Pedigree Breeding Snobbery – Opinion Piece

Published on September 20, 2008 by Freelance Contributors   ·   1 Comment

Written by Simon Mulholland | All rights reserved.

“Intentionally breeding deformed and disabled animals is morally unjustifiable and it has to stop.” Mark Evans, RSPCA chief veterinary adviser.

This is selective quotation because it comes in a report on the RSPCA pulling out of Crufts. But does anyone believe that Mark Evans doesn’t mean just what he says.

This raises two obvious issues. Why is all the concentration on dogs, and how did we get into this ludicrous situation in the first place.

All the fancy show societies, horses, cats, birds, llamas etc are keeping their heads down to avoid the flak and hoping to survive, an understandable, but not particularly courageous attitude. If they had any moral defence, and blaming the Victorians isn’t a moral defence, they would come out fighting, standing ridgeback to ridgeback with the Kennel Club.

Horse and Hound has been carefully silent on the subject,and they even have dogs in their title. But their horses are the problem. The catalogue of defectives produced in the name of showing and competing with horses won’t stand close scrutiny. 10% of Fell Pony foals dying a miserable death by three months from a genetic condition created and reinforced by the breeding policies of their showing world.

Routine female genital mutilation of Thoroughbreds and sport horses as a result of an attempt to improve performance. Endlessly producing tragic crippled dwarfs, the byproducts of the Miniature Horse breeding program, are these really going to pass Mark Evans “Intentionally breeding deformed and disabled animals is morally unjustifiable and it has to stop.” princple?

No is the simple answer. A more complex question is how did we get here? Just what are these breeding policies and what is so good about them?

If you mate close relatives you concentrate the genes. If you’re very, very, lucky you reinforce a virtue, but the vast majority of the time, you increase the risk of defects. We all carry defects, but the most likely people to carry MY defects are my close family. If I marry close family the defects that I carry as single recessive genes get a chance to partner up and cause serious problems. If I marry an outsider, this risk reduces to average. Although they carry just as many defects, they are different defects. You need two of a recessive gene for it to be effective. Line breeding, inbreeding, incest, whatever you want to call it massively increase the risk of recessives operating.

What is so great about linebreeding? It is aristocratic, indeed positively Royal. And therein lies the problem. This whole fiasco started with the Thoroughbred. The Thoroughbred is actually a product of the crooked gambling habits of the upper classes, the General Stud Book, family bible of the Thoroughbred was actually written to stop upper class crooks running ringers in weight for age handicaps. Asd a byproduct, if you record the year and the mother, you have a pretty good breeding record. Add in the dad, and you have invented the Thoroughbred.

This was all occurring around the Age of Revolution, when foreigners and colonials were throwing off the yoke of oppression. So the upper classes came up with the theory that breeding really matters, pure blood creates courage, etc. And for some reason everyone fell for this nonsense. Now it works, but there is a trick. You can line breed dogs or horses and you will produce brilliant new gundogs, or ultra fast horses, but you will also get a whole load of defectives. The puppies are easy, drown them. The duff horses ended up dragging a hansom round the streets if they were lucky. Just read Black Beauty for the fate of the rejects.

Today we can’t just look at the glossy “Duke of Gordon’s Setters.” We see the sacks of wriggling pups being thrown into the river. The beautiful racehorses, and their failed brothers and sisters, bred for speed and hauling coal. We have bought into a fantasy of upper class life, and now we are being shown the dark side. We have a choice.

A dog is a dog, a pony is a pony. People have loved and worked with dogs and ponies for Millennia before paper was even thought of. Forget the pedigree. Get a dog because you can’t resist it. Learn to work with it, learn to live with it. The same with a pony.

If you even thought of employing someone using the principles of pedigree, you would be arrested as a racist, snob trampling all over disability rights. Do you pick your friends because they have 5 generations of recorded upper class ancestry? Isn’t your dog or your pony your friend?

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