This dog is blind, deaf, epileptic, and in joint pain at age 4.
In the July issue of Dog's Today, I give "Terrierman's Top Ten Tips for Avoiding Expense & Misery," pinging off of the story of the tallest dog in the world (a harlequin Great Dane) and the oldest (a 26-year old cross-bred Jack Russell Terrier).
As I noted in that piece, the Great Dane in question died at age seven, euthanized after coming down with cancer -- a very common outcome for this breed.
So who is the "tallest dog in the world now?
According to the Guinness Book of World Records, it is a 4-year old Great Dane named Titan who is "blind, deaf, epileptic and undergoes acupuncture and chiropractic adjustments every three weeks."
Great. A total genetic mess. The only good thing here is that the dog was adopted by its current owner from a Tennessee Great Dane Rescue.
Let's be clear here: Breeding defective dogs that live in pain is a type of systematic animal abuse.
We know how to breed healthier dogs. To not do it is a violence.
Thinking about getting a dog? Think and research before you adopt or buy.
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6 comments:
Which is more cruel:
Inbreeding to produce exaggerated and unhealthy shapes ind dogs or fox trapping?
To answer that question one must consult the old utilitarianism of Jeremy Bentham. Now, Peter Singer uses Bentham a lot in his work. However, I put my metrics rather differently.
To me, it is worse to cause an animal an injury that lasts many years than it does to cause an animal an injury that lasts just a short period of time before it dies.
A fox in a trap experiences discomfort and fear, but in most states, the trapper must check his line daily. The fox is only likely to have been the trap for a couple of hours.
Before being caught in that trap, that fox lived a normal life. It could breathe, cool itself, and move without much trouble. I won't say that its life was perfect, but it generally lived a comfortable existence up until it was caught in a trap.
Constrast that with the dog that inherits all of these conditions and distortion lives in discomfort, weakness, and possibly misery its entire life.
So if you really think about it, fox trapping is far less cruel than breeding dogs in such exaggerated forms. The fox suffers only for a short time, while the exaggerated dog that has inherited several conditions because of inbreeding suffers throughout its lifetime.
Of course, I don't think trapping foxes is cruel if done with the proper equipment and training. It is better for the foxes to experience an annual cull than to breed up in such high numbers that they experience either widespread mange or some canine viral epidemic.
Of course, very few people think like this. And many people will condemn the trapper and praise the "ethical" breeder who just produced the next champion peke, even though the dog can barely breathe or cool itself.
Breeding 'Double Merles' which is what that poor dog in the photo is, is not considered ethical by most people, even in 'show circles', not only because of the fact that MxM dogs are mostly white, blind, and deaf, and don't have the 'appropriate' coat pattern. At least that's the case with other breeds that express the Merle mutation... I know Dane breeders tend to ONLY breed one color so I'm not sure if they outcross Merle dogs to Black like in other breeds or if they have their own 'internal logic' that says it's okay.
Breeding harlequin Great Danes at all -- single merle coats -- is not ethical, as 20% of the dogs are deaf. In fact, considering the cancer and torsion rates with Giant Breeds, I think the ethics of breeding ANY giant breed is a question worth raising. The average Great Dane does not stop growing until age 3 and is dead at age 7, of which the last year is usually in pain, misery and expense. This is ethical?
P.
I don't think it was humane to "rescue" that poor dog. It should have been put down.
I thought Great Danes originated as a boar hunters. What a downfall from a tough hunter/courser to a giant cripple.
Is it the 'giant-ness' that causes so many problems with them, or simply modern inbreeding depression? Are they larger today then they were 100 years ago, or structurally weaker due to conformation-ring fashions? Physically the modern Dane looks very similar to the dogs I've seen from the late 1800s. I'm not familiar with the conformation of the breed to tell at a glance what is fundamentally different now in the breed besides head shape.
I always wonder when I see dogs from 100 years ago that look very similar to the modern breed, yet seemed to have fewer problems than their nearly identical-looking descendants. Or have they always been this way, and people just didn't question it?
It's a difficult comparison to make.
A lot of the dogs that survive to adulthood today simply wouldn't have made it 100 years ago. C-sections, tube feeding, electric heating pads, advances in veterinary medicine, etc., have made it easier for weaker dogs to survive. For example, if a puppy had Persistent Right Aortic Arch (PRAA) 100 years ago, there wasn't a $2,500 surgery at the vet school to correct the problem. The dog simply starved to death at 4-5 weeks old and would be written off as 'failing to thrive.'
Breeders are also less apt to simply dispatch a sick or deformed puppy than they would 'back in the day.' Terms like 'bucketing' have almost gone out of existence now within the dog fancy, but they were quite common even 20 years ago. They may secretly (and illegally per the AKC's rules) have the problem corrected surgically and then use the dog for breeding. It's unethical as hell, but it happens.
Finally, there's just a lot more information about disorders - many of which weren't even identified 100 years ago, and it's easier for people to share information about dogs and diseases via the internet, etc. Having said that, it's nearly 2010, and we still struggle to get owners (and breeders) to have necropsies performed on dogs.
C
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