When the bow is beneath the waves, follow the rats.
How much genetic damage must we do to our dog breeds before we call it quits and start over from wolves? Should we consider a breed an abject failure if half of all the animals in that breed are doomed to die young of exploding hearts with no advanced warning other than the knowledge that all the dogs in that breed have substandard hearts?
Is it ethical to continue to breed those dogs given that you know the attrition rate is so high? Would you buy a dog if you knew that the mere act of throwing the ball could be fatal? Would you expect a health guarantee from your breeder knowing that there are no dogs in the breed that are safe and no cure? Would you offer said guarantee if you were a breeder?
This is what happens when fashions change and you limit the gene pool. We bred Dobermans to be fiercely loyal and vicious protection dogs. Then fashions changed and we wanted more docile dogs. But we didn’t breed that in, we bred the primary characteristic out. That whiplash limited the gene pool so greatly (the only docile Dobes in the first place were the defective ones) that a healthy heart gene didn’t survive the ride.
And why would we want docile Dobes when there are plenty of (considerably more) healthy docile breeds? Nostalgia, history, and the seductive nature of a small change here and a small change there. Dogs are our first, best, and longest experiment in engineering, and it’s a rare engineer who will drop a pet project.
Dogs aren’t the only area where we’ve stubbornly held on to the past. The US still uses the Imperial System despite the Empire moving on to Metric. We still honor heavenly bodies and old Norse gods with our days of the week. Our measurement of time is as old as the Babylonians. The above systems are based on 8/10/12/60/24/7/365/5280 … when they could all be based on 10. Or if we wanted some mind blowing symmetry, 12.
We kept Imperial, but at least we ditched the Empire. Just look at those complacent get-along go-along Canadians. They’re still a Constitutional Monarchy for no apparent reason except they like to keep an inbred old English bag on their money. In the above cartoon, those stunted little Corgis figured out that it’s wise to follow the rats when the water reaches the top level of the sinking Monarchy, why haven’t the Canadians?
There’s romance and comfort in history, it’s where we came from, and in an uncertain world we often grasp at the past for stability. This is the reason we fetishize pedigrees in dogs and genealogy in people. The Monarchy is a mix of both and despite leaving it behind over 225 years ago, Princess Diana was a global icon and the Queen’s recent visit to the US showed that the fuddy duddy old icon of anti-meritocracy could draw huge crowds and great reverance.
I think you can make a strong case that to breed even a single Doberman is unethical. The disadvantages certainly outweigh the benefits. This is a breed that no longer servers a purpose and it’s so riddled with disease that life and death is literally a flip of a coin.
Is it time that the Doberman go extinct? Should we limp the breed along and accept the casualties until genetic engineering can remove the disease? Should we outcross and bring new genes the old fashioned way, reforging the breed to limit disease expression?
It’s clear we need change, the only question is change to what? How? When? and Who? Any volunteers?
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Anton
Christopher
Lawrence Dillard
Lech
Stephanie
Essere
Odd how in the production of meat and poultry, market, health, and vitality shape breed lines and crosses.
But in canines particularly, “dog lovers/breed advocates” relegate these attributes to the bottom of the list of priorities in a quest to reproduce to a notion. Unless and until the market changes, there will be no real motive for change.
The KC has been hit with a lot of pressure, lately. I have not seen a similar movement towards the AKC. What would it take? In the real world, as in, can the major promoters of AKC shows be swayed here as they have been in England?
Without a bunch of damn “there aught to be a law against that” nonesense?
Eli
Eli –
I wanted to thank you for that “Acid Wash” comment over on Pet Connection. It was excellent.
I’m not sure what it would really take. People like Terrierman P. Burns are very anti-AKC but when I’ve written to him to note that nearly NO ONE is actually taking advantage of any open registries to breed in other breeds, and that even “REGISTER ON MERIT” options are really only used to bring 100% purebreds back into the registry after their ancestors were just not registered or were registered in another country or with another registry, even he didn’t have a good response.
The interesting thing about Border Collies is that the AKC is actually the most open registry for Border Collies. Who knows for how long. But when I wanted to breed the most diverse BCs I could find, I couldn’t do that within the ABCA because even the ROM program is over-ridden by AKC hatred.
For (too) many breeders, showing the dog is the thing. There are only a couple of ‘open’ registries in the US, one of those being the Continental Kennel Club, yes, the ‘puppy mill’ registry. And AKC doesn’t recognize them. So you couldn’t show a dog that is ConKC registered. And showing is so important, you know. We MUST stick with AKC because we MUST show our dogs to be ‘reputable.’ Even performance people who do something beyond obedience or agility like OFC or lure-chasing are stuck, the dogs must be ‘purebred.’
One of the the mailing lists I’m on had a short discussion about cryptorchid dogs recently. Another poster and I agreed that in some breeds, a retained testicle is really a minor issue compared with high rates of bone cancer or heart problems or other real quality of life health issues. Immediately someone piped up and said, “But you can’t show a cryptorchid!” Gah.
I’d be very interested to know just how many people are taking advantage of the open registries out there.
I did a nearly complete pedigree on both of my dogs and the only non-Border Collie that I’ve ever seen in the entire pedigree goes back 100 years ago to a Bearded Collie who predates record keeping.
There’s another instance of a ROM dog where the father is registered but the mother is not. The going theory is that the mother might not have been a BC. Produced a herding champion dog, btw.
I don’t know of any people taking advantage of the ROM program to intentionally breed in fresh blood today though. I suspect most ROMs are issues of book-keeping, not blood keeping.
I’ve heard about the “Shiloh” Shepherds trying to reforge the GSD and the Dalmation-Pointer backcross. Any others?
There is a guy in the UK who bred a Corgi into his Boxers to get a natural bob tail. One breeding with a Corgi. I don’t know if it’s had any effect on the heart issues Boxers have.
Five years ago, I had an oops Afghan/Saluki litter. What I got was a bunch of dogs that resemble the early imports, the ‘desert’ type Afghans. Very little coat that sheds out almost completely in summer. I have crossed one of the halfghans back to a pure Afghan and am waiting to see if it took. I am hoping to eventually end up with dogs that will consistently throw a heavily patterned coat that mostly sheds out in the summer, that still look and act like Afghans. I haven’t considered attempting to register them with an open registry.
Is it ALL dobes that are dealing with heart problems? Or are the dobe still used in protection sport/police work less prone, like the east european W/L german shepherds are in comparison to the crippled hocks you see in S/L shepherds?