We had a miniature poodle back in the 1960s, when I was a child. It was a friendly dog, as I recall, and loved to play.
Thing is, that my Dad had a friend who was a breeder and trainer of black Labradors for hunting ducks (Dad and his friend loved duck hunting), and Dad thus trained our poodle the same way he trained black Labs. Our poodle would sit, stay, and come on a whistle; and while she never retrieved a duck, she was quite happy to take off into the lake to retrieve a thrown stick.
The original poodle was a water retriever akin to the Curly Coated Retriever, the Portuguese Water Dog, and the Irish Water Spaniel.
I don’t miss every breed that I don’t see much any more. There were some miniature dogs in my childhood that were nasty yippy nippy horrors. I haven’t seen one of those in a while, and I’m fine with that. Give me a golden or a German shepherd or a Portuguese water dog or a pit-bull-mix over those any day.
In addition to groups like the AKC funding research aimed at understanding and eliminating serious genetic defects in dog breeds, there have been breeding guidelines set up to minimize problems.
For instance, the British Veterinary Association and a dog group beginning in 2006 promulgated a grading system for Chiari-like malformations and syringomyelia in Cavalier King Charles spaniels. It recommended that dogs with scores that didn’t meet criteria not be bred. As of 2016, only a tiny number of breeders (less than 1%) were reportedly utilizing the grading system.
Cavaliers’ neurologic problems were only identified after the AKC recognized the breed in 1996. I wouldn’t necessarily connect the dots there, but added popularity didn’t help matters.
When my now-wife and I first started dating, her family had a Bouvier des Flandres – I’d never heard of the breed before, and when I first met that dog, I thought she was a giant schnauzer.
Ah, so Dalmatians are from that particular natian?
It does kinda look like one, though the cropped tail and beard (which I see is what the name translates to) certainly lend to that. Same reason a lot of people thought my dogs were scotties and when we’d cut their beards off (either because they were matted or we wanted a break from cleaning it every time they’d get into something) it was hard to tell what they were.
Unrelated side note: A few years back I had to deliver some food over to a local dog agility place. I went in assuming they just had some random thing going on and wanted food out for people, when I got there, however, I saw license plates from all over the country. I walked into this warehouse style building to find they were having some type of (apparently national) breed specific dog show. There must have been over 50 Irish Wolfhounds in there. Holy schniekies that was a lot of enormous dogs in one space. Good thing I like dogs. Plus, being a dog show, they were better behaved then most humans.
No, the AKC does not set the breed standards - the national breed parent club of each breed sets the standard for their breeds, and are responsible for training judges in what the standards mean. In the case of my breeds, those parent clubs are the German Shorthaired Pointer Club of America and the American Pointer Club. The parent clubs of every breed accepted by AKC are members of the AKC themselves, but they are not the AKC, and the AKC is not responsible for setting the standards. The parent clubs are also the ones who hand down guidance on matters of breeding and genetic health, but that’s all it can be, guidance. If a breeder chooses not to have their dog tested for hip dysplasia (for one example) before they breed, or choose to ignore the results of such testing and breed the dog anyhow, that’s no one’s fault but the breeder. Just as in politics, if the extremes are what wins, then you will have unscrupulous breeders breeding for the extremes. If the extremes are what’s winning, then it’s the fault and responsibility of the breed parent club, not the AKC.
Many times, breeders will separate their litters based on whether they’re more suited to competition, or a pet home with someone who cares not for competition. I know I did when I was breeding, and I’d also match prospective buyers with the temperaments I saw in the pups - had more than one buyer walk away because I wouldn’t sell them the pup they wanted.
And there is a difference between inbreeding and linebreeding. Too much to go into here, but linebreeding (i.e., breeding offspring of common ancestors together) helps fix desirable traits and weed out undesirable traits. I’ve had dogs that, even as recently as their grandparents, had the same dogs or bitches on both sides of their pedigrees.
Hybrid vigor is a term that’s bandied about as a solid reason for cross-breeding, but you’re just as likely to have the same issues crop up, especially if you’re not doing genetic testing of your breeding stock, which most folks who cross-breed don’t do. On top of it, you’re just as likely to end up with offspring that carry the worst traits of each breed than ones that carry only the best traits of each breed.
They have neurologic (and other extremely serious) problems because they are very inbred, and no one culled for any of these problems until they were completely embedded in the breed if indeed they do now. There is no practical way to get rid of recessive traits which are carried by almost all of a closed gene pool. Test away, there is nothing left to breed to that is not a carrier. There’s a long list of AKC breeds in the same boat, although I would say few approach the dire straits of the poor Cavalier.
This statement is not as set in stone as you might like to believe. Especially amongst the sporting dog breeds in the AKC, there are many, many DCs, dogs that have won both as CH in the show ring, and FC in the field, whether they be spaniels, retrievers, pointers. One should look to the Brittanys as an example of a breed, and a parent club, pushing the fact that a proper dog, by their standard, will be both. Form follows function. I agree, there are too many folks who only value one or the other, and I rail against them as much as anyone. But whether it’s a breeder that’s breeding strictly for show (or field, for that matter), or Billy Joe Jim Bob deciding to breed because “heck, I have a male and a female”, my point is that it is not the AKC at fault. Are there problems within the sport? Sure, just like any other. Many of us do our best to fight ignorance from within, and are sometimes successful. And if you think dog breeding is not a business, you are just terribly, terribly mistaken.
Not dog related, but in March we got two Maine Coon kittens (and I broke rules and didn’t post pictures). Its the first time I’ve ever gone for purebred with papers animals - all my other animals have been rescues of the “American Domestic We Don’t Really Know” breed.
We got genetic testing for both their parents showing they did not have the genes (on either chromosome) for the three common defects in Maine Coons. (They are Pollies - but that isn’t REALLY a defect unless you are going to show them).
(We got a boy and a girl - the boy is ten pounds going on five months. The girl is also big for a five month kitten, but not the absolute monster her brother is)
In genetic science there is no difference at all.
You do not have “the same problems crop up” unless both parents have or are carriers of that problem. Which is likely if the problem is common to many breeds, like hip dysplasia, and extremely unlikely if it is a problem unique to one breed, like Scottie Cramp, Springer Rage, the Cavalier’s cardiac and brain issues, and many many more.
These are false and feeble excuses for not opening studbooks, I have heard all of them forever, and all of them are hogwash. Breeding a Schnauzer and a Labrador together will get an F-1 litter that is a wild assortment – they are quite unrelated. Breeding two very similar breeds together, you won’t. If you cross a working Australian Shepherd and its sister breed, the English Shepherd, you will get … an old- fashioned British farm collie, which is essentially what both of them are. The best traits of both of them are the same.
Hybrid vigor is a real thing. It is caused, in my understanding, by at least two factors. One is what I will call macro heterozygosity, where there are many fewer deleterious homozygous gene pairs in the offspring. Another factor is the increase of heterozygosity within the cells themselves. I don’t pretend to know how this works, but that is what a geneticist told me.
One of the most dispiriting things about dog breeding is that it is entirely presided over by total amateurs with no scientific training, not even the ag school education that many farmers have. Everything they do is based on what other total amateurs (called “breed mentors”) tell them is true. They try so hard to do the right thing! But they do not have the background or any of the other requirements necessary, and are dragged down by the hidebound, antiquated, and yet totally controlling bureaucracy that is the AKC.
I used to know a lot of dog breeders, and I don’t think any of them made any money at it, quite the reverse. Tax write off maybe. The people who make any profit in the dog world are trainers, boarding facilities, handlers, vets, groomers. Not breeders, unless you are talking about puppy mills.
And don’t bring up the damn Brittany! It is the only breed like that in the AKC! There are a smattering of other gun dogs who get those dual championships on a regular basis – and all of them are small population breeds within the AKC, as most hunters seem to register with the UKC if at all, but generally people stay in one sport, either showing or working, usually until the lines diverge completely, like Labradors have.
I have given up railing against people only interested in breeding for one form of competition, because I have come to despise all competition without exception. But that is an entirely different unpopular opinion I have.
The AKC is a ‘club of clubs’. They keep the registry and they administer the shows and many minor programs. The specific breed club writes the standard and can amend it. However, many if not most breeds have changed appearance, sometimes enormously so, over the years, without changing the standard at all. That is because the standard is almost always a subjective loose physical description, with few measurable parameters except height and weight.
I will point out once again but only once, that “unscrupulous breeders” and “breeders who care to win at all in the sport of their choice” are interchangeable categories. If you are a “scrupulous” breeder, and say you enter your homebred German Shepherd which moves like a normal dog and not a cripple, in an AKC show, you will be dead last in any contest. Your choice is to breed cripples like everyone else, or find a new hobby.
There is nothing to keep the AKC from deciding that submitting mandated health test results are a requirement for registration. There are plenty of other domestic animal registries which do this and considerably more. They just … don’t want to. I guess it’s about freedom or some such shite.
Or, to put it more simply, a large number of deleterious traits are the result of a recessive gene. You only express a recessive trait if both your relevant genes code for that trait. If either gene codes for the dominant trait, that is what you will express.
So a lot of problems will only affect the puppy if both it’s parents carry a gene for that problem. And if the parents are unrelated, they are less likely to both carry the same deleterious recessive gene.
(But some problems, like hip dysplasia, are so widespread that it’s hard to avoid just by hybridizing. And others are the results of a combination of genes, so are more complicated.)
Which are those? We had a mutt Maine Coon. Very affectionate, lived to 18 years.
Yes.
Technically speaking, it isn’t hybridizing when dogs of different breeds mate, because they are the very same species. A dog mated to a coyote or a wolf would be a hybrid. The term makes it seem somehow more scientific than if the results were called crossbreds, like they were for centuries.
Hybrid vigor, as a generalized term, does seem to apply though. It is most visible when the offspring of separate inbred populations are mated, and we certainly have those.
Its four apparently (cut and paste from testing site, which is why there are prices):
| HCM in Maine Coon | HCM in Maine Coon cats - dectetion of Meurs mutation (A31P) | 45.00 $ |
|---|---|---|
| PK deficiency | for more cat breeds | 42.00 $ |
| PKD | Polycystic kidney disease - persian and exotic Persian-outcrossed breeds are in the highest risk of feline PKD due to frequent inbreeding. | 32.00 $ |
| SMA | Spinal muscular atrophy in Maine Coon cats | 40.00 $ |
Thank you. Yes, Maine coons, if not inbred, are a wonderful breed.
Except they kill vacuum cleaners. Even Consumer reports uses MC hair to test vacuum cleaners.