Biologist Claire Wade and her Toller "Burn" during an NSDTRC-USA Field Test.
The 2011 study A Genealogical Survey of Australian Registered Dog Breeds is a shoddy piece of work and a disgrace to the scientific method.
The world-wide population of Cavalier King Charles Spaniels descends from only 6 dogs. This bogus study manufactured 836 observed CKCS “founders.”
GIMME AN F!
The authors Mohammad Shariflou, John Hames, Frank Nicholas, and Claire Wade did themselves and the canine community no service in writing it and I contend that Claire Wade allowed her own bias for and attachment to Nova Scotia Duck Tolling Retrievers to taint her judgment. Combined with her failure to disclose her extant conflicts of interest as a Toller owner, breeder (stud service), trainer, and breed club member, this bias and its resultant corruption of the methods and characterization of the results by the authors are de facto academic fraud.
The authors begin by suggesting that their analysis is circumspect and all encompassing when it’s anything but:
To better understand the actual nature of pedigree dog population structure on a whole-population basis, we examined data records for a representative sample of recognised pedigree breed populations in Australia.
This is a lie. This paper did NOT look at a whole-population basis at all, in fact the researchers went out of their way to limit the information they were looking at and purposely excluded data that is both informative and readily available.
The world-wide population of Pekingese Lion Dogs descends from only 5 dogs. This bogus study manufactured 1053 observed Peke “founders.”
GIMME AN R!
They looked at only a fraction of the data available in one registry in Australia, going out of their way to remove all known dogs before import which were certainly contained on their import pedigrees but not included in the analysis. This means that they failed to look at the whole-population of any dog breeds despite claiming otherwise. They didn’t even come close.
Only one breed, the Australian Terrier, passed the 10 generations of data mark. The other native Oz breed, the Australian Cattle Dog, fell short at only 9.7 generations but this low mark still greatly surpassed the imported breeds.
Generation Equivalents (EqG): 3.0, 2.1, 3.5, 5.4, 4.4, 3.1, 3.4, 3.3, 4.8, 4.1, 4.1, 1.7, 7.6, 2.6, 10.1, 9.4, 7.7, 8.3, 8.1, 7.6, 9.7, 7.6, 6, 7.5, 7.3, 8.7, 6.6, 4.8, 6.7, 6.6, 4.9, 8
mean: 3.9
These scientists threw away so much prior-to-import data and the documented history within Australia is so limited for almost all these breeds that their results are based upon an average of only 3.9 generations! This is less information than would appear on one single import pedigree and we know that most of these breeds have many more generations of documented history.
The world-wide population of Nova Scotia Duck Tolling Retrievers descends from only 9 dogs. This bogus study manufactured 84 observed NSDTR “founders.”
GIMME AN A!
As I’ve shown before, Nova Scotia Duck Tolling Retrievers should have between 11 and 22+ generations of documented pedigrees. I’ve traced my own Border Collies back (including significant history in Australia) between 20 and 70 generations.
It’s really laughable then that they claim their results are “comparable with other species of domesticated animals.” How can you compare genetic analysis of an entire species to a circumcised look at a niche registry in a remote island country?
Why would you make such a comparison when your data doesn’t support it and your methodology precludes making such comparisons in the first place? These sorts of throw away comments suggest an author with an agenda to create sound-bites for breed apologists instead of a scientist with ethics and objectivity.
Claire Wade's Toller "Burn" a.k.a. Am, NSDTRC-US CH Edlyn Seastar Dodge N Burn WC CGC CCD JD, is a conformation show champion.
Using complete national pedigree data supplied by the Australian National Kennel Council (ANKC), this study examined the levels of inbreeding and popular sire use in 32 Australian dog breeding populations with different registry sizes.
This statement is misleading. It says “using complete national pedigree data” but as you’ll soon find out the researchers discarded much of that data, so the use of “complete” is highly inappropriate. If you want to use the word ‘complete,’ you should include all known pedigree data, worldwide, period.
The world-wide population of Samoyeds descends from fewer than 20 dogs. This bogus study manufactured 149 observed Sammy “founders.”
GIMME A U!
For Nova Scotia Duck Tolling Retrievers, this analysis was already completed and published before the Wade paper in 2009 by Katariina Mäkii: Population Structure and Genetic Diversity of Worldwide Nova Scotia Duck Tolling Retriever and Lancashire Heeler Dog Populations. For the Australian subpopulation, the study found an inbreeding level of 28% and looked at 13.2 complete generation equivalents worth of pedigree data.
It’s not that this data contradicts the ANKC data, it’s that the Mäki data was not artificially manipulated to exclude known relationships and create bogus founders out of thin air.
The Wade study looks at but the tip of the iceberg and pretends that everything below water doesn’t exist.
Claire Wade's Toller "Burn" is an import to Australia and a stud dog for hire. He's sired at least two litters to date.
The evaluation of data over the entire registration histories of breeds shows inbreeding trends over time.
The world-wide population of Leonbergers descends from only 5 dogs. This bogus study manufactured 149 observed Leonberger “founders.”
GIMME A D!
This statement is misleading and if it was intended to suggest to the reader that these researchers were looking at “the entire registration histories” then it is a bold lie.
Even for the few breeds which were developed in Australia, I’d like to see some evidence that they were founded within the ANKC and that their breed is represented well within just that registry. I have my doubts as the study claims to only have data from 1954 from the Australian Cattle Dog and 1955 for the Australian Terrier. It’s likely that the ANKC is not the parent/founding registry for these breeds and thus their formation is not contained in their registry database (or that data has been excluded in this study).
In the genealogical analysis, animals with known parents born from 2000 to 2009 inclusive were used as the reference population. The completeness of pedigree information was determined by complete equivalent generations (EqG) in the reference population. Founders (f) were defined as animals with unknown parents (typically imported dogs with known parentage but outside of the Australian registry) contributing to the gene pool in the reference population.
This little gimmick is what completely invalidates this entire study. They are creating “founders” out of thin air, throwing away the information which documents inbreeding and then declaring that there is no inbreeding!
This is Australia we’re talking about so almost every single breed was developed elsewhere and there’s a good chance that the two Australian breeds were not developed within the AKNC, so this one step not only obliterates evidence of the true founder effects on the breeds, it also white washes the very real import bottleneck that Australia has.
Import bottlenecks are no small matter. Think of the rising inbreeding documented in culturally or geographically isolated human communities: Muslims in Europe & Australia; Polygamist Mormons; Ashkenazi Jews; Bedouins; Martha’s Vinyard, Pitcairn Island, Faroe Islands, Easter Island, Iceland; Hirado, Japan.
As far as dogs are concerned, Australia is no different. Not only are they geographically isolated from the countries of origin and the largest dog markets in the world, there are also historical import barriers that prevented the easy flow of dogs into the country. Many of these barriers still exist: it’s very expensive and laborious to sort through all the red tape, bureaucracy, and quarantine to import a dog into Australia. This greatly limits the gene pool versus the global population of a breed.
If you read this study as presented, you’d be given the mistaken impression that Australian dog breeds are miraculously well off genetically. This is true only if you blind yourself to reality. But that’s exactly what Wade has done:
Observed values for breed mean inbreeding coefficients are considerably lower than those reported by Maki (2010), who analysed international pedigrees of rare breeds, but are in line with those reported by others based on national data (Calboli et al., 2008; Leroy et al., 2006). For example, it is likely that the observed disagreement with the Maki analysis for the Nova Scotia duck tolling retriever breed (Australian F = 0.03 vs. International F = 0.26) is related to the treatment of imported individuals in our data and, as part of this, the lack of pedigree information from ancestors of the imported dogs. The correspondence of our breed mean results with other national data collections suggests that the majority of the inbreeding identified by Maki (2010) for this breed is probably derived from distant rather than recent co-ancestry. Recent inbreeding is expected to be more deleterious to population health (Hinrichs et al., 2007) and so inbreeding coefficients calculated over more recent population history (such as are presented in this analysis) may have more relevance to breed health than total inbreeding.
The first bit of intentional distortion here is that Mäki didn’t just look at all International data, she also published subdata which included Australia. Wade clearly doesn’t want to point out that the Australian subpopulation of Tollers is actually more inbred than the International average at 28% inbred versus the 26% Wade quoted.
Wade is trying to claim that the post-import Australian breeders are doing such a bang-up job of avoiding inbreeding that they’ve dropped their COI numbers, this isn’t the case, obviously, as the Australian dogs are more inbred on average, not less.
The second distortion is that Toller inbreeding is “distant” versus “recent.” Tollers are not an old enough breed to distinguish between distant and recent inbreeding. As you saw from my recent COI post, Toller inbreeding skyrockets after only 4 generations: 9.57% at 7 generations, 19.35% at 8 generations, and 25.9% at 9 generations. This is NOT distant inbreeding.
Wade quotes the 2007 paper by Hinrichs et al to suggest that Toller inbreeding is somehow so distant that they are protected from the effects of inbreeding. The Hinrichs paper defined “new” inbreeding as at least 25 generations of pedigree information! Tollers don’t even have that many generations in their entire history, so the notion that the Hinrichs paper is applicable to Tollers is a joke. The fact that Wade would try and apply the Hinrichs paper but redefine “new” inbreeding as under 4 generations and “old” inbreeding as anything over that is a horrible distortion of the truth and of another researcher’s work.
When you look at less and say it’s more, you are a liar.
When you look at more and say it’s less, you are a liar.
Claire Wade and the other authors of this paper looked at less information and claimed that it was more. Knowing that COI levels were more, they manipulated their data to tell you it was less.
This is fraud.
At the end of many research papers you’ll find a signed statement that reads something like this:
The Conflict of Interest statement signed by Claire Wade
This represents a commitment to the integrity of the scientific process, the credibility of the presented findings, and a reaffirmation of public trust that is central to peer review and publication. Conflicts of Interests arise when an author or researcher has any relationship or interest which can influence their judgement and the potential for bias can exist and should be disclosed even if the author believes that such a relationship will not affect their scientific judgment.
While financial conflicts are the most obvious (Researcher X is currently employed by Pharmaceutical Company Z whose drug Amazicure is being investigated in this study), conflicts can arise from personal relationships or rivalries, academic competition, and even a passion for the subject being studied.
Claire Wade is a Toller owner, breeder, trainer, and conformation show exhibitor. She imported her Toller “Burn” into Australia and it’s possible that his offspring are included as data in this study. She has a vested interest in the promotion and breeding of Tollers and that is a conflict of interest that should have been disclosed in this study and it was not.
What does that spell? F-R-A-U-D! F-R-A-U-D! F-R-A-U-D!
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It’s sad that I’m not too surprised — you see this kind of hanky-panky going on in a LOT of nutritional studies as well. There’s lots of bad/skewed ‘research’ getting published nowadays, in many different fields.
This statement:
Seems to be the entire purpose for publishing this study, yes? To use the Hinrichs paper to cast doubt on whether the high average COI in Tollers is detrimental or not. This seems highly specious to me, considering that’s not actually what the Hinrichs paper says at all, and that paper only looked at litter size as an indicator of inbreeding depression.
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It’s really a horrible joke that Wade could consider inbreeding that would still show up on a current pedigree as “distant.” Tollers are NOT Cheetahs. They have not managed to survive centuries with a bottle-necked and inbred population. They have barely survived half a century… and Wade is trying to invoke a study which wouldn’t begin to explain slightly less impactful (but certainly not non-existent) inbreeding depression for another century or more of breeding.
And of course Hinrichs in no way suggests that massively more distant inbreeding isn’t potently harmful.
Just came across this blog, a little a annoyed at the constant attack on tollers, so please let me correct at least that last comment.
The half of a century you are referring to in tollers is the time the have been accepted into the Canadian kennel club. Not how long the breed has been around and survived for. The breed dates back hundreds of years, but only recently(in the last 60-70 years), have the pedigrees been written and records kept.
I have a few other comments, but I’ll write those on those pages. Can I ask this though..why tollers? Out of all the breeds that could have been written about, why tollers? There are more inbred breeds, there are much unhealthier breeds, there are breeds with cropping/docking/altered structure – why have you, and many other blogs, chosen tollers? I’m genuinely curious.
The “Toller” breed in question is the one that is defined by the Canadian Kennel Club. They are the dogs that have been studied, tested, and they are the ones which have pedigrees which lead back to only a few founders.
This is a rather simple concept. Tollers as the breed that is defined by pedigreed dogs within the CKC are certainly only a subset of all the Tollers that ever existed and perhaps there are Tollers that exist outside of this subset even today, but um, what point are you trying to make be invoking them? Are you going to breed your Toller to one of those Tollers? If not, then it’s a moot point.
Also, that any breed existed for a short or long time before entering into the “pure” blood scheme of the kennel clubs is also rather a moot point. We live today on the other side of that bottle neck. Past diversity and health does not benefit modern dogs that lack those qualities which were thrown away.
As for the Toller persecution complex that is so repeatedly invoked by Claire Wade, Danika Bannasch, and numerous breeders who comment on the blogs which are looking at Tollers in an objective manner, get over it! I’m not out to persecute Tollers “because Toller breeders are so open” or anything of the sort.
I made real arguments in this essay and others, why don’t you deal with them directly instead of pretending that there’s some global conspiracy to pick on Tollers?
I write about numerous breeds. Tollers aren’t special, they are simply another example of a larger investigation I’ve taken up on this blog. Feel free to stick around and learn something or at least have your beliefs tested by some challenging questions.
You are out to get the Tollers!
Let me explain something that might make some sense:
Not a single person writing on this thread created the Nova Scotia duck-tolling retriever. However,when this breed was brought into the closed registry system, it didn’t have that many founders.
And to make matters worse, because this breed developed as a landrace in which conformation is variable, only a few ‘nice-looking’ male dogs were chosen to breed from. In a closed registry system, that drives down genetic diversity rapidly.
When you have low diversity, you wind up with autoimmune problems.
BTW, anyone who has objectively looked at toller longevity shows them to be the shortest lived of all the retrievers– as an average or median.
Just because someone might have 15 or 16 year old tollers doesn’t mean that the statistics are wrong. It’s just that those dogs are outliers. One should not be making generalizations on outliers– bad cases make bad law.
Retrieverman recently posted..African wild dogs drive leopard into a tree
I’m curious about a statement like “…shows them to be the shortest lived of all the retrievers– as an average or median.” Since you don’t cite any facts or research to bear this out, where did you get this? Surely it’s not from the Kennel Club study on longevity which included only what, 9 dogs?
In fact, in the study of longevity I made just last fall, three things standout.
1. Out of 461 dogs, the mean age at death is about 10.5 years (10.42 to be exact).
2. The dogs that are alive now will extend that age significantly. When we look at the whelping date vs. todate, many are in the 14 and 15 year range.
3. There are gross differences between the longevity between countries that would bear further research into healthcare and diet. In Sweden, 73 dogs had an age of 8.39 while in Netherlands, 28 had a life expectancy of 11.61. In Canada, the reported 208 dogs had a life expectance of 11.04 years.
Also, why do you hide behind “retrieverman”? Anyone who is going to make the kind of assertions you do ought to back them up with a real name. Otherwise, the assertions become just blather.
Eric, see the Maki study mentioned above found this, as have all other studies on toller longevity.
BTW, you can take your tone and shove up your ass.
Retrieverman recently posted..Should the lundehund be in the closed registry system?
Hey, Eric, you fucking moron. Check this out:
http://users.pullman.com/lostriver/breeddata.htm#Sporting Retriever
I have a name. Come to my blog if you want to start shit, okay?
Retrieverman recently posted..Should the lundehund be in the closed registry system?
Nope. Those are all invalid variables.
This breed is founded from a tiny founding population, and there isn’t enough of a founder effect as they have spread to different countries.
Please try again, if you’re going to quote one study, I’ll quote four.
So fuck off.
Retrieverman recently posted..Should the lundehund be in the closed registry system?
More: http://pedigreedogsexposed.blogspot.com/2011/09/tollers-take-two.html
Retrieverman recently posted..Should the lundehund be in the closed registry system?
Rman I hadn’t known PDE was also a blog, not just a documentary. I have you to thank for introducing me, and for alerting me to the Toller’s problems. I am devestated as I would have considered one of these guys for myself. Seems like a scary deal now.
I guess it’s pointless to ask if there are ANY lines bred only for work and with zero regard for the ring. Seems there are too few founders for any of that sort of thing, though at one time they MUST have been good if someone really had tried to create a hunting dog. I don’t know enough about the dogs that went into the making of the first so-named “Tollers.”
Tollers are actually derive from the collie family. They aren’t closely related to the other retrievers, which all derive from the smaller water dog from Newfoundland.
The primary breeder of tollers was HAP Smith, who lived in NS, and the dogs were common enough for a time. But I don’t think there are many unregistered dogs in NS to be crossed in.
So they are going to have to do outcrosses to keep the gene pool sustainable.
The dogs they should use should be in the collie family. Golden retrievers and tollers are similar only through artificial convergent evolution.
Retrieverman recently posted..Identify this golden dog
The collie type ancestor was likely like this Irish collie cross: http://www.lostandfound.ie/pics/976192_rua2-1.jpg
Retrieverman recently posted..Identify this golden dog
That dog doesn’t look collie-ish at all to me. Looks more like a spaniel.
I have seen stock-dogs that look like that.
http://www.border-wars.com/2009/01/queen-victorias-border-collies.html
There are drop-eared border collies, and there are red border collies that aren’t liver.
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The more one learns about old or rare collies, the more one realizes how varied they appear. Again, after all, they were bred for work, not appearance.
They certainly look different enough from other retrievers. I even always told folks “Think of a red border collie” when describing a Toller. I’m a collie fan, but by that I mean working collies or working breeds derived ( ACDs, etc), so it figures I would have been drawn to Tollers.
Okay so, outcross.
I would likely agree with this if you looked at JP Morgan’s collies of 1904 where you see on far right a pattern that resemblems Tweed described in history books of collies. The merle gene is now known to have modifers. It is suspected to find other modifers of phenotype expression. Two have been identified harlequin mutation, and due to complex nature of brindle coming from the K locus as a dominant gene. The American Collie was bred for the work of the American Farmer this specimen of J.P.Morgan collies
expresses the likely phenotype of Tweed in my opinion. It could be highly likely the Spaniel out cross was used. After all Farmers of that area would need an all arounder.
Kathy, you have to share your collie art and library titles with me so I can mooch off of all your hard work of research and collecting! ;D
Seriously, it sounds fantastic!
UrbanCollie: One of the best books about collie history is “The Collie in America”. Great pictures! It tells how the early fanciers set about deliberately making the old collie “better” by making it bigger, leaner, more flashy, and more showy.
There are some good pics of early black-and-tan Champions and some of the faddish solid white collies (Jefferson Kennels) as well as the personalities of the people that were influential in the early days of the breed.
I have no idea which picture Kathy is talking about, but it’s probably in that book. Author is Gayle Kaye – it’s really hard to find, but worth it! I’d loan you my copy 🙂
The Finnish Database reports on 232 deaths in the Duck Toller. The average age at death was 7 years and 11 months. There is more info as to causes if you follow this link.
http://jalostus.kennelliitto.fi/frmTerveystilastot.aspx?R=312
Kary
You think that this guy is gonna listen?
Heck no!
He’s bought into the cult.
He might even be a high priest.
Retrieverman recently posted..Should the lundehund be in the closed registry system?
He’s sure as hell not going to listen if you call him a “fucking moron.” Take YOUR tone and shove it up your ass. There are more effective ways to get your point across and taken seriously.
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I don’t care.
This guy isn’t worth my time.
Retrieverman recently posted..Should the lundehund be in the closed registry system?
If you read what he’s written on PDE, it doesn’t matter what I say.
Plus, he made it personal.
You make it personal.
I’ll make it personal.
Retrieverman recently posted..Should the lundehund be in the closed registry system?
Relax.
He just asked who you were. Keep in mind, a lot of breeders are functionally computer illiterate. If you took the time to explain by clicking on the URL in your name, he can find your blog and your real name along with location, then the matters would be resolved quickly.
Not everyone knows how to deal with backtrackng aliases.
“1. Out of 461 dogs, the mean age at death is about 10.5 years (10.42 to be exact).”
I am curious as to what criteria you used to select these dogs for your study?
Kary
BTW, that’s shorter than any studies I’ve seen on golden and Labrador retrievers, except one study the GRCA did, which had them at 10.2 years.
Retrieverman recently posted..Should the lundehund be in the closed registry system?
Here’s a better study on genetic diversity, which had a far larger n than toller denialist above will ignore:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20646119
Retrieverman recently posted..Should the lundehund be in the closed registry system?
http://www.border-wars.com/wp-content/uploads/uexc_attach/genetic_diversity_tollers_mki.pdf full text
Retrieverman recently posted..Should the lundehund be in the closed registry system?
Kary-
I maintain a public database of 27,000+ NSDTR. Unfortunately, the contributors are much better at contributing the whelping date than the date of death. The 461 dogs cited were 100% of the dogs with a date of death. Based upon the study I did, folks are more diligent about completing this portion of the record. However, it’s been less than 6 months so I’ve not repeated the study.
Did this answer your question?
No matter how you cut it– 6 or 10 years.
That’s a pathetic lifespan for a dog of that size. The GRCA study on goldens had them with a similar lifespan, but all the ones done in other countries have them in the 12 year range. A golden retriever is a much larger dog than a toller and should have a shorter lifepsan.
The dogs need outcrossed. Their population structure is crap. Total crap.
I still stand my assertion that they have the shortest lifespan on the aggregate of all the retrievers.
And in the aggregate, if we accept yours as the gold standard, then they are only beaten by curlies and flat-coats, one of which is a cancer factory, and the other is almost as rare as hen’s teeth.
BTW, your study is not the 12-14 years I see on toller propaganda sites.
So I’d say most toller people are in utter denial of the problems that this bred faces.
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I’d like to see you or Chris get the expose out on the Flat Coated Retrievers. I have heard they are loaded with cancer. Are they second to Boxers on that one? Sure seems like it!
I have, but it’s in so many posts that I can do links to them here.
The big thing to remember is that the difference between golden and flat-coated retrievers is negligible. A recent genome-wide study found that flat-coats actually fit as a subset of golden retriever, which will never be outcrossed to goldens.
The story goes that goldens were a color variety of flat-coats, which is kind of true, but the modern flat-coat is just a paltry form of what it once was. Because goldens were more common, they actually have most of the old flat-coated retriever’s diversity, while the dog that is called the flat-coated retriever today is derived from individuals from lines that nearly went extinct during the Interwar Period. From about 1880 until the First World War, everyone who had a retriever had a flat-coat, and they dominated the first retriever trials. But it was after the First World War that the modern Labrador retriever started to become popular as a trial dog.
Flat-coats have a higher incidence of cancers that hit at early ages than goldens. That’s the big problem. The average lifespan is somewhere in the 8 to 9 year range, where goldens are over 10 years in the GRCA study, to 12-13 years in every other study I’ve seen. The GRCA study included only the dogs belonging to members, which means lots of very tightly bred dogs were in the survey. I think the 12-13 year lifespan is a bit more reasonable because the pet line dogs are quite a bit more genetically diverse.
Goldens and flat-coats share many individual ancestors. Black flat-coats were registered as goldens even after that breed split off in the 1911-1912 time period. Goldens were also bred to flat-coats.
And one of the historical legacies of that close relationship is that the flat-coat has never been able to purge itself of yellow individuals that still pop up in litters, even though they are disqualified according to the standard.
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http://retrieverman.wordpress.com/2011/10/18/new-genome-wide-study-sheds-light-on-dog-breed-relationships/
Retrieverman recently posted..Tibetan dholes kill a goat
>Curlies and flat-coats, one of which is a cancer factory, and the other is almost as rare as hen’s teeth.
Nice if you had identified which is which in this statement. All population studies should be a % which mitigates the number factor.
Retrieverman you do get very aggressive when your opinion isn’t taken verbatim. Please consider all viewpoints are important.
I get aggressive when people are condescending fuckwads.
Yes. So these are the reported deaths of dogs on your database. This is similar to the Finish database death report statistics then.
This brings up more questions. Are full litters – including the pet owned Tollers – on your database or just the ones bred forward on (usually owned by breeders then). I ask because my experience is that the majority of litter members never make it on to a database of anykind.
Kary
The history of the database comes into play just a bit. When we started, dogs were entered singly from historical records. Many dogs seemed to be part of a litter but not every one. We used several databases to get to the starting point. The Finnish study used the My Skold file as did we. Further, we added the studbook from the KC, the Canadian KC, and the NSDTRC(USA), which served as the US registry pre-2003. Now the breeders (world-wide)are entering whole litters plus people with historical records filling in some gaps from earlier dogs.
Of course, this doesn’t help with longevity reports yet because the so many of the dogs are still alive. We just had a virtual “birthday party” for a dog that turned 17(admittedly probably an outlier). Also, we did just have a report of a dog that had died at age 14. All I am really suggesting is that it is too early to draw conclusions on Toller longevity because the data just isn’t there yet. The dogs that are alive today will probably set new longevity figures.
BTW, it is a public database. Join and look around… http://www.toller-l.org/tollerdata
Eric
Actually, insurance companies are more reliable than pedigree databases because they poll the vets. Not everyone who goes to the vets will inform the breed club about those details out of fear of not being able to buy a puppy again (pet-buyers), or out of having their kennel`s reputation ruined (breeders).
Insurance companies consider Tollers a high-risk breed because of the treatments they require over the course of their life.
Even with my dog`s breed, Swedish Vallhunds insurance companies dropped it from Class 1 to Class 2, because vets are reporting higher rate of disorders than what is made known to the individual breed clubs.
So, who you trust more, the insurance companies who have no interest in protecting the image of a breed? Or the vastly under-reported nature of a pedigree database where people can choose to opt out?
Dave recently posted..Swedish Feist
And a big study on dog breeds insured by a Swedish firm found that golden retrievers were unusually healthy compared to the general population:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1624818/
Tollers didn’t stand out in the study because they weren’t very common, but the idea that tollers are some how magical dogs that live a very long time and are healthier than other retrievers is simply not true.
The GRCA health survey that people often quote included only club members, which means lots of linebred dogs. Most golden retrievers aren’t in tightly linebred populations, though they do have these issues when you look at particular performance and show types.
Retrieverman recently posted..Chat room
Just because our breed isn’t the worst off doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do anything until it is.
Why are you concerned with a study that has nothing to do with Border Collies? Just wondering. Seems kind of a curious topic for “A Border Collie Manifesto”.
I have over 60 articles in my “Health and Genetics” category. I cover all breeds in a manner that is relevant to all breeds. Many breeds share the same problematic alleles, many more share analogous problematic alleles, and many of the topics I cover are applicable across the board for dogs. This study actually documents 32 registered dog breeds, including Border Collies and many other breeds I write about. The authors of this study also publish other multi-breed studies so their particular biases and the shoddy work done here are relevant to dogdom at large.
It doesn’t have to be breed-specific to be interesting, informative, or relevant. I’m not particularly interested in border collies, but the breeding & genetics articles are general interest.
Indeed if it were not for the Shetland Sheepdog and Border Collies studies who have won by default for gene markers more than once. I had to use a Shetland Sheepdog photo of a true mahogney sable just the other day to answer a personal e-mail. This is why a few of us collie people are here on this Border Collie blog site. We are lacking Collie Breed Club education into the new breeding tools to improve our collie. Kathy
The collie fancier interested in how to protect and breed collies has to seek educated breeders of our family of Herding dogs. Educated and well presented information based on scientific study findings.
Postualating on that next discovery the research will reveal in current studies.
Communication with others that are keeping in step with the new world around us. All this great new technology that gives hope and promise to human and animal suffering. Kathy
Eric, see the Maki study mentioned above found this, as have all other studies on toller longevity.
BTW, you can take your tone and shove it up your ass.
Have you seen this? http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1090023312005254
>Words can so easily carry different meanings. Since the original screening of the BBC TV documentary ‘Pedigree Dogs Exposed’ in 2008, some of the words written by two of us (FN and CW [Frank Nicholas and Claire Wade]) have been perceived as implying that inbreeding ‘does not matter’, i.e. the mating of close relatives is not harmful. […] we wish to provide in particular an unambiguous statement that FN and CW have always been, and are still now, in complete agreement with PB and DS [Patrick Bateson and David Sargan](and every geneticist of whom we are aware) that matings of dogs (indeed all domestic animals) should be arranged so as to minimise the level of inbreeding in the offspring.
No, dodo, a copy hasn’t crossed my desk yet. Care to e-mail it to me, it should make for interesting reading!
I want a copy, too, if you get one. I ain’t paying $30 for it, tho.
“Words can so easily carry different meanings.”
Disingenuous. This is the internet, people, if someone gets you wrong, you can easily elucidate your meaning and spread it to the masses.
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Copy-and-paste of the article. http://pastebin.com/RXBn3JXM
The original article by Bateson and Sargan. http://pastebin.com/7ufN29Vi