They’ve otherwise apparently done a good job of purging the evidence of their registrations modeling the Dow. I’ve copied this page to my hard drive.

There are not nearly as many collies registered as I’d thought. But still more than ten times as many as Tervs.

I had another thought about working titles, which is the need to control for titles earned by ILP dogs. Not only are they not part of the breeding population, they may not be the breed they are listed as. The PDF of titles I found did not indicate or tally ILP’d competitors. I have no idea if there were significant numbers of them in any of the breeds listed.

I’m going to try some tricks with the Wayback Machine and see if I find more.

I am opposed to it’s use as a first alternative in any event BUT WOULD COMPROMISE if it were used in such a way that it is clearly demonstrated that natural covers, natural whelping and fertility were not questions in the lineage of the donor animal.

It is not being used that way currently and breeds are suffering as a result.

As Heather states: “It takes not very many generations of assisted reproduction before that assistance becomes mandatory. This *can be* independent of any obvious structural deformities that interfere with normal reproduction. That way lies madness.”

BTW collies are second only to border collies in the number of herding titles awarded. I guess you can quibble about the value of herding in different venues but the titles are being worked for and earned by folks in the collie breed.

I could find stats only for the year 2004 for AKC herding titles. ASCA and AHBA do not publish titles by breed (that I could find), and USBCHA does not award titles.

It’s hard to figure out how many individual dogs titled, because there are so many possible titles (NINETEEN, not counting instinct testing and something called “pre-trial.”)

With just the basic HSAS (herding started sheep), 103 border collies titled, 27 Shelties, 23 Tervs, 21 ACDs, 19 collies, 16 GSDs, 14 Aussies. The proportions stay roughly similar through all the many possible titles, but the HSAS is the most common title.

I was going to compare those numbers to the raw numbers of registrations by breed for the same year or a year just previous. But ACK has not only ceased publishing the actual numbers of registrations (to hide the swan dive in their registrations) — it has gone through and purged the lists of raw numbers from prior years from its website! I couldn’t find anything elsewhere on the web with actual numbers from any year.

If LauraS, or anyone else, has preserved any raw number lists that AKC published in the past and can send them to me, I’ll happily publish them on my blog so that future googlers will have better luck than I did. (No, a list of names and numbers is not copyrightable.)

So, in 04, collies were not the #2 breed to title in “herding” with the AKC. However, the 2003 list does show that collies were more popular than border collies (the AKC version), ACDs, and Tervs — all of which had more HSAS titles than collies. Per the collie club website, the number of started (sheep) titles in 2007 was 17 on the A and B course combined, so that actually went down a little. Not surprisingly (to me) the two kennel names that appear over and over in the club’s list of dogs who competed in herding trials specialize in smooth collies.

In any event — herding titles in the low double-digits in a population of many tens of thousands does not make for evidence of widespread breeding to preserve working abilities. Ten times the number of collies were entered in the *first day* of the 2007 conformation national specialty than earned herding titles all year in 2004

I applaud the owners and breeders who are making an effort to select for ability, and organizations such as the AWCA that support those efforts. But they are a tiny proportion. (If ACK hadn’t started obsessively hiding their facts and figures from the light, I could compute HOW tiny.)

Clearly, the incentive structure to demonstrate a collie’s soundness and usefulness is nowhere near competitive with the incentive structure that rewards a “correct head” (that’s this one: http://www.collieclubofamerica.....study.html) with ribbons and trophies, and disparages and penalizes this UGLY head: http://www.collieclubofamerica.....pherd.html

The book (and article) is mostly about Storm Cat, who until his retirement in 2008 at the age of 25 was the top Thoroughbred stud, at $500,000 a date.

AI is a powerful tool, especially in rare breeds in which a particularly desirable mate may be on another continent. Or to bank the genetics of a particularly fine male for strategic later use. Or to bank the genetics of a promising male during his most fertile years, for use later if he proves to be especially good and long-lived, and his early natural litters are great dogs.

It is also, used in another way, a way to try to cheat Nature and perpetuate weakness. The weakness is not limited to poor reproduction; the offspring that are conceived and manage to survive are frequently unwell in other ways.

I said “No AI if the bitch hasn’t conceived, and the male hasn’t sired, naturally.”

IOW, no AI for a first litter. If the bitch will not stand or cannot conceive naturally, if the male is sexually incompetent or has such lazy or unpopulous sperm that he can’t engender puppies naturally — they need to get out of the gene pool.

It takes not very many generations of assisted reproduction before that assistance becomes mandatory. This *can be* independent of any obvious structural deformities that interfere with normal reproduction. That way lies madness.

I know a bitch line in a moderately structured hunting breed that is now on its fourth generation of technological reproduction. Each generation, the interventions get one step more extreme. The breeder is adamant that she get a litter out of each daughter she keeps. I don’t think she’s going to manage it one more time. At least in this case it’s contained and self-limiting.

I didn’t originate this idea. Before the AKC takeover, the Leonberger club had this exact rule — no AI for first litters. I imagine that many other European-system clubs do. This rule is most onerous in rare breeds — and it is most important when the gene pool is small. Just another difficulty of conservation breeding.

Oh, and I’d also, personally, spay a bitch who wasn’t a good mother, who got mastitis twice (maybe once), who had a very difficult delivery, or for any other reason had a hard time raising puppies. I’d do it because it’s unkind to make a bitch who suffers because of motherhood do it again. Bonus: selection for good mothers.

Just saying that bringing AI into the blame game mix may not be valuable, in terms of priority.”

I prefaced what I wrote with the Jockey Club with “their own set of problems” like Popular Sire Syndrome, pedigree name recognition and breeding for speed as opposed to soundness. Breeding for length of stride as opposed to heart/lung capacity, so on and so forth. Fertility is less of a problem for them than it is for many other breeds or species, and they are none too eager to give that up.

I also suggested that the collection of worthy sires would be prudent for future generations if the selection was based on measurable contributions like health and performance attributes as opposed to having just been a popular stud dog or stallion.

I’m not arguing to dump AI, I am arguing to preserve it as a tool not to be used because we can, but as a resource for things we may lose.

I do argue that fertility is usually one of the first thing to go, lack of maternal instinct in bitches, lack of libido in dogs.

As has already been pointed out, if it can’t be done naturally, I ask, should it be done at all?

Just because the technology is available, I don’t agree that it should be used as freely as it currently is.

Before AI was possible, there was a popular German Shepherd Dog sire who was a producer of several influential champions. He could not be bred in the traditional sense. Girls just didn’t turn him on.

He had to be manipulated manually for each and every breeding, all outside ties and on the occasion of pregnancy, had a low ratio of surviving puppies. This was before hormone leutenizing and ovulation timing.

To this day, over 30 years later, his influence can still be felt in the breed. The paternal line of these dogs also suffer from low libido, low fertility and poor survivorship of neonates. But still they persist in perpetuating this line of dogs.

Shepherds are not the only breed with such stories.

My point is this: all else being equal, is this something that we should be perpetuating?