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).

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.