Breeding for disaster
By Gina Spadafori
July 5, 2007
When it comes to many dog and cat breeds, nothing succeeds like excess. We take a concept — size, nose length, coat length, wrinkles — and just keep pushing and pushing until the poor animals who result are unhealthy and in need of surgical repair, if they can be fixed at all. Or, on the mild side, completely incapable of doing the work they were bred for. Some quick examples:
- Pugs, bulldogs, Persian cats and more with “doll faces” that are so unhealthy the animals have difficulty breathing, can’t hardly exercise and are top candidates for heat stroke. Dr. Patty Khuly has written about this, and the satirical newspaper The Onion poked fun at it.
- Toy breeds that are being bred smaller and smaller and smaller until the poor little dogs can barely survive. If I hear one more person tell me she don’t want a dog any bigger than three pounds, I may lose it. I don’t care if these purse puppies are fashionable — this sort of breeding isn’t healthy. (Here’s my modest proposal, an alternative for someone who has to have a little creature in her fashionable bag.)
Some of these extremes are perpetuated by breeding for a “look” for the show world, but most are simply being bred for the dough by puppy mills and casual ”backyard breeders.” As extremes of anything become faddish, people will pay top dollar and these profit-driven puppy-pushers know it.
Whatever responsibility they take for these dogs — and to you – ends the second the commercial transaction does. (Again, it’s back to the choice — if you must buy a dog rather than adopt one from a rescue or shelter — between responsible, reputable breeders vs. puppy mills and backyard breeders. (Guess which two categories are unaffected by California’s proposed spay-neuter bill? Hint: It isn’t the reputable folks. Check out the Lassie Get Help blog for information on the most recent — July 3 — amendments to this piece of legislative dog vomit.)
This morning’s rant was triggered by this piece about Shar Peis, a breed that has gone from being the rarest in the world (in the 1970s) to a popular pet bred for an excess of those trademark wrinkles. Except that more and more wrinkles mean the dogs are prone to skin problems (basically, rot in the folds) and painful eye problems that need to be corrected by surgery:
Ladner veterinarian Dr. Kevin Harris is working with TnT Shar Pei Rescue to fix a serious problem genetic to shar pei dogs.
Shar peis are known for their wrinkly skin, particularly around their head. All those wrinkles may make the dog look cute, but they set them up for health problems down the road.
There’s so much skin on their face and their forehead that it rolls their eye lids in and they can’t see,” Harris said. “They actually have damaged corneas.
They’re in pain and without quite an extensive surgery, they are going to spend a lifetime in agony with irritated, sore eyes until they go blind.”
The skin from the dogs’ eyelids rubs on the cornea, causing pain, vision problems and, ultimately, blindness.
[...]
Harris said the majority of shar peis he sees at the Trenant Park Pet Clinic need some sort of eyelid or forehead surgery to correct these problems. [...] The health problems can affect the dog’s personality. When Lola was brought into the vet’s office she didn’t like to be approached by people and would snap at other dogs.
She literally was in so much pain and she couldn’t see very well so she reacted every time somebody came near her,” Harris said.
We did the surgery, and two weeks later when she came back she could actually see and her personality was tremendously different. She was friendly and wagging her tail and she didn’t react any more.”
Amen, sister.
Comment by Katherine — July 5, 2007 @ 7:58 am
P.S. I like the modest proposal; I like rats. I also can’t have them; my cats do know how to hunt and what to do with what they catch.
Comment by Katherine — July 5, 2007 @ 8:02 am
This is beyond pathetic. What is wrong with people today? I adopted a little Persian kitten in January from a wonderful rescue organization in Alabama. The “breeder” let these Persians and Himalayans breed indiscriminately (over 200) and live in deplorable conditions until the humane society got involved. Hopefully the breeder is in jail now. Jezebelle is only 5 lbs (full grown) with the flat flace and severe digestive problems. Others have the same problems. I imagine it will be a struggle to keep her going but she is loving and feisty. Guess people will stoop to anything to make a buck.
Comment by Carol — July 5, 2007 @ 8:05 am
Well yes sometimes it’s anything to make a buck, but sometimes it almost like an anorexic. By that I mean the breeder can’t see when enough is enough. “More” whatever won’t “improve” the breed. You see little dogs getting littler, big dogs getting bigger, GSD getting more and more sloped, corgis and doxies getting longer and lower… And it’s a crying shame. My vet calls Shar peis “the doggy dermatalagist’s dream dog”…
Comment by Schnauzer — July 5, 2007 @ 8:39 am
Lets not forget the so called Designer dogs being bred by puppy mills. Cock-a-poos, labra-doodles, pug jack russel crosses, pug beagle crosses, peke-a-poos and the list goes on. The puppy mills in the finger lakes prosper because people pay from $500 to $1500. for a mixed breed dog.The parents of these mix suffer horribly , a live time of females bred every heat. If people want to buy from a puppy mill ask to see where the dogs are kept, if they won’t show you don’t buy. If they do show you were you bothered by what you saw?The groups that need to be more regulated are pet stores and puppy mills.
Comment by thomas — July 5, 2007 @ 9:21 am
One intact bitch and dog permit per household for the purpose of allowing one litter to be bred as soon as they are physically capable (equivalent to middle-schoolers having babies) (I’m paraphrasing from the amendment)… Oh God, shoot me now! Let’s encourage backyard breeders! And discourage the breeders that keep a few intact from a litter (who might be co-owned and live in a different household), waiting for maybe one of them to mature into something worthy of being bred on (i.e. healthy, intelligent, good temperament) to the appropriate dog or bitch which is likely several states away or across the country. No, we don’t need to be encouraging that. And forget about letting them get mature enough for health clearances.
I couldn’t read the bill any further than those provisions. I was too depressed.
Comment by Deanna — July 5, 2007 @ 9:49 am
And we had a reader on another thread refer to that inclusion as a “common sense” addition.
There is SO much these people just don’t get . . . . .
Comment by The OTHER Pat — July 5, 2007 @ 9:58 am
What’s next? Genetically engineered Shar-pei’s from Monsanto?
Comment by shibadiva — July 6, 2007 @ 4:23 am
… I once saw a Persian cat, that was breathtakingly beautiful …. a lion’s mane, totally royal, longer hair, but the rest was *cat* with a face and wonderful cat-eyes.
That was at a biologist’s station - he concentrated on ‘back-breeding’, mostly cats: Siamese with a body (slender, but a body) who didn’t look like the cross between a bat and a greyhound, Persians that looked like cats, only just more beautiful, and other wonderful animals.
Too bad that so many people see their salvation in breeding animals to a standard that is questionable, to say the least, without seeing the animal as a whole.
In my very unpopular, very politically incorrect opinion, I presume that some of those people do substitution ‘beauty’: “I myself may look like something the cat dragged in, but my cats win beauty prizes all over the place….”
What’s the proper English expression for that? Pathetic?
Comment by MaKo — July 6, 2007 @ 11:20 am
Terrierman has many good posts on this topic, here are two:
http://terriermandotcom.blogsp.....rufts.html
http://terriermandotcom.blogsp.....nking.html
Comment by expat — July 6, 2007 @ 11:37 am
Teerierman has a large number of good posts on this topic, here is one link that shows several of the relevant posts:
http://terriermandotcom.blogsp.....2Bbreeding
Comment by expat — July 6, 2007 @ 11:52 am