written by Karen Clark-Stapleton

The dog was probably the first species domesticated by man and has maintained a special place in human affections ever since, so why are some breeders continually creating canine disasters?

The development of dog shows, breed societies and stud books by the Victorians led to the emergence of new breeds based largely on appearance. These new breeds were often formed by inter-breeding existing types, and selecting for individuals with particular desirable structural or behavioural characteristics , its important to realise here that the characteristic of a breed are created by breeders — not by registries. Ordinarily a breed has already existed for an appreciable length of time before it reaches the point of becoming a recognized breed served by any registry.

Nonetheless, the event of its “recognition” by a registry such as the KC is always a crucial (and often a debilitating) one in the history of a breed. Breed recognition is far more crucial (and ultimately damaging to the welfare of the animals) than it need be or ought to be.. Purebred dogs are now in serious trouble through a general failure by breeders to distinguish between what is necessary to establish a breed and what is desirable to continue that breed for the future. Breed standards have been far too vague and have permitted breed clubs and their membership to abuse what would have originally been a good dog with no real health concerns. I mostly deal with toy breeds and I am concerned that US breed standards are creeping in and altering the look of our dogs. Dogs are getting taller (or very small)and this is due to breed clubs poor management of the gene pool. The KC know only too well what is happening but feel de masculated to a degree, they feel that breed clubs will simply refuse to listen to recommendations, and they do have a valid point here. I have seen and listened through gritted teeth with some of the absolute tosh coming from within some of these clubs, whose objective is to protect their breeds not destroy them…..
Most registered breeds are less than a century old as registered breeds; many are but fifty or sixty years old. Yet nearly all breeds now show levels of expression of genetic defects that must be considered unacceptable. Over 500 distinct genetic defects have been catalogued in various breeds of purebred dogs and more continue to come to light regularly. Some of these have reached very high levels of incidence, creating problems for breeders and dog owners, threatening the health of entire breed populations. What is worse, in many instances organized control programs seem relatively ineffective. Although such programs successfully identify affected animals, in some cases individuals with several generations of “clear” ancestry stubbornly continue to produce affected stock. It should be of interest to breeders that of the approximate 500 genetic diseases which have been identified in pure dog breeds. Information on these diseases has been collated on the “Inherited Diseases in Dogs” (IDID) website (www.vet.cam.ac.uk/idid).

More than half of these disorders are inherited in a simple Mendelian autosomal recessive manner.This in part reflects the difficulty that breeders have in removing recessive mutations from their breed as they cannot differentiate between genetically normal and carrier individuals.

In contrast, for simple Mendelian dominant conditions, where a single copy of the mutation is sufficient to produce disease, it is relatively simple for breeders to remove affected
individuals from their breeding population.

So should this continually create a problem for breeders and dogs alike ?

Inbreeding is in its simplest form the mating of two individuals that are closer related than two randomly chosen individuals in any respective population. The degree of genetic relation between two individuals depends on the number and the position of common ancestors in their pedigree and can be easily measured by calculating the “coefficient of inbreeding” (COI) which was established by Sewall Wright in 1922.

A site to be commended is that of the Havanese Gallery , devised by Kamphor , a Hungarian breeder. This gives the COI of those on site and breeders and owners can check just how close their dogs are in relation to others. An absolute must for anyone considering using a good breeding programme. We personally use Battaglias breeding programme, although in its infancy we have produced quality pups free from health issues.

Instead of embracing our findings some of the breed clubs closed ranks and decided that their own inbreeding methods were far better , these same breeders continue to produce dogs with debilitating genetic diseases. Sadly popular sires are still being used by some of the rarer breeds and this in the very near future will have a devestating effect upon the whole breed.

The COI is based on the calculation of combined probabilities and expresses the expected percentage of identical genes an individual inherits from one or more common ancestors of its parents (FALCONER,1984). What many breeders don’t fully understand is that it has to be kept in mind that the COI only represents a probability value that varies with the number of generations considered when calculating it.

Moreover the COI is the same for full sibs although they can strongly differ in their individual degree of homozygosity. I have checked the COI of many UK dogs and frankly in some breeds it is extremely high.

Whilst some breeders use inbreeding or line breeding in a do-or-die-way to improve the quality of their dogs or maintain type and standard within the breed as fast as possible others avoid inbreeding as a matter of principle believing that all genetic problems will be solved by decreasing the inbreeding level alone. Either way this is factually wrong , inbreeding is nothing more than a breeding system with advantages and disadvantages that have to be considered.

Both of which must be taken into consideration, the trouble is , many older breeders who have longevity feel that their system no matter what is the right one, they fail to understand that rigid line breeding will actually destroy the breed they are interested in . Most breeds were formed using relatively small numbers of founder dogs. The formation of closed stud books, which precluded the introduction of new genetic variants into the breed, essentially fixed the genetic options for each breed, what breeders need to realise is that there are four main factors that inevitably lead to an increase in the level of inbreeding and therefore to an increase in homozygositiy:
• Genetic drift in small and genetically isolated populations.
• Intentional inbreeding strategies by breeders that focus on fast improvement of desirable traits. This is said by some breeders to protect the standard .
• Intensive selection in favour of desirable traits or against undesirable traits.
• Overuse of special sires (popular sires). A very dangerous act indeed , especially when rare breeds are concerned and sadly, very popular within the UK .Although a lot of scientific evidence exists concerning the association between inbreeding and fertility in different species there is only little scientific evidence available on that subject in dogs.

We have seen this with our breeding population and have taken steps to rectify this issue sadly others have not. We tend to deal with toy breeds and have noticed that some lines have more of a tendency to produce genetic conditions mainly due to popular sires and closed breeding programmes, what we have found is that , these particular lines have created problems within overseas breeding programmes and this must be avoided for the protection of any canine health strategy for the future.

We reap what we sow , so do we really want this to come back to us from stock sold to breeders outside the UK.

We live with a large pack of dogs and have a very unique way to observe pack issues, breeding strategies , temperaments , health and genetic concerns ,colour changes , but more importantly we have one of the UK’s only FULL health registers of ALL pups produced since conception of our Affix and understand that this can only really be done with larger (out-crossed) packs with a varied researched gene pool from all over the EU and USA .

Importantly we also have a commitment to vet all applicants of progeny and to ensure that all owners complete yearly health tests and checks to which we have access too. Smaller less fortunate breeders who have limited their gene pools simply cannot have the ability to perform these tasks without a diverse gene pool from all over the World or without foresight which we had before breeding.

The present structure of The Kennel Clubs studbook registry embodies a fallacy which is directly responsible for the current genetic crisis in purebred dogs. The ideal of the purified lineage is seen as an end in itself; accordingly, the studbook has been structured to reflect and to enforce that ideal rigidly and absolutely. Population geneticists insist that limited populations under strong artificial selection, subjected to high levels of incest breeding – such as our own purebreds — simply cannot maintain genetic viability and vigour in the long term without the periodic introduction of new and unrelated genetic material.

They are referring, moreover, to true out-crossing, the introduction of stock unrelated to the breeding line, not merely the use of a dog which might be from someone else’s kennel but is derived from exactly the same foundation stock some generations back. Why do some breeders feel they cannot or should not outcross, is it simply ignorance or is it line snobbery , either way these breeders must wake up in order to protect their breeds they need to read more and gossip less.

The breeder often assumes that he has abandoned the realm of natural selection and that only artificial selection plays a significant role in his breeding programme. Nothing could be further from the truth. The breeder may attempt to abandon natural selection; natural selection, however, will not abandon his stock. As one geneticist puts it: “Man-imposed characteristics, however, like the flower colours and forms selected by the plant breeder, usually do not perturb the deep-set genetic variability systems of the species. Most such changes are reversible when a less restricted gene pool is restored.

The ‘balance’ system appears to be retained by natural selection, which, perhaps paradoxically, pervades most systems of artificial selection.” (Hampton L. Carson, The Genetics of the Founder Effect. l983) .

The future health of our dogs should demand all breeders to health test before committing to exhibit their dogs, after all, by exhibition you are holding your own up to the scrutiny of others and stating you breed quality healthy dogs, when in most cases this is factually unknown. No matter how good a coat is dressed for show it cannot give an indication as to the internal wellbeing of that animal, which is fundamentally wrong.

The KC have a wonderful opportunity to promote canine health by the addition of mandatory health testing for all accredited breeders, instead of giving useless accolades for exhibition or stud book numbers. For heavens sake they give accolades for breeding five or more litters, how absurd, they don’t give any for health screening which should be done prior to breeding, somehow I feel they have their priorities all wrong, could this be due to the internal pressures of the show fraternity ?

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