. Last seen at the Tring Museum.

An article in The Independent notes that in the issue of Dogs Today that is due to come out today, Jemima Harrison has an open letter to the Kennel Club calling into question their "go slow" approach to changing breeds standards and reducing Coefficients of Inbreeding.

"Despite a few press releases promising to tackle genetic diversity, you are not doing enough to truly deal with this key issue," she wrote.

"Yes, you responded to public outrage and last year said you would no longer register the progeny of mother/son, father/daughter and brother/sister matings - a repellent practice that had gone on for far too long."

But she said the organisation had refused to introduce any further breeding restrictions.

"Indeed, you've stated recently that you still think it is all right to mate a grandfather to his own granddaughter as long as they are both 'suited'," she wrote.

Referring to the "devastating genetic erosion" of certain breeds, she called for "strong leadership" from the Kennel Club, writing: "It is time now to properly tackle this bigger issue - because, until you do, the dogs will continue to be inbred into oblivion."

The Kennel Club, of course, says it is going as fast as possible.

Right. And where are they going?

Mostly they are going to change the subject!

Their latest flutter is to make a big production about "puppy farms" -- an entirely different issue than that raised by Pedigree Dogs Exposed, and one which has nothing to do with Kennel Club breed standards which embrace physical deformity which leads to predictable disease and dysfunction.

And here's the delicious part: the British Kennel Club is only too happy to register puppy mill dogs! In fact, Kennel Club registration papers are a core part of the puppy farm business plan in the U.K., same as it is here in the U.S.

As for inbreeding, as Ms. Harrison notes, they have done the bare minimum and no more.

Bottom line: So long as the Kennel Club continues to employ Caroline Kisko as it spokesperson, you can be sure nothing has changed but the location of the deck chairs on the Titanic.

• Related Links:
  ** AKC To Go Out of Business By 2025
  ** Hunte Corporation: Pushing AKC Puppy Mill Pets
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AKC To Go Out of Business By 2025?

SOURCE :: Click to enlarge

The American Kennel Club appears to be ready to go out of business by 2025.

That's the take-away message from an analysis of the perilously steep decline in AKC registrations that has occurred since 1992.

Between 1992 and 2008, AKC registrations declined by more than 55 percent, and a "best fit" trend line done by DVM magazine suggests the organization will be gone by 2025 unless a drastic change is made.

If we looks at AKC registrations per capita, the decline is even steeper -- a 61% decline in registrations over the same period of time.


SOURCE :: Click to Enlarge

What's the reason for the decline? You can chase it around the barn any number of ways, but the simple story is that No one wants to register their dogs with the AKC anymore.

Most dog buyers would rather go to the pound (the source of more than half of all pet dogs in the U.S.) while those that still go to breeders are looking for healthy dogs, not show dogs.

But what about that piece of paper that says "AKC" on it?

No one believes it's a sign of a either healthy dog or a knowledgeable breeder producing quality dogs.

In fact, quite the opposite.

The word is out that the AKC has been in bed with backyard breeders and puppy mill dog peddlers for decades, and the AKC's own board minutes and the statements of its Chairman reflect that.

The word is out that AKC dogs, on average, are less healthy than mutts and cross-breeds, and canine health insurance records and premiums reflect that.

And the word is out that AKC breeders have been giving "the big wink" to defect, disease and deformity for more than 50 years. Who wants to be associated with that?

And so the AKC is crashing to the ground.

Like a drunk hugging a vodka bottle as it speeds down the road, it is unable and unwilling to change until it is too late.

• Related Posts:
  ** All at Seat at the AKC
  ** The AKC, Facing Extinction, Banks on Misery Pups
  ** The AKC Helps Sell Puppy Mill Dogs for Petland
  ** Dogs and the Asch Experiment
  ** The Business of Diamonds .... and Dogs
  ** For Veterinarians, Silence Has Been Golden
  ** AKC Registrations Down 53 Percent in 15 Years

The Farce That is Crufts

The face of a winner.

The farce that is the Crufts Dog Show continues unabated.

Named after a dog food salesman that never owned a dog, it started out as the Allied Terrier Show and helped speed the rapid destruction of almost ever breed of working terrier, from Fox and Welsh, to Borders and Bedlingtons.

Crufts is also the location where the genetic disaster know as the Cavalier King Charles Spaniel first appeared, spurred by an American by the name of Roswell Eldridge who put up a cash prize for anyone who could come up with a dog that looked like those in the paintings of van Dyck. The resulting dog was inbred to the point that today more than 50% of Cavaliers die from heart disease. In addition to jaw-dropping levels of heart disease, well over one-third of Cavaliers have Syringomyelia, a disorder of the brain and spinal cord.

In the last year, insult has been added to injury, as Crufts has now taken on a discount sofa company as its sponsor, going so far as to include a sofa in the Crufts logo. The owner of DFS, the discount sofa company, has said (and I could not make this up): "If DFS was a dog, it would be a Crufts champion." Translated into English that means: "We sell products that look good in the picture but they fall to pieces the moment you try and actually put them to use."

So what's the latest charade? Just this: The London Times is reporting that "The Kennel Club has rewritten the rules for the Crufts dog show to give a veterinary surgeon the authority to exclude any unfit dog."

Right.

And how does that work?

There are entire breeds that are unfit, starting with the English Bulldog.

Listen to the bobble-headed Bulldog breeder in the clip, below, explaining why all English Bulldogs are unfit for ANY function:

"In the heat and the lights of the show, they can overheat and actually go down in five minutes. 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 turns."

Flash located here (right click on link to copy) Youtube link here


Now look at the German Shepherds below, which were show at the Manchester Kennel Club show in 2008.

I guarantee you will see exactly the same slope-backed wrecks walking on their hocks at the Crufts show in 2010!



Border Terrier breeder and veterinarian Steve Dean will be Crufts chief veterinarian, and his word is to be law.

But what good is the law if it will never cry foul?

When the Bulldogs enter the ring the whole thing will become a joke. The German Shepherds, Cavaliers, Pekingese, and Chinese Cresteds will simply be the punchline at the end of a long wind-up going back more than 100 years.
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We Love Our Freaks

A Great Dane and a Miniature Horse, North Carolina.

As many as one in four harlequin Great Danes may be born deaf and put to sleep -- something a professional breeder might "take care of" by simply slipping a new-born puppy into the freezer.

And what of the horse? Just imagine if we did to horses what we have done to German Shepherds.
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C-Sections at the Kennel Club

A Mastiff gets a c-section.

A study paid for by The Kennel Club, and published in the Journal of Small Animal Practice notes that in some breeds, the vast majority of dogs are now born cesarean.

The study looked at 151 breeds that reported on at least 10 litters. A total of 13,141 bitches, whelping 22,005 litters, were included in the analysis. The frequency of cesarean sections was estimated as the percentage of litters, by breed.

The top ten breeds for cesareans were:

• Boston Terrier (92.3%) (#19 AKC breed in 2009)



• Bulldog (86.1%) (#7 AKC breed in 2009)



• French Bulldog (81.3%) (#24 AKC breed in 2009)



• Mastiff (64.6%) (#27 AKC breed in 2009)



• Scottish Terrier (59.8%) (#52 AKC breed in 2009)



• Miniature Bull Terrier(52.4%) (#125 AKC Breed)



• German Wirehaired Pointer (47.8%) (#74 AKC breed in 2009)



• Clumber Spaniel (45.2%) (#128 AKC breed in 2009)



• Pekingese (43.8%) (#53 AKC breed in 2009)



• Dandie Dinmont Terrier (41.4%) (#151 AKC breed in 2009)

What's the cost of a c-section on a dog? Anywhere from $500 to $1,200 or more.

There were only seven breeds for which there were no reported cesareans. These were the Australian Silky Terrier, Curly Coated Retriever, German Pinscher, Hamiltonstovare, Irish Terrier, Pharaoh Hound, and the Portuguese Water Dog.

• Related Links:
  ** For Veterinarians, Silence Has Been Golden
  ** French Bulldogs: Unfit for the Most Basic Functions
  ** Scottie: A Healthcare Basketcase Wins Westminster
  ** Bulldogs: How Did We Come to Select for Defect
  ** The Boston Terrier: Defective by Design
  ** Rosettes to Ruin
  ** Most and Least Inbred Dog in the AKC
  ** Danger: Market Forces at Work
  ** Inbreeding Analysis by Breed
  ** Genetic Diseases by Breed
  ** Dog Longevity Data
  .