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‘Ugly is ugly, even if it’s family’
By Gina Spadafori
April 3, 2008
The expression, introduced here yesterday by the Terrierman, is now one of my favorites. And he dropped it in here to remind me that while what he thinks of as “ribbon-chasing” breeders are certainly not tormenting animals like puppy-millers, and usually not ignorantly breeding dogs with health defects and temperament issues like puppy-millers and clueless, careless backyard breeders, they aren’t always doing the family of dogs any favors.
I’ll dish on myelf. As you know, I have rescued dogs (Pip and Drew) and purpose-bred dogs (Heather, Woody and McKenzie). The purpose-bred dogs are Flat-Coated Retrievers, a breed with a more than passing resemblance in looks and behavior to the Golden Retriever. (Probably because goldens are a color mutation from flat-coats, although the breeds have long gone their own way since.)
Anyway, a lot of flat-coats die of cancer, and they often do so at heart-breakingly young ages.
I’m working on these books, the “Ultimate Pet-Lover” series, and part of the book involves going to the one top expert in a given field and asking that person to give us the best information. For cancer, we tapped Gregory K. Ogilvie, DVM, a board-certified veterinary internist with a sub-specialty in oncology. Aside from his expertise, he is a wonderfully compassionate man, who once talked to Christie for more than an hour about her dog Raven’s osteosarcoma.
I edited Dr. O’s bit for the book (really, just tightening and cleaning it up a tiny bit) and sent it back to him for final sign-off. And in my e-mail, I mentioned I have flat-coats. He shot back a response:
Flatcoats? Yikes. Great dogs … wonderful personalities. Genes need a bit of fixing!
Um, yeah. But we’re working on it. And to me, that’s the difference. Reputable, ethical breeders don’t put their heads in the sand when it comes to inheritable diseases. They acknowledge them, they test for them, and they do everything they can to breed away from them — as well as fund studies to help find the cure, as we do in flat-coats.
That, on top of raising every puppy with an eye towards optimum socialization and early learning. That, on top of always being there to answer every question a puppy-buyer ever has. That, on top of always being ready, willing and able to take back a dog they’ve bred, for any reason.
OK, so what percentage of all breeders would I put in my own category of “ethical, reputable, responsible”? Mmmmmmm …. I know a lot of them. But I also grit my teeth listening to friends and readers tell me about people they got puppies from who aren’t even close to being anyone who’d pass my screening test.
Best interest of all dogs … best interest of the breed (health, temperament and working ability) … best interest of the individual dogs: All these things have to be in the reputable, ethical breeder’s mind at all times.
So what percentage of people breeding dogs fit the bill to my mind? Less then 10 percent, easily. Less than 5 percent, probably. Less than 1 percent? Not outside the realm of possibility.
Tip of the hat to Luisa for the pointer and to Save a Pit Bull, Save the World for this:
I drive about 15 miles to and from work every day, and right now, just from the signs by the sides of the road, I could buy myself an AKC Chihuahua, an AKC Golden Retriever, and AKC Chocolate Lab, an AKC Boxer, or an AKC Bernese Mountain Dog. All of them are farm-bred. Puppy farming is a huge problem in Central Pennsylvania, and it’s not just the Amish who are cashing in. I can’t tell you how many clients we see with their new puppies who assure us that, even though the pup came off a farm, raised in a barn and completely unsocialized, sold the moment they reach seven weeks if at all possible, it’s okay because the breeders weren’t Amish. And, see, he’s got papers! Papers mean quality!
Or not.
AKC papers mean nothing. They are not an assurance of health, of good temperament, of quality stock, of quality breeding practices. We have even had clients assure us that their pups don’t need vaccines because they have AKC papers. Uh huh. Papers will protect them from an ugly death from parvo. I’m sure.
But still the myth persists, and it’s frustrating.
[...]
I’m so jaded, so frustrated. People won’t get shelter dogs because they don’t want dogs with baggage and health problems, so they buy puppies of basically unknown background, puppies who are no better bred than my shelter hounds, and line the pockets of those who are breeding to make a few bucks. I don’t understand why, if you’re going to spend the money, you don’t do your homework and hook up with a breeder who does it right, a breeder who does something with their dogs beyond just encouraging them to reproduce, a breeder who does at least the very basic health testing appropriate for the breed, a breeder with a goal that goes beyond making money or nice pets.
There are lots and lots of perfectly nice pets sitting in the shelter right now, dying in the shelter right now, because their owners didn’t want them anymore. Those dogs, purebreds and mutts alike, didn’t come from good breeders. Because if they had, they wouldn’t be in the shelter. They’d be back with their breeders. That’s part of the responsibility of being a good breeder.
But hey, this is America, and if I want to breed my dysplastic, weak-tempered bitch, there’s nobody who is going to stop me! She’s got papers!
Of course, it’s not just AKC papers. Nowadays there are paper-mills to match the puppy-mills, places that put the apparent stamp of “good pup-keeping” on anything and everything.
People jump all over me for not telling insisting that a shelter or rescue dog is the only choice. Others jump all over me for not defending all breeders — yes, even puppy mills — because of “slippery slope” arguments that if high-volume U.S.D.A. puppy factories are put out of business, then the reputable breeders will be next.
Not all shelter dogs are wonderful. And puppy-millers should rot in hell. And I’m not going to say otherwise to fit your political agenda.
See, the biggest reason people jump all over me is because I don’t see things in black-and-white (or red and blue, for that matter). Everything is much more complicated and nuanced that the sound-bite peddlers will have you believe.
Pictured: A 4-week-old flat-coated retriever puppy. This officially makes me a breeder for the first time in my life, since I co-own his father, Ch. Zebulon’s Windy Tigertee JH a/k/a Woody. In this case, family isn’t so ugly after all. And yes, I am fully responsible for this youngster and his siblings, for their entire lives.
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Okay - maybe I’m picking a nit here, but isn’t the “breeder” officially the owner of the b!tch?
Nevertheless, I’m proud of you for stepping up to the plate. If all stud owners (even CO-owners!) felt their responsibility as keenly as the owners of the dams, it would be one more step towards making sure NO puppy ever born is allowed to fall between the cracks.
And as for your “stats” on the percentage of breeders who are really doing it right? I’d be hard-pressed to argue with you, based on what I’ve seen in the breeds with which I have been associated. But that doesn’t mean we give up. It means we keep talking about what it takes to be a Responsible Breeder even more persistentlyand publicly, because the more commonly accepted these ideas become, the more they will create expectations in the minds of the puppy-buying public. And then breeders will find themselves in very uncomfortable positions indeed if they can’t answer the hard questions their puppy buyers will ask.
Comment by The OTHER Pat — April 3, 2008 @ 9:44 am
In Flat-Coat world, the “breeder” designation is assigned to both bitch owner and stud dog owner. It’s one of the things — the other thing being peer disapproval — that keeps studs from being overused.
:-)
Comment by Deanna — April 3, 2008 @ 10:01 am
The thing that is so insidious about cancer in Flat-Coats that makes me as an owner feel so helpless is that even with the best bred dog, a dog whose pedigree is a who’s who of long-lived dogs (many, many dogs that lived into double-digits and even into their teens) and whose own parents made it to double-digits…. can have cancer pop up at a heartbreaking young age. The heartbreak multiplies when it happens to the best dog one can imagine sharing one’s life with.
But I can’t claim ignorance. We knew that cancer at a young age was a possibility. Breeders do their best to stack the odds in favor of longevity. It’s the risk we take for sharing our lives with these dogs. I feel blessed that our guy had symptoms before any obvious metastases and a primary tumor site that was treatable. Knock on wood, he’s staring down a 7th birthday that we feared he would never see.
Comment by Deanna — April 3, 2008 @ 10:15 am
When I owned a stud dog, I had a stud contract that gave me right of approval on the placement of the puppies and the bitch owner agreed I had to be on the contact information for the puppy buyers if they couldn’t keep a puppy for whatever reason in the future. In essence, my stud agreement was that, in exchange for what I think was a $400 stud fee if at least two live puppies were born, I would take lifetime responsibility for the puppies if their owners or the bitch’s owner wouldn’t or couldn’t.
That’s how seriously I took this issue.
However, the stud dog owner is not the breeder. I’m not in the flat coat world, but I’ve never heard of the stud owner being called the breeder, and when I was breeding deerhounds, if the owner of the stud had referred to herself as my puppies’ breeder, I’d have been outraged.
Comment by Christie Keith — April 3, 2008 @ 11:27 am
I’m in my own little world, haha but I do have a gaggle of Flatcoats. The breeder is the bitch owner as far as I’m concerned. I too put into my stud contract that puppy buyers will be given my contact information as a backup to the breeder in case anything goes wrong.
Comment by slt — April 3, 2008 @ 12:19 pm
The owner of the mom is the breeder.
But like the owner of the mom of this litter (who as owner of a stud dog some 15 years ago stepped up to help re-home a dog who ended up living with me) I consider that I am also responsible for the puppies my half-a-dog brings into this world. So although I am not the breeder per se, I will take responsibility as if I am.
Because … it takes two to tango.
Comment by Gina Spadafori — April 3, 2008 @ 12:58 pm
haha - your “half-a-dog”. I love it.
Comment by slt — April 3, 2008 @ 1:37 pm
It seems like the term ‘breeder’ is jealously guarded by the bitch’s side of the chapel. But it seems like it would be good if their was some term to suggest the dog’s side take up some paternal responsibility—if only to prevent over dependence on a few gigilo studs ;)
Comment by emily — April 3, 2008 @ 1:55 pm
From the FCRSA website on the rescue page:
“Breeder - is the owner or owners of the bitch at the time of whelping AND the stud dog owner or owners at the time of the breeding.”
I’m not saying that this is the ultimate authority on who does or doesn’t get the designation “breeder” — to me it’s just a question semantics. True, this is coming from the perspective of rescue which is concerned with making sure that whatever pups are put on the ground will be taken back by the people who put them there.
I think all of dogdome would be better served if stud dog owners thought of themselves as breeders.
Comment by Deanna — April 4, 2008 @ 7:12 am
I think that some of this arose out of the question “Who owns the puppies?” And the answer - traditionally - has been, “The owner of the dam - i.e. the breeder - owns the puppies”.
So the owner of the dam gets to make decisions on such things as which puppies are prospects to be “grown out” v.s. which ones get placed immediately in pet homes, how homes for ALL puppies are screened, other ownership issues having to do with care, feeding, training, etc. If the stud dog owner was also legal “owner” of all the puppies from a breeding, I could see where things could get a lot more complicated in a hurry. So it simplifies things saying the owner of the dam also owns the puppies.
Nevertheless - as Gina said - it DOES take “two to tango”, and I really like the idea of the stud dog owner accepting the responsibility for those little lives right along with the owner of the dam!
Comment by The OTHER Pat — April 4, 2008 @ 7:19 am
Okay Gina, I always read Patrick first. And in this case, you’ve missed his point.
Flat-coats are the perfect example of a breed that has been destroyed (in this case, health-wise) by a closed registry. Flat-coats are the poster-pup for the effects of “responsible” pure breeding. Sorry, I’ve never heard of a Flat-coat puppymill — I’m sure there are one or two that club breeders feel qualify, but you can’t drop this at their door.
The cancer rates in flatcoats are due to the constriction of the breed gene pool — too much homozygosity. This comes from decades of too-narrow selection, it likely comes from bottleneck events in the breed’s history, and most of all, it comes from the “quaint” Victorian closed registry system that prevents the infusion of new genes into the population. This is the system that the ACK and KC have sworn to perpetuate.
Why aren’t flat-coat breeders studying population genetics and carefully crossing in dogs of other breeds to infuse heterozygosity into their gene pool? Why aren’t you beating the drums for an open registry, or waving goodbye to the AKC as the WHPG folks have done?
I can guarantee you, more health testing, and increasingly narrow selection criteria, cannot fix this problem. It will only continue to get worse with time.
A good dog — and every flatcoat I’ve known has been a very good dog — is worth having for a long time. Every dog deserves to be born with healthy genes to the extent that we can hedge those odds for him.
Longevity studies of dogs with low coefficients of inbreeding v. those with high COIs (within the same breed) show *shocking* differences in longevity between the least inbred and the most inbred groups.
When founder effect, bottlenecks, and constrictive selection conspire within a closed registry to shrink a population’s gene pool, all its members are inbred, no matter what the five or ten-generation pedigree says. And contrary to Victorian dog-fancy lore, homozygosity is unhealthy in and of itself — it doesn’t just “concentrate what’s there.”
The most “responsible” thing a flat-coat breeder can do today is go looking for the right Labrador to breed in while telling the ACK, the breed club, and every other busybody to get bent.
Comment by H. Houlahan — April 4, 2008 @ 7:28 am
You say “stud dog owner”, I say “breeder”. As long as it’s not in a contract or we’re not sitting around talking about who’s the bitch owner, is there really a difference?
Let’s face it, the avg. pet owner doesn’t parse words or argue over semantics the way so many have been quick to do so here over a simple little word: “breeder”. It’s pretty obvious that the bitch doesn’t get pregnant just because the owner made a wish that came true. I think that this whole thing is just silly from a big picture POV.
So yeah, the contract will designate “bitch” and “stud dog” and when we talk amongst ourselves, we talk about “breeders” which means the owner of the bitch who produces the pups, but when talking to the world, anyone who contributes to the production of pups is a breeder.
(And, yes, I suspected I’d be stepping in it with my “Flat-Coat world” statement. There are obviously differences of opinion even in FCW.)
:-)
Comment by Deanna — April 4, 2008 @ 7:36 am
“The most ‘responsible’ thing a flat-coat breeder can do today is go looking for the right Labrador to breed in while telling the ACK, the breed club, and every other busybody to get bent.”
And potentially breed in all of the problems of Labradors? (Cancer is common in that breed among other problems FCR’s currently don’t experience in great numbers.) No thanks!
Comment by Deanna — April 4, 2008 @ 7:42 am
How about Flat-Coats from other countries? (Do they share the high cancer risk, etc.?)
Comment by The OTHER Pat — April 4, 2008 @ 8:09 am
Presuming that a health issue is all genetic is just that a presumption.
We know some cancer is genetic but we are not always sure if another outside trigger influences the turning on of the disease.
For example you would swear that bone cancer is genetic in Rotties and some other really big breeds right? But recently a retrospective study of Rotties shows an amazing amount of bone cancer in dogs who were altered before the growth plates fully closed. So is this a genetic issue or is it a problem with removing hormones from the dogs’ bodies?
Another interesting thing about cancer in our own species is the ‘clusters’ of diseases of a certain type depending on where you live. The question is what influences the cluster - the fact that a certain type of people live in the cluster area (such as an ethnic group or related families) or is it an exposure to something locally not found elsewhere?
As responsible breeders we may be taking responsibility for things that are not under our control.
As for those irresponsible breeders saying show folks are ruining breeds - if that is the case why are there more health issues with dogs purchased through the commercial area than otherwise?
Comment by Nancy — April 4, 2008 @ 8:47 am
“Presuming that a health issue is all genetic is just that a presumption.
We know some cancer is genetic but we are not always sure if another outside trigger influences the turning on of the disease.”
If a breed, such as Flatcoats, has a high rate of early cancers compared to similar breeds, such as Labradors, then the cause it is almost certainly genetic. Alternatively, we have to believe that, on average, owners of Flatcoats expose their dogs to significantly higher levels of carcinogens or other environmental triggers for cancer than do owners of Labradors. Sorry, I’m not buying that.
It’s not necessarily a particular gene that is at fault. It’s well known that an animal’s immune system works best when the Major Histocompatibility Complex (MHC) is highly heterogeneous. It’s possible that some breeds have high levels of early cancer simply due to excessive homozygosity of the MHC. This is a cause of inbreeding depression.
Reduced longevity due to inbreeding depression is a very real problem in many dog breeds. The two main causes are a small founder base, as well as ongoing overly narrow selection for a uniform physical “type”. Both of these causes are largely a result of selection in the conformation show ring. Working dog handlers do not breed for a narrow physical type, and besides, working dog breeding typically has low levels of homozygosity.
Comment by LauraS — April 4, 2008 @ 9:35 am
In response to H.Houlalan’s sensible and science-based post that Flatcoat breeders consider outcrossing to Labradors, Deanna answered:
And potentially breed in all of the problems of Labradors? (Cancer is common in that breed among other problems FCR’s currently don’t experience in great numbers.) No thanks!
I fear for the future of dogs if we cannot get past these basic misconceptions. The knowledge of population genetics among the vast majority of dog breeders is shockingly poor. Sadly, our dogs are suffering as a result.
Comment by LauraS — April 4, 2008 @ 9:44 am
As to the “breeder” nomenclature, all I can do is repeat: If the owner of the stud dog called herself or himself the “breeder” of my puppies I’d be furious. I agree that stud owners should have equal obligations to the lives of the puppies sired by their studs.
I would use a stud dog owned by someone who I wouldn’t sell a puppy to. If their dogs are healthy and possess good temperaments and the traits I want, I want to be able to do that without creating a complicated arrangement wherein they have some control over my puppies.
If I had what I’d call a breeding partner and I was using her dog or his dog, then I might feel differently.
Comment by Christie Keith — April 4, 2008 @ 10:01 am
“If a breed, such as Flatcoats, has a high rate of early cancers compared to similar breeds, such as Labradors, then the cause it is almost certainly genetic.”
The assumption here is that the incidence is high in FCR’s compared to their cousin breeds. I disagree with that assumption. I think that FCR breeders and owners simply don’t sweep it under the rug like other retriever breeds. What is of high incidence in Flat-Coats is three particular rare cancers. (One of which my boy has.) And studies are underway to try to identify genetic markers for those diseases.
Besides, I wouldn’t trade one day of life with my dog who was diagnosed with cancer with a dog from any other breed. And it wouldn’t/didn’t stop me from getting another. That might be hard for some to understand. My dog didn’t contribute to the gene pool and for this I am glad. None of his 9 siblings have been afflicted by any health issues and as I mentioned, both of his parents were long-lived, so I still think it was a good breeding decision.
Comment by Deanna — April 4, 2008 @ 11:01 am
Wow Christie, you and I sure are wired differently. I save my fury for something like puppy millers. I certainly wouldn’t get furious if someone uses a word differently than I would, particularly if their intentions were well-meaning.
Comment by Deanna — April 4, 2008 @ 11:07 am
But Deanna, calling someone a “breeder” DOES have ramifications - at least insofar as AKC ownership is concerned. AKC considers the breeder (i.e. the owner of the dam) to also be the owner of the puppies. And the owner is the one who gets to make the decisions about those puppies’ lives.
A stud owner has no *technical* ownership/control of life decisions for those puppies. I think it’s great when a stud owner accepts responsibility for the little lives that the sire had an equal part in creating, but legally, that owner doesn’t get to make DECISIONS about those puppies unless some sort of a co-ownership contract has been entered into between owner of sire and owner of dam.
That’s where the distinctions become more than mere word-games.
Comment by The OTHER Pat — April 4, 2008 @ 11:37 am
Laura, I’m not a breeder (or stud dog owner for that matter >ggg
Comment by Deanna — April 4, 2008 @ 11:40 am
I’m not making any assumptions. Read the wealth of health information assembled by the Flatcoat breed clubs and other sources. They are the ones saying that Flatcoats have high incidences of early cancers. I’m not a Flatcoat owner, but this information was easy for me to find.
For the bottom line, let’s look at the median longevity of Flatcoats relative to cousin breeds.
In one study published in the medical journal Veterinary Record, “Longevity of British breeds of dog and its relationship with sex, size, cardiovascular variables and disease”, median longevities were:
Labrador retriever: 12.6 yr
Golden retriever: 12.0 yr
Flatcoat retriever: 9.5 yr
This shows reduced longevity for Flatcoats versus cousin breeds, but the sample size for Flatcoats was small.
From a 1997 Flatcoat Health Survey that had a much bigger sample size, there’s this:
Median life spans of [Flatcoat] male and female dogs were the same (8.0 yrs).
http://users.pullman.com/lostriver/citations.htm
Flatcoats apparently have significantly worse median longevity compared to cousin breeds. An 8 yr median lifespan is dreadful. That’s as bad as giant breeds (generally speaking, longevity decreases with breed size) and it’s as bad as genetically-impoverished breeds like Berners.
Flatcoats should not be dying so young. The cause is almost certainly genetic. We don’t need to find a specific gene to know this. It may have nothing to do with a specific gene. Again, inbreeding depression isn’t necessarily due to a specific gene.
Comment by LauraS — April 4, 2008 @ 11:41 am
(OK, trying again, without grins inside of brackets…. Dang, and I worked really hard on the wording!)
Laura, I don’t breed and I don’t own a stud dog, at least not yet, but I do believe in supporting breeding decisions I agree with by my animal acquisitions. I want it all — temperament, working ability, trainability, health and yes, looks — by which I mean structure appropriate for the work the dog is to perform and enough breed type so that it looks like a good representative of its breed. Which is why I’m a Flat-Coat owner. Yeah, I play the AKC game (hubby plays the UKC game). That 4 judges agreed that my show dog has enough type to be declared a champion is of little consequence to me — I have fun showing him. And the performance titles he obtains merely represent the fun we have together. Nothing more.
I’m not ignorant of the information that is available on the topic of population genetics. I just disagree with H. Houlahan’s comments and the seemingly random selection of “the right Lab.” I find his comments to be neither well-reasoned (why a Lab?) nor scientific (cite the science, please). Is the assumption is that Labs aren’t as susceptible to cancer? Or other heritable issues? I so, false.
Every time the issue of inheritable conditions pops up, someone will chime in and claim that outcrossing is the answer. OK, I’ll play along. Nature loves diversity and all that, but outcross to what?
All the UK developed retriever breeds came from pretty much the same stock and pretty much experienced the same bottle necks so are those truly an outcross? Maybe one of the other sporting breeds? Maybe not even a purebred at all. But that’s assuming that mixes don’t have heritable conditions — then why do I see mixes with cancer at the specialty clinic? Following a different line of reasoning, at what point would the resulting animals stop having the qualities that we collectively call “Flat-Coat”?
Until we know what causes cancer, there is no easy answer.
Comment by Deanna — April 4, 2008 @ 12:19 pm
Laura, I don’t dispute the Flat-Coat longevity stats you quote — I am a little surprised by those you quote for Labs and Goldens since I’m not seeing the same. Could it be that the source of the information is flawed?
I’m just saying that the answer isn’t as easy as “cross to the right Lab”. One could just as easily say, “breed to the right Flat-Coat.” Finding the right one of either breed (or within any breed) is difficult.
Comment by Deanna — April 4, 2008 @ 12:25 pm
“Besides, I wouldn’t trade one day of life with my dog who was diagnosed with cancer with a dog from any other breed. And it wouldn’t/didn’t stop me from getting another. That might be hard for some to understand.”
Nobody is suggesting that your give up your breed. Outcrossing doesn’t mean one’s gives up one’s breed. On the contrary, it’s the time-proven method of reinvigorating and maintaining breed populations.
Mankind has been breeding dogs for over 10,000 years. During nearly all of that time, separate populations of dogs were developed and maintained for various purposes. Most of these dog populations were used to do demanding work of some kind.
These populations were breeds. But people did not totally wall these breeds off other breeds. When they needed to bolster traits in their breed, they judiciously crossed them to other breeds. This, along with rigorous selection quite unlike the norm today, caused breeds to remain relatively healthy and functional. Rather than ruining breeds, cross breeding was an essential part of maintaining breeds.
In many cases, dog owners could not afford to lose the essence of their breed, because in those harsh times, their very lives depended on their dogs. If cross breeding caused breeds to lose their essential traits, it wouldn’t have been done. And yet it was.
The notion of absolutely walled-off breed populations came about during the Victorian era. The idea was that populations would “breed true” if they were isolated and uncontaminated by the genetics from other breeds. This unscientific nonsense was also applied to human populations, and gave rise to Eugenics and eventually the Nazis.
First, the Victorian notion of “breeding true” by simply isolating breed populations is false. Dog breeds lose their functional abilities rather quickly without rigorous ongoing selection. The very essence of breeds is lost. Breeds end up with watered-down fragments of the abilities they once had, fragments that The Fancy frequently mistakes for dogs that still have their working abilities fully intact. The evidence of this is all around us, in the form of formerly useful working breeds and breed populations that are now largely useless for demanding breed-appropriate work. The Fancy often denies what’s been lost, because they don’t understand how to assess breed working abilities.
Second, by not crossing breed populations, the ability to reinvigorate breed populations through heterosis was lost. This might not have been so bad, at least not so quickly, if The Fancy hadn’t combined this foolishness with narrow founder bases and ongoing selection for a cookie cutter “type” that overused a small number of dogs. Genetic diversity in breed populations plummeted, and inbreeding depression rose its ugly head.
So here we are today, with dozens of breed populations that are suffering inbreeding depression because “modern” scientifically-discredited dog breeding practices damaged them.
Comment by LauraS — April 4, 2008 @ 12:25 pm
I’m not ignorant of the information that is available on the topic of population genetics. I just disagree with H. Houlahan’s comments and the seemingly random selection of “the right Lab.” I find his comments to be neither well-reasoned (why a Lab?) nor scientific (cite the science, please). Is the assumption is that Labs aren’t as susceptible to cancer? Or other heritable issues? I so, false.
Nonsense. Nobody is talking about “seemingly random selection”.
Why a Lab? Because they are a relatively healthy, longer lived, genetically-diverse cousin breed. There are enough breeders of Labs for work and field trials that the breed hasn’t been ruined by The Fancy.
As far as the science, I suggest you start with Professor John Armstrong’s “Canine Diversity” site. There is a wealth of information there to get you started.
http://canine-genetics.com/
Want more? A fascinating area is to read up on inbreeding depression and COI impacts on livestock breeds. Livestock breeds have scientifically studied to a much greater degree than have dogs. Increased COI correlates with decreased production in dairy cattle, beef cattle, swine, sheep, goats, egg chickens, broiler chickens, etc. The low COI levels that yield optimal production in livestock are, interestingly, similar to those that working dog breeders use… and are a lot lower than show dog breeders commonly use. Google is your friend. There’s tons out there.
Comment by LauraS — April 4, 2008 @ 12:45 pm
“All the UK developed retriever breeds came from pretty much the same stock and pretty much experienced the same bottle necks so are those truly an outcross?
Yes they are, since Labs are relatively long lived while Flatcoats are not, this is evidence that Labs are not suffering from inbreeding depression.
The founder base is not the only thing that determines population genetic diversity. On-going selection for the narrow “type” demanded in the show ring causes a further loss of population genetic diversity, as well as increases in COIs and associated inbreeding depression. Stick with the outcrosses from performance-bred populations, as they are more diverse.
Comment by LauraS — April 4, 2008 @ 1:15 pm
“Laura, I don’t dispute the Flat-Coat longevity stats you quote — I am a little surprised by those you quote for Labs and Goldens since I’m not seeing the same. Could it be that the source of the information is flawed?”
I’m puzzled how a Flatcoat fancier is unaware of information about Flatcoats and cousin breeds that I, a fan of working herding breeds, can locate via Google in a matter of minutes.
The weighted average of several longevity studies for Flatcoats and Labradors found for median longevity:
Labradors: 12.04 yr
Flatcoats: 9.02 yr
http://users.pullman.com/lostriver/breeddata.htm
Comment by LauraS — April 4, 2008 @ 1:21 pm
Wow Christie, you and I sure are wired differently. I save my fury for something like puppy millers.
Is there a shortage of fury I don’t know about? I appear to have exactly as much as I need for all the things that piss me off. ;)
I certainly wouldn’t get furious if someone uses a word differently than I would, particularly if their intentions were well-meaning.
If I have bred a litter of puppies, it’s MINE. The bitch is mine. The decision to breed her is mine. The responsibility for the puppies is mine. Loving them and holding them and kissing them, mine. Finding their homes, mine. ALL MINE. I’m the one who selected that stud dog, based on needs and wishes that are MINE.
For the stud owner to try to take ownership of a decision process over which they had zero power other than saying “yes” or “no” about their dog’s sperm means they are stepping on my relationship with my dogs, my beliefs about breed improvement and preservation.
You think words don’t have power? They do. My life is words. I care about them. They matter.
Comment by Christie Keith — April 4, 2008 @ 1:25 pm
Well, non-breeder Deanna admits that flatcoated retrievers die of cancer at shockingly young ages, but refuses to countenance the statistics from multiple sources that indicate that two closely-related breeds live, on average, several years longer.
Fine. Your anecdote is clearly more authoritative than anyone’s controlled study.
You could also cross to a totally unrelated breed, and very quickly get back the specific morphology that is so important to you. Dr. Cattanach’s bobtailed boxer experiment, with Pembroke corgi crossed in, is a good example of that, as is, to a lesser degree, the effort to produce Dalmatians with normal kidney function by incorporating pointer genetics.
So cross your flatcoats with fox terriers for all I care. With the right selection regimen, the cross will be undetectable to the eye or behaviorally in five generations, while the diversity in the MHC will continue to confer its benefits on the dogs’ health.
But know what? Doesn’t matter. Because if golden or Labrador retrievers were just as inbred and homozygous as flatcoats, judicious crossbreeding would still reinvigorate the gene pool, because the genes would be different. (Unless Deanna is claiming that the three retriever breeds are the same.) This is commonly done in the breeding of production livestock (especially swine, sheep and chickens). Separate inbred strains are maintained (sometimes with difficulty, as they lack normal vigor) to provide breeder stock, which are crossed for offspring that have superior vigor and production traits. In swine, the system of pure strain maintenance and multi-generation crosses is so complex that it would make Steve Hawking’s head swim.
Of course, production livestock are not a perfect model for dog breeding. Some of the goals that livestock breeders have are different from the goals that dog breeders have (and should have); however, I should hope that any dog breeder would be concerned about good health, fecundity, maternal competence, vigor, disease resistance, resilience, mental health. The science of their genetics is not different. All species benefit from heterosis and suffer from inbreeding depression.
Of course, this kind of breeding program requires that the breeder actually have a program — that she take the long view of what kind of dogs her children and grandchildren will get to enjoy, not what sort of puppy will turn the judge’s head next year. And in a working breed, where each dog requires a considerable investment of time and expertise, that program is going to be necessarily communal, the shared work of many breeders and non-breeding owners over time and space.
It just makes me sad, that someone would rather have a “pure” dog that dies young and in pain of a preventable genetic condition than a healthy, long-lived “impure” animal that looks and acts the same.
I’ve got a “purebred” bitch who I’ve long known was something like 1/16th a different breed. Like I care! Not only is she a fine example of the breed, she is the dog I want — not the pedigree I have always dreamed of. I am a fairly competent trainer, but I have never yet found the way to induce a pedigree to find a lost hunter, or even warm my feet.
Comment by H. Houlahan — April 4, 2008 @ 7:37 pm
Hi Laura S and H Houlahan -
Just a couple of quick comments. (Laura, you may remember me from CanGen.)
First, it does appear that there is significant interest in adding more genetic diversity to gene pools, and more recognition of the need for genetic diversity in breeds.
FYI, from what I understand, the Dal club is revisiting the Pointer cross project (for those who don’t know, the crosses were done to address stone forming - the dogs were admitted by AKC, but rejected by the breed club.) I understand the support for this was very high, a supermajority.
Two, remember the Basenji experience with reopening the AKC stud book in 1990 to unpedigreed, unregistered land race dogs. There is great interest in the community in adding more such dogs. I do think it needs to be presented in a way that people can understand, rather than just kind of throwing it out there.
Third, if you consider it, what breed to add is important. For the handful of truly primitive breeds, adding outside breeds can destroy unique gene stocks - they need to go back to the source (the landrace pool). For European breeds, it makes sense to add dogs that are simiilar in type, temperament, and history - basically going back to the source.
Fourth, I do think it’s important to realize that a lot of health issues are due to founder effect causing increased frequency of specific defects rather than depletion of MHC variability (which I totally agree is an issue.)
Properly used, DNA tests can go a LONG way to both preserve existing diversity and eliminating defects — for recessives, for example, “one parent tested clear” is enough to eliminate virtually all expression of the disease while having a modest effect on genetic variability. That’s the recommended approach with our Fanconi marker test.
It isn’t either/or - you need both - DNA markers for common or serious defects and adequate genetic diversity. If you add outside blood to a gene pool with a high frequency of a defect, you still have to select against it after the first generation. It helps cut gene frequency, but it doesn’t get you all the way there with major defects.
FWIW
Comment by Lisa — April 5, 2008 @ 5:18 am
In the past when Ive tried to raise some of these issues here Ive taken a lot of flak but it sounds like I have some allies now. Lets hear it for Luisa who put her finger on it. I like the comments of Houlahan too and many others.
As Ive said before, the AKC registry is little more than a vestige of the long scientifically discredited eugenics movement that itself came from European royalty trying to prove there inherent fitness to rule based on their decendance from other rulers (without any evidence that those rulers were effective, competent or even sane).
Those same royal families could not interbreed with the rest of the population so the very narrow gene pool lead to many of the same kind of inherited maladies that plague dogs subjected to the same selective breeding.
I think people often confuse the love of a breed with the love of individual dogs. I see my Scout as perhaps the most intelligent and communicative dog I have ever had and I wonder if this is a setter thing or if it is just Scout or if other breeds are as smart and as loving and cooperative. And I find myself falling into the logic trap that somehow all English Setters are like this and so maybe I only want English Setters when maybe there are other things I can experience with still other breeds.
The nuance that needs to be understood here is that if you are helping to perpetuate a breed that has severe problems with disease and birth defects it is at least necessary to question the ethics of perpetuating the breed. The very existance of these specialized breeds leads us to believe that we can somehow craft an animal as if it were a lump of clay. But at what cost? How many failed experiments and the resulting agony will it take to achieve the perfection of creation?
Would we love another animal less because it has a different color or a longer coat? A breed is not an indivudual but an individual can represent his breed. And when that representation results in sickness, pain and a shortened life who is responsible?
I suggest that when a “breed” exhibits such maladies the only truely ethical path is to set that breed on the side. I think the confusion comes when we confuse the individual with the breed and somehow think this means euthanizing living breathing creatures. Not at all. What needs to be euthanized is the notion that we can “fix” these problems when in fact we are the ones who broke it for entirely arbitrary and usually cosmetic reasons.
Comment by Bernard J. (Bernie) Starzewski — April 5, 2008 @ 6:24 am
I’ve sure enjoyed the discussion here, and let me tell you, I would LOVE LOVE LOVE it if the Flat-Coated Retriever club broke from the AKC (or got special permission from them), got some top geneticists to help, formed a selected pool of dogs and breeders and a PLAN and launched into a program to fix this cancer issue while maintaining the working ability and other assets of the breed.
No doubt in my mind: In a few generations we’d still have the dogs we love, but healthier.
My dogs are about as outcrossed as can be under the current system, a cross of Swedish and American lines. We know they do they can work — my friend who co-owns them is a top field trainer and the Lab people raise their eyebrows when they see her dogs work in the field (and they kick border collie fanny in agility, too) — and we know they look enough like flatcoats to become champions in the ring. These are the things we see now … the longevity department, we don’t know yet. Although McKenzie’s top-field Swedish dad was over 12 when he died, so we can hope.
Comment by Gina Spadafori — April 5, 2008 @ 7:05 am
The Flatcoats I’ve had have lived to ages 10-12 and while I appreciate that is well beyond the “typical” Flatcoat lifespan, I certainly don’t consider it long lived. I see no reason, beyond genetics, why they can’t live to be 18 or 20. When my dogs have died, all have been beautifully healthy with lush coats, good teeth, active bodies and minds, etc - except for the cancer which comes on suddenly and strongly. I end up having to put them to sleep when it seems they are no longer enjoying life because the thought that these ultra exuberant, crazy-happy dogs should suffer at the end of their lives because of cancer is just wrong to me. I hate having to put beautiful, healthy in seemingly all aspects *except for cancer* dogs to sleep. I care nothing about any club’s rules. I want an end to this unnecessary, genetically determined death so prevalent in the breed.
Comment by slt — April 5, 2008 @ 8:22 am
Gina, you make the absolutely crucial point, there has to be a PLAN, with communal buy-in, when it’s time to use an outcross to reinvigorate a gene pool. The plan includes both the choice of the cross and a selection process for folding the descendants back into the registered population. For a plan to work, those who understand science have to be constantly battling the unexamined prejudices masquerading as fact that constitute the great bulk of kennel-club-breeder “lore.” The worst of that dirty underwear is the conviction that “purity” is important, that pedigree defines a breed.
My heart really does break for those of you who love breeds that die too soon. As with everything in life, love chooses you, not the other way around. (With a good dog, is it ever not too soon?) Years ago my husband and I were set to buy a Berner as our first dog — until the breeder mentioned that she’d never had a dog live past age SIX! Another breed I admire is the Doberman — but they die too soon, I will not do it. I guess we dodged one bullet by finding out about longevity issues in these two breeds before love and loyalty got their grip on us. A thirteen or fourteen-year guaranteed heartbreak schedule is about all I can take.
If my breed club wouldn’t let me fix that in my breed, I’d gather together as many other like-minded people as possible and leave.
Comment by H. Houlahan — April 5, 2008 @ 10:30 am
Keep in mind that median longevity means that half the dogs in the study lived to be older than the median (and half lived fewer years). Median longevity is not the maximum age that any of these dogs achieved.
The breeds with the longest median longevities in the survey data appear to be small and toy companion breeds, as well as largely “unimproved” small breeds. These breeds have median longevities in the 14.0-14.6 year range.
http://users.pullman.com/lostriver/breeddata.htm
I don’t think it’s realistic for any dog breed to have a median longevity in the 18-20 year range. None appear to be even remotely close to that today. That would be like saying the median longevity for humans should be 100-115 years. A very small number of dogs live to be 18-20 yr just as a very small number of humans live to be 100-115 yr. In both cases, they are extreme outliers.
Standard Poodle longevity has been studied as a function of 10 generation Coefficient of Inbreeding (COI). The results are stark evidence of one of the impacts of inbreeding depression:
10 gen COI…. median longevity
10% and usually >20%. I suspect that most dog populations today probably have COIs sufficiently high to result in reduced longevity and other impacts of inbreeding depression. Closed studbook registries, small foundation populations, on-going overly narrow selection for a cookie cutter “type”, overuse of popular sires, and an overall ignorance of population genetics are the primary culprits.
In contrast, most of the dogs in high performance dog populations like the working line German Shepherd Dogs and ISDS Border Collies have 10 generation COIs below the cutoff of 6.25% that was found to correlate with inbreeding depression in SPs. Few (if any) of these working dog breeders are calculating COIs and targeting for low numbers. Instead, breeders of working line GSDs often observe problems when they line breed even within the first 3 generations; mostly, they say it exaggerates both the good and the bad character traits of the dog being linebred on. Working dog breeders cannot tolerate these degradations in breed character traits, while show dog breeders apparently can.
Show dog fanciers scoff at the wide range of appearances of working dog populations without realizing that this diversity in appearances is a refection of healthy genetic diversity of these populations. It’s a strength, not a weakness, of working dog populations. Those who think there is something wrong with this have their priorities seriously screwed up, and are unknowingly advocating for unhealthy selection.
Getting back to longevity…
Longevity decreases with increasing breed size. I doubt that a Lab/Golden/Flatcoat sized breed could achieve a median longevity of >14 years. But a median longevity of 12-14 years is obviously achievable, as Labs are already at 12 years. I’ll bet if the least inbred Labs were counted it would be like SPs, with median longevities closer to 14 yr. As a breed, Flatcoats are dying several years prematurely, on average.
Comment by LauraS — April 5, 2008 @ 12:51 pm
OK, I should have known that HTML doesn’t like the “less than” character. Because of that, the following got deleted from the middle of my last post.
Standard Poodle longevity has been studied as a function of 10 generation Coefficient of Inbreeding (COI). The results are stark evidence of one of the impacts of inbreeding depression:
10 gen COI…. median longevity
less than 6.25%.. 14.0 yr
6.25-12.5%……. 11.3 yr
12.5-25%……… 10.3 yr
Interestingly, the survivorship curve isn’t just shifted for the least inbred (less than 6.25% 10 gen COI) SPs. It has a totally different shape. All three groups have the same 16-18 yr maximum longevity for the outlier dogs, but the survivorship curves for the more inbred (higher COI) groups are significantly flattened due to most dogs dying prematurely.
http://www.canine-genetics.com/lifespan.html
(scroll about halfway down, under Effects of Inbreeding – Results)
The survivorship curve for the least inbred SPs is shaped more like the one for mixed breed dogs. http://www.canine-genetics.com/xblife.html
Whether it’s purebred Standard Poodles with 10 generation COIs less than 6.25% or mixed breed dogs, the dogs live longer because they don’t suffer from inbreeding depression. It’s heterosis, commonly called hybrid vigor.
Comment by LauraS — April 5, 2008 @ 1:00 pm
I completely support opening stud books in a planned way to improve health issues and genetic diversity while still preserving the traits that make our breeds themselves.
It’s one of the reasons (not the only one) I changed my mind about the ethics of creating new breeds (really creating new breeds, not just new-every-generation mixes-marketed-as-breeds like the cockapoo).
Comment by Christie Keith — April 5, 2008 @ 1:21 pm