Envy Winning Her Second Major

Chazmere You Envy Me winning her second major, owner-handled by Mary. You go, girl! Envy is very moderate.

Envy is the grizzle in the front.

Notice to Subscribers

WordPress spontaneously deleted a bunch of posts I had in the trash, waiting to be released and edited. So I had to re-upload my old Blogger posts, which have just appeared in your mailbox.

I am also having issues with the satellite internet.

Sorry, sorry, sorry.

Random Doggage: Mio

Getting fuzzy. Not real sure what that expression means. Probably “You know you’re getting up my nose, right?”

Oh yes, she’s evil.

Kali is Weird

Kali’s sire was kind of weird about treats. Some he’d take, some he’d take only after close inspection, and some he’d drop on the floor, smell, and walk away from. Didn’t matter what they were, and if he ate it one time it didn’t mean he’d eat it the next time. And of course, her mother Zora was the queen of picky. Kali and a couple of her siblings are the same way. You  never know what they’ll eat. (Unlike Enki, who will eat anything, including candied ginger, Tums, Smarties, and Altoids. I haven’t given him pickles but I bet he’d eat those, too.)

(Treats are distinguished from food by the fact that food is always the same, and is served in a crate. Treats, on the other hand, may be anything, and are served by hand, or in a human food receptacle.)

I have digestive disease and eat a special diet; right now I am unable eat solid food, and my current diet consists of gravy made from rice flour, mixed with a protein powder (made with honey for breakfast, beef broth for dinner. No, it’s not delicious.) I tried a new kind of protein powder today (hemp, it’s rather…grassy) and it didn’t mesh terribly well with rice flour gravy and honey, so I offered a spoonful to Kali, who was lucky (or perhaps unlucky) enough to be standing nearby. I expected her to turn her nose up at it and walk away.

But she ate it.

I offered her the pot to lick.

She licked it clean.

Kali is weird.

You still love me, right? Even though I’m weird?

Pass the Ammo

A while back I posted an article titled Unintended Consequences.

In it, I make it quite clear that I try not to judge other breeders:

“I really don’t care what other breeders do. Whatever blows your hair back, breed the dogs you like, have fun.”

I’ve had too many snap judgements flung at me in the past for me to do it to others. But (as Pee Wee says, everyone has a big but) there are consequences for our decisions to consider:

“When your breeding practices are questioned, you’d better have the answers. And they’d better be good answers, not “It’s traditional,” “We’ve always done it that way,” “It wouldn’t be pure,” “Our dogs are fine,” “We fund studies!” or “Why don’t you leave us alone and worry about puppy mills? We’re the responsible breeders!””

There is a bit of a fooferaw going on right now, due to Collies, of all things. You wouldn’t think that a Collie could be controversial (Lassie’s only sin was, after all, being a cross-dresser) but this involves the Collie that won the Breed at Westminster. This particular dog is the son of a double merle Collie. The double merle sire was not the result of an accidental breeding between two merles, he was produced on purpose, a planned litter. Under the rules of some kennel clubs, the progeny of such a breeding would not be registrable due to the risks associated with being homozygous merle. This is not so with the AKC.

A single copy of the merle gene can cause some problems on it’s own, but a double dose, a homozygous merle, can be a disaster. Such dogs can have varying degrees of vision and hearing loss, and deformities involving the eyes and ears.

Breeding a merle dog to a merle bitch produces a litter where each pup has a 25% chance of being defective. That’s one in four. Which is essentially the same chance of defect you get when you breed two carriers of a recessive disease together, like progressive retinal atrophy, juvenile cataracts, or hemolytic anemia.

I had a whole rant in mind about how the general public has a perception of what a responsible breeder does, and that perception is simple: responsible breeders don’t produce defective puppies on purpose. But I’ve been following this particular story across five or six different message boards to get the pet owner reaction, and I think these posts say it very well:

“Yea it’s not the PETA people you need to worry about, it’s the otherwise moderate public. However anyone feels personally about merle x merle breedings, I’m astonished that the perception of the public isn’t even on the radar as a concern. Besides, why should Joe or Jane Average believe the AKC when it advises only buying from breeders who health test so they don’t accidentallyproduce unhealthy puppies when there are breeders who are deliberately taking a chance with producing unhealthy puppies and ultimately rewarded for it? Self-policing organizations only work when its members actually self-police.”

Or this one:

“But then you have to understand that the credibility of the AKC may suffer in the general public’s eyes. I think it’s confusing to the uneducated to see articles like the one about intentional double merle breedings apparently being celebrated on one hand and AKC giving recommendations on picking a “good” breeder on the other hand. Given the former, why should the latter have any credibility? No wonder people go to BYBs.”

Or this one:

“…to take it further, if breeders don’t like how AR groups are broadcasting the message about breeders, perhaps they should police themselves a bit and stop giving the AR groups so much fodder.”

And this:

“I have heard both sides and every excuse in the book but frankly, I think it’s inexcusable and extremely selfish to knowingly do a merle x merle breeding.

even if only one pup is born deaf, or only two born blind out of the whole litter.. you would KNOWINGLY take that risk and deal with euthanizing or finding homes (and proper homes for deaf/blind dogs aren’t exactly a dime a dozen) for deaf/blind pups in the name of..what?.. titles?

Any breeder that isn’t at it’s root breeding for the HEALTH and perseverance of their breed (including creating healthy pups to further the breed) needs to really re-examine their priorities.”

How about this one?

“Personally I’m of the opinion there isn’t really a good reason to produce a 1/4 chance that a puppy really should be euthanized within a litter. If someone produced dogs where one out of four would be born with crippling HD, a fatal heart defect, or a serious case of epilepsy people would be howling. Why would a blind/deaf collie ever be acceptable within a breed bred for herding? After all the well being of every dog within a pedigree should matter. Vanity – is the only reason to produce such an animal on purpose – and foolishness would be the only reason to retain one as breeding stock.”

From an exhibitor (not sure whether this is a breeder or not):

“I agree. There is NOTHING that makes this okay. It’s sickening, and it’s just another nail in the coffin for those of us who are working our collective arses off to do right by involving ourselves with purebred dogs.

Those collie people are wreaking havoc on the reputations of ALL breeders and exhibitors. They’re stabbing us in the back, all so they can have “pretty” puppies for themselves. Selfish, selfish, selfish. And the dogs are the ones that suffer the most. It’s just… just awful.”

In the breeder’s (of the blind and deaf double merle) own words:

“Doing a merle-to-merle breeding should only be done by experienced and knowledgeable breeders, and only when a suitable non-merle with the desired quality is not available.”

Let’s go back to the definition of ‘responsible’ breeder: A responsible breeder doesn’t produce defective puppies on purpose. Responsible breeders health test to avoid producing pups with problems. With a one in four chance of defect, is it responsible to do a merle to merle breeding? Does ‘experience’ and ‘knowledge’ change the cast of the genetic dice so that ‘experienced and knowledgeable breeders’ don’t produce defective pups in a merle to merle breeding? I find this confusing. It’s not responsible to do a breeding between two carrier of a serious disease because of the risk of producing defective pups. It’s not responsible for bybs or puppy mills to do merle to merle breedings. But it’s okay for ‘experienced and knowledgeable breeders.’ This is supposed to make sense to the public? It doesn’t make sense to me.

(I won’t get into the ethics of breeding a dog that is so specific in it’s conformational deficiencies that only one other dog in the entire universe is the ‘perfect’ mate. That’s a whole other can of worms.)

I find it incredibly sad that the pet owning public has no problems understanding this, but the breeders, the ones being responsible for the litter, do not.

I find it even sadder that this incident will color the public perception of all breeders, including show breeders, in a negative way. Dog breeding is no longer seen as an honorable hobby. This type of breeding does not help that perception.

Ironically, I have been…chided…for pointing out that the breeding community needs to consider public perception. This blog is my attempt to change public perception about certain kinds of breeding. The large numbers of cross-breeders who are not ethical skew the perception of the public and cause ‘unethical cross-breeder’ to be the default. The same thing occurs when problems are common (or are perceived to be common) no matter what type of breeder we are talking about.

Let me reiterate:

“When your breeding practices are questioned, you’d better have the answers. And they’d better be good answers, not “It’s traditional,” “We’ve always done it that way,” “It wouldn’t be pure,” “Our dogs are fine,” “We fund studies!” or “Why don’t you leave us alone and worry about puppy mills? We’re the responsible breeders!”

To the general public, the only answer to the question, “is a merle to merle breeding responsible?” is a resounding “no.” Producing defective puppies on purpose, doing a breeding known to produce defective pups and hoping that it doesn’t, isn’t ‘responsible.’ Breeding is already fraught with risks. Personally, I would avoid known risks like the plague, it seems like common sense to me.

The breeding community needs to wake up before it’s too late, needs to stop hiding behind the ‘Peta and HSUS just want to stop breeding so we shouldn’t be giving them ammunition against us’ excuse, needs to confront the hard questions and answer them honestly to the best of it’s ability. This is not specifically about merle, or brindle, or brachycephalic dogs, or dwarf dogs. It’s not about backyard breeders, or show breeders, or puppymills. It’s about all dogs and all breeders.

Otherwise, the breeding community might as well just ship a bulk box of rounds to HSUS headquarters.

Full disclosure: I didn’t watch Westminster this year. We got about halfway through the hound group before turning changing the channel because of all the fat dogs.

Random Doggage: Fancy Prancy Curly Tail

Enki!

Just in case you couldn’t tell, my camera does horrible things to black dogs on a light background. Don’t you just love his curly tail? Sometimes he relaxes it, and it always surprises me how long it really is.

I don’t put snoods on our dogs to protect their ear feathers while they are eating. Not because I can’t remember to put them on, but because I don’t remember to take them off. Then the snood becomes a dog toy. Plus, I really just don’t care if a dog sports the asymmetrical look for a while.

I am not entirely convinced that Enki chewed his own ear hair off. There are others that have been known to do a little pruning if their neighbor has a bit of dinner on their feathering. (Looking at you, Teshie!)

I Am Crushing Your Head

Notice

I am going to be releasing some old posts from limbo over the next day or two. I don’t know if subscribers are going to get a bunch of notices in their inbox. If you do, sorry, and don’t panic.

Dogs were not created by inbreeding– but they are being destroyed by it

Reblogged from The Retriever, Dog, & Wildlife Blog:

A common misconception that continually gets spread is that domestic dogs were created through inbreeding wolves and that the different specialized breeds and types were created through inbreeding. There is almost no evidence for either assertion. The first assertion is easily falsified. Domestic dogs retained most of the wolf’s genetic diversity through domestication– in the neighborhood of 95 percent.  Wolves are a very genetically diverse species, so dogs, as a population, really do have a lot of …

Random Doggage: Bearded Lady

Loki

She has actually grown a mustache as well, a small group of white hairs in the whiskers on her upper lip, but I’ve been unable to get a decent picture.

I know it’s normal for us ladies to get a little…hairier as we get older, but I’m glad I’m not an Afghan hound. Of course if I was an Afghan hound, I wouldn’t care.