Splitting a Hive to Make Two More Hives

In order to avoid swarming, I split a big four-box bee hive to create two new 5-frame nuc hives.  I moved the two new nucs to a corner of a farm about 5 miles away, and will introduce a queen to each of them this evening.

Each queen is in a small cage with 4 or 5 attendant bees that groom and feed her. The exit to the cage is blocked by a sugar plug, and the screen allows her scent to permeate the hive making it hers. Once the two new hives realize they now have a Queen, they will eat at the sugar plug from their side in order to free her.

I’m told the nucs can move back to the house in a week or 10 days — by then everyone should be bonded to each other.  

Will it work?  I have no idea. Bees are expensive, malevolent, and prone to both suicide and disease. Every teaspoon of honey is a miracle of perseverance, I assure you.

What Came Apart, And What Did Not

   

These two lived through the near dissolution of the British Empire as India gained independence and Palestine became independent Israel. 

What followed was rapid decolonization as Singapore, Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia), Botswana, Malawi, Tanganyika (now Tanzania), Gambia, Yemen, Jordan, Seychelles, Malaysia, Kenya, Hong Kong, Burma, Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), Brunei, the Gold Coast (now Ghana), the Bahamas, Barbados, Canada, Newfoundland (now part of Canada), British Honduras (now Belize), British Guiana (now Guyana), Trinidad and Tobago, Fiji, the Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, Tuvalu, Papua New Guinea, the New Hebrides, the Maldives, the Gilbert Islands, Mauritius, Tonga, Kiribati, Samoa, Nigeria, Sierra Leon, Cyprus, Malta, Jamaica, Southwest Africa (now Namibia), Ireland, Lesotho, St Lucia, Saint Kitts and Nevis, St Vincent and the Grenadines, South Africa, Uganda, Oman, the Maldives, Bahrain, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Australia, and New Zealand all declared or were granted independence.

In addition, Pakistan and Bangladesh were created out of the breakup of India.

Winning the War and Losing the Election

The photo is of Prime Minister Winston Churchill on June 27, 1945, making a speech in Uxbridge, Middlesex, England during the 1945 General election campaign.

Churchill’s Conservative Party would lose the election in a landslide victory for Labour, and Clement Attlee would replace Churchill as the UK’s Prime Minister.

Attlee did not have an easy job, as the UK after the war was essentially bankrupt with food, housing, and resource shortages.

Attlee spearheaded the nationalization of public utilities and major industries and shepherded public insurance and social programs into existence, including the passing of the National Insurance Act of 1946, the National Assistance Act of 1948, and the formation of the National Health Service (NHS) in 1948.

It was under Attlee that Britain shed itself of many of its colonies, including India (which also created Pakistan and Bangladesh), Burma (now Myanmar), Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), Transjordan (now Jordan), and the British mandates of Palestine (now Israel).

California’s War on Nutria

"For years now, California has been waging war on nutria, a highly destructive 20-pound rodent native to South America that poses a serious threat to fragile wetlands and endangered species. And now, wildlife officials say it’s possible that someone intentionally reintroduced them."

See >> https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/california-nutria-reintroduced-22198180.php?

Elton John and Luciano Pavarotti :: Live Like Horses

I can't control this flesh and blood

That's wrapped around my bones

It moves beneath me, like a river

Into the great unknown

I stepped onto the moving stairs

Before I could tie my shoes

Pried a harp out the fingers of a renegade

Who lived and died the blues

Someday, we'll live like horses

Free rein from your old, iron fences

There's more ways than one to regain your senses

Break out the stalls, and we'll live like horses

B, S & T :: You’ve Made Me So Very Happy

Happy Confederate Surrender Day!

Happy Confederate Surrender Day to all who celebrate.  The White Flag of surrender is the true confederate flag.

The Battle of Appomattox Court House was fought on this morning 160 years ago.  It was the final engagement of the Civil War before the secessionist traitor Robert E. Lee and the Army of Northern Virginia  surrendered to the Union Army under Ulysses S. Grant.

The American Civil War killed an estimated 750,000 soldiers and an unknown number of civilians, making it one of the bloodiest wars in world history. It's estimated that ten percent of all Northern males 20–45 years old, and 30 percent of all Southern white males aged 18–40 died in the war.

To this day people will tell you the war was not about slavery, but that is a lie. Yes, the war was also fought to preserve the union, but let us not forget that the union was being pulled apart because a vast group of people wanted to preserve the institutionalized violence and subjugation that was the slavery system.  

The secessionist states were clear why they were leaving the union; it was about slavery and only about slavery. Secessionist traitors were not just suiting up to create a new country; they were suiting up to enslave people and preserve a system of  violent subjugation targeting men, women, children, and families.

Countries Do Not Have Rights. People Do.

NO, Israel does NOT have a right to exist.

People have a right to exist, including Muslims and Jews, Christians and Atheists, Zoroastrians and Hindus, Buddhists and Animists.

Do not confuse the honorable 4,000-year old religion of Judaism, which is foundational to the creation of law, with the dishonorable 140-year old political cult of Zionism which is centered on illegal land theft.

Judaism and Zionism are not only not the same, they are fundamentally at odds with each other.

Zionism’s land grab is theft under Jewish law as Maimonides makes clear in the 246th prohibition in the Mishneh Torah, noting in the Laws of Theft that one who moves a neighbor's landmark to steal land commits a twofold prohibition: they violate the general prohibition against theft or robbery, and specifically transgress the commandment, "You shall not remove your neighbor's landmark" (Deuteronomy 19:14).  

The Ernest Hemingway Medical File

Ernest Hemingway lived through anthrax, malaria, pneumonia, dysentery, skin cancer, hepatitis, anemia, diabetes, high blood pressure, two plane crashes, a ruptured kidney, a ruptured spleen, a ruptured liver, a crushed vertebra, and a fractured skull. 

In the end, however, his memory was wiped clean by electro-shock therapy at the Mayo Clinic, where he was sent for depression. 

Rather than relieve the depression, the electro-shock seemed to deepen it by removing most of his memories.  

Hemingway killed himself with a shotgun blast in July of 1961.  He was only 61.

Color Me Skeptical

The article is interesting, but color me skeptical.

Extrapolating from a set of 300 rural dam sites is a bit like looking through a keyhole to describe both the house and the garden.

That said, population estimates are *always* wrong.

A short story…

Back in 1986, I was the organizer of a session on census adjustment at the annual conference of the American Association of Science. The topic of the panel had to do with census reapportionment for congressional seats. If the courts decided to exclude illegal immigrants from the count, how could that be done? How did we count permanent resident green card holders? Did we count them at all? And what about the millions of young black men who, for whatever reason, were always missing in census counts? Was a deep sample survey actually more accurate than a nose-by-nose count?

All good questions, but before we got too far into the thicket, I wanted to prick a few balloons.

I began the panel by noting that in 1980 the U.S. Census Bureau had counted exactly 226,545,805 people, but that the margin of error that the Census Bureau freely admitted to was 2.5 percent. 

In short, I observed, the one thing we had some confidence in was ... wait for it ...  wait for it .... that only the first digit of that big official number was probably right. All of the other digits in the apparently precise official count were subject to change based on the Census Bureau’s freely admitted margin of error.

I tell this story to stress that folks who do not work with numbers, day in and day out, tend to fall in love with false specificity.  

We don't have an exact count on a lot of things.  The good news even if we do not have a precise count, we have direction and velocity data, and some ballpark numbers which, in turns out, are good enough for most policy purposes. 

"Counting the uncountable" is a problem we struggle with in the illegal immigration arena, the illegal drug market arena, the nonpayment of taxes arena, and the fraud arena -- all areas I spent several decades working on in Washington, D.C.

I bring this up, because we have the same problem when it comes to counting dogs, and yet it does not matter as much as some would think, because we can gauge direction and velocity.

If numbers are going up or down, that's one thing, and if they are going fast or slow, that's another.

When it comes to population, direction and velocity is generally a more important metric than absolute numbers.

Some Coyotes Will Be Out in the Day

This is the time of year you may see a coyote out in the day. No need to worry; it’s just a hard-working male trying to provide food for a litter of pups and his mate.

Where You Stand Depends On Where You Sit

Who Would Jesus Bomb :: Rainbow Girls

A Lovely Family

Daughter Sarah, Son-in-Law Stephen, big brother Milo, and Wee Man Leo.

The Globe We Need to See

The true size of Africa and the true scale of water in this world. Approximately 71 percent of the Earth's surface is covered by water.

What Are We Gonna Do?

THEY NEVER TELL THE FULL STORY

This Will Be An American Cemetery

These are the mountains of Iran. 

If Tolkien was drawing a map of a fortress built as a country, he would draw Iran.

Iran is not Afghanistan, which Russia could not defeat in 9 years, and which the US could not defeat in 20 years.

Iran is not North Vietnam, which the US could not defeat in 20 years.

Iran is not Iraq, which the US could not defeat in 8 years 

Iran has the people and technology to fight back, has vast financial reserves, has globally essential resources, an extremely well-educated population, and is fighting on their land, which has cultivated a sophisticated culture and civilization for 4,000 years.

Iran will be a cemetery for American soldiers that set foot in that country.  

None of those soldiers will be named Trump or Vance or Hegseth or Netanyahu.  

None of those soldiers will be Israeli.  

None of those soldiers will be the sons or daughters of Lindsey Graham.

Trump is already saying this war in Iran will be so expensive, we can no longer afford Medicare, Medicaid, or child care for Americans.

But Israel?  They have universal heath care paid for with US taxpayer dollars.

Will Trump ask Israel for $200 billion to pay for this war?  

Will Trump demand Israel put boots on the ground in Iran?

No and never.

This entire war is simply a distraction from the Epstein files, which is centered on an well-funded and long-term Israeli honey-pot operation that lured rich and powerful men (including Donald Trump) with the promise of easy sex with underage girls and boys.

Trump and scores of Big Names were video taped raping children. 

The entire Trump presidency is now centered on protecting pedophiles, selling pardons, and pocketing billion dollar bribes from foreign governments.

Americans are now being killed, and American treasure being wasted, to try to change this well-documented story board.

Is this what anyone in America voted for?

Fascism Changes Everything

This is the opening line to George Orwell’s dystopian novel, Nineteen Eighty-four.

Trump Dismantles the US Forest Service

From Care2 on Facebook: 

The Trump administration ordered the dismantling of the U.S. Forest Service with an eye-crossing, sleep-inducing press release written in the densest bureaucratese you've ever had the misfortune to read.  In brief: 

The U.S. Forest Service’s 121-year history isn’t ending with a budget cut or reorganization—it’s being dismantled.

Headquarters is moving from Washington, D.C. to Salt Lake City, a hub of anti–public lands advocacy. All ten regional offices are being closed, along with the career experts who provided independent oversight.

More than 50 research facilities across 31 states will be eliminated, wiping out decades of long-term science that cannot be replaced. In their place: 15 political “state directors,” embedded with the same state officials and industry groups that have long pushed for more logging and fewer protections.

That puts 193 million acres—an area larger than Texas and the nation’s largest public land system—under political control with little warning.

Created by Theodore Roosevelt and built by Gifford Pinchot to ensure professional, science-based stewardship, the agency is now being reshaped under Chief Tom Schultz, a former logging executive.

Long-term studies, datasets, and partnerships will collapse. Scientists won’t relocate en masse, and their expertise will be lost.

Once the science is gone, so is the safeguard against damage.  We can't save the planet until we save ourselves from this destructive administration.  We'd best get busy.

Bald Eagle Chicks

I think there may be two chicks.  One chick is normal for Bald Eagles, and two is pretty common. If three eggs hatch, one of the chicks is eventually forked out of the nest, as there’s no room for more than two. The chicks actually end up very slightly larger than their parents at the time of leaving the nest, as Mother Nature compensates for weak wing muscles in youth by giving the first feathers a slightly longer length.

Astronaut David Hadfield :: Space Oddity

Still Looking for Evidence of the Non-Existent

WE HAVE MORE VIDEO EVIDENCE of the existence of these three creatures than we do that red fox prey on lambs.  

Ever.  

Anywhere.  

Don’t believe it?  I will PAY YOU for video evidence.  

Here are the rules >> https://terriermandotcom.blogspot.com/2025/08/easy-money.html?

The Oldest Living Land Animal Passes Away

Jonathan, the world's oldest living land animal, died today at an estimated age of 193.

Jonathan was a Seychelles giant tortoise (Aldabrachelys gigantea hololissa), a subspecies of the Aldabra giant tortoise (Aldabrachelys gigantea), but he spent most of his life on the remote South Atlantic island of St Helena, where he was brought when he was about 50.

Jonathan (left) is pictured with another giant tortoise in 1886, when they were aged 53–54.

The Four Bee Hives Are Roaring

It's 80 degrees out and the first trees are in bloom (lots of callery pear), so it's GO TIME at the hives. It was perfect timing to get the three nuclear hives installed yesterday.

Three Bee Nucs Installed

Thirty thousand bothered bees were rehomed this morning.  

I also power washed some old bee equipment in preparation for hive growth.

The Death of a Castle Rat

Thanks to Margaret N-J for forwarding this.

Do It Once, And They Never Forget

 True story. See >> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johan_de_Witt

Eagles Off the Nest

 Liberty Road Bald Eagle this morning.  Both eagles were off the nest and the temperature was about 57 degrees Fahrenheit (13.89 celsius).  

Oat Milk Ice Cream for the Win

Breyer’s Oat Milk Vanilla Ice Cream is the best vanilla ice cream I’ve ever had, while oat cream and oat milk are the very best additions to coffee — far better than dairy.

But are oat milk products environmentally better than dairy milk, and if so, by how much?

It turns out the answer is YES, and by a WHOLE LOT.

Oat milk requires roughly 90–99% less land to produce the same volume of cow’s milk. To put it another way, dairy uses 10 to 11.5 times more land than oat milk to produce the same volume of milk

Beyond land, oat milk production is far more sustainable, using significantly less water, producing less waste, and bypassing all kinds of public health and animal welfare cautions, from antibiotic loads to the pain and suffering of lame and sick animals.

How about calories?  Oat milk and dairy milk have comparable calories, typically ranging from 100–130 per cup for oat milk and 90–150 for dairy. While similar in calories, oat milk is generally higher in carbohydrates and lower in protein and fat compared to whole cow's milk.  Looking for a lower calorie substitute fir dairy milk?  Try almond milk, which is available at just 30 calories a cup, and which is a perfect substitute in most cases.

When You Fight, You Become Legends

Jane Fonda and Joan Baez

No Kings - March 28, 2026

"A dead thing can go with the stream, but only a living thing can go against it."

— G.K. Chesterton, The Everlasting Man 

Fascism Never Sleeps

IN 1942, THE THREAT WAS ALREADY THERE, because war profiteers and exploitive capitalism have always found common ground in division, hate, and cruelty.

Trump is just Hitler and Mussolini reconstituted.  

A vast array of detention centers — far too many for immigration detainees — is already being built to incarcerate and “disappear” American protestors. 

A massive army of nameless, faceless, masked thugs, accountable to no one, has already been recruited. 

Extra-judicial killings have already started, both overseas and here at home.  

Right-wing corporate overlords already own most of the news outlets, from radio to television, and from legacy newspapers to new online media. 

Crony capitalism and billion dollar bribes now drive all political decisions from the invasions of Iran and Venezuela to the genocide in Gaza, from pardons of mass murderers and serial rapists to deregulation leading to massive frauds and the looting of public systems built over generations.

The real threat to America has always been from within, and its roots have always been apathy, greed, cowardice, and racism.

We were warned by our founders in 1776, and by Lincoln in 1863.  We were warned in 1942 and we continue to be warned by everyone who thinks.

Something wicked this way walks.

The Gravestone of the Dog Catcher

I’m always interested in both dogs and history, and sometimes the two intersect.

One morning I decided to roll up the street to see if I could find the nearly 95-year old gravestone of a local dog catcher, one William F. Hopwood.

Mission accomplished!

The cemetery in question is old and filled with a dizzying number of stones, some predating the Civil War. 

Dozens of graves had been undermined by over a hundred years worth of groundhog dens.  

The terriers were with me on this journey, but there was no letting them off-leash!

William F. Hopwood, known to all as “Billy,” was the father of five and was born in Frederick, Maryland on May 19th, 1870.

Before landing a job as the local dog catcher in September of 1914, he held a janitorial job at the Frederick City Hall.  

In his first year on the job as City Dog Catcher, Billy Hopwood caught 102 dogs, of which 20 were reclaimed by their owners, and 82 were killed by chloroform after their two-day holding period was up.

In July of 1916, the local dog and cat killing business changed as a Society to Prevent Cruelty to Animals (SPCA) shelter was created. Pound dogs were now moved to the shelter after two days, and from there they could be adopted.  

Things seem to have settled into a quiet routine for Billy Hopwood until April 5th, 1928, when he made the local news after a Collie bit him in the face, resulting in a wound that required a half dozen stitches to close up.

Billy Hopwood was struck and killed by an out-of town car while walking to work in late October of 1929.  

He was 59 years old.

Come As You Are :: Playing for Change

Spring is Kicking Off

500 daffodils are up, and the plum trees are in bloom.  The peach trees are about to bloom, and leaves are coming out on the apple, cherry, and pear trees.  The viburnums and dog woods should leaf out in the next week or so.

Liberty Road Bald Eagle Nest

Dan Tyminski With :: The Boy Who Wouldn’t Hoe Corn

The great Jerry Douglas on dobro.

John Prine :: Hello In There

The Young Longhorn is Back

The beef cattle across the road and at the other end of the cul de sac are back, and I’m thrilled, as they have been missing since December, and I was afraid they’d been sent away to freezer camp. 

In the evening and early morning, I can sometimes hear the cattle mooing, mixed in with the call of Red-shouldered Hawks, Barred Owls, Wood Thrushes, Cardinals, and Carolina Wrens.  

Trust me — none of it is noise pollution.

The Monsters in the River

A slightly modified tale:

One summer in the village, the people gathered for a picnic. As they shared food and conversation, someone noticed a deformed  bulldog in the river, struggling and barking. The dog was going to drown!

Someone rushed to save the dog. Then, they noticed another yowling monstrous dog in the river, and they rushed in to pull that dog out. Soon, more deformed monstrous bulldogs  were seen drowning in the river, and the townspeople were pulling them out as fast as they could. It took great effort, and they began to organize their activities in order to save the severely deformed dogs as they came down the river. As everyone else was busy in the rescue efforts to save the dogs, two of the townspeople started to run up the shore of the river.

“Where are you going?” shouted one of the rescuers. “We need you here to help us save these dogs!”

“We are going upstream to stop whoever is throwing them in!”

I recount this story because of the great irony associated with a putative act of kindness being done by well-meaning people.

The short story here is that a group of people in the UK decided to “rescue” dogs from the Chinese meat dog trade.

Breeding dogs to be eaten is, of course, horrible and someone had to do something, and so "let's raise money," said someone, and things spiraled up and out from there.

But wait a minute.  No one’s breeding mutant bulldogs for the meat trade.  After all, most of these dogs are so morphologically wrecked they cannot breed on their own, and cannot whelp on their own.

So why are these dogs being bred?  Why to sell to the “meat dog rescue” people, of course.

The very same thing has happened here in the US, where “rescues” would swoop in at Amish puppy mill auctions to buy Cavalier King Charles Spaniels.  Thanks to thick bankrolls provided by Facebook “Good Samaritans,” the legend of the “$10,000 Cavalier” sale of a kennel of  aged bitches became legend — and fueled more Amish farmers breeding Cavaliers. 

In fact, what occurred here is a classic story right out of the Bible. 

In the parable of the good Samaritan (Luke 10:29-37), Jesus says that the way to heaven is to come to the aid of those who are battered, hungry, and destitute. 

The set up to this story, however, is generally lost due to poor translation. 

The Pharisee is not asking Jesus what he should do in any specific situation -- he asking what is good policy?  

The distinction is not a small one. 

Yes, if you come across a person who is bleeding in a ditch, bind up their wounds and invite them in for a hot meal. 

But what are we to do with scores of thousands of people bleeding in ditches? Who has the bandages, the iodine, and the rooms to accommodate them all?  What do we do in that situation?

And so we come back to a first movement question:  How is it that deformed Pug X English Bulldogs are being sold in China to a foreign“dog meat rescue” group on Facebook?

And what could that possibly have to do with so many of these very same people now riding in to play "Rescue Ranger?"

Al Lewis :: Make a Little Room

The Essential Nature of a Glass

Some people see the glass half full.

Others see it half empty.

I see a glass that's twice as big

as it needs to be. 

     --- George Carlin

George Carlin missed the essential nature of a glass:  it’s refillable and will hold whatever you want — just like the human mind.

Dorothy Parker :: Her Truth Keeps Marching On

Over on Threads, Joanne Tum writes:

Dorothy Parker died alone in a hotel room in 1967 with almost nothing left. No family. No career. No money. When her will was read, everyone was stunned. She had left her entire estate to Martin Luther King Jr.

To understand why, you have to go back to when she was eight years old.

She was standing at a window during a blizzard, watching men dig through the snow with bare, purple hands. Their feet were wrapped in burlap rags because they had no boots.

Behind her, her wealthy aunt smiled and said: "Isn't it wonderful? All those men have work."

Dorothy said nothing. But she never forgot.

Some people had to suffer so others could feel generous about it. That realization became the engine of her entire life.

By thirty, she was one of the most celebrated writers in America.

The sharpest voice at New York's legendary Algonquin Round Table. A poetry bestseller. Short stories in The New Yorker. Two Academy Award nominations.

Hollywood paid her a fortune.

Then in 1936, she sat with journalists and refugees who had escaped Nazi Germany. They described what they had seen — the arrests, the disappearances, the systematic violence.

“This is only the beginning," one told her. “Another war is coming."

Parker cancelled her social calendarand got to work.

Within months she helped co-found the Hollywood Anti-Nazi League, uniting thousands of actors, writers, and directors with one goal: warn America before it was too late.

Hollywood didn't want to hear it.

Studio executives dismissed her. When she described Nazi atrocities at meetings, some suggested she must be drinking. A woman this emotional, this insistent — surely she was being hysterical.

She kept speaking anyway.

In 1937 she boarded a ship to Spain, where fascist forces backed by Hitler and Mussolini were crushing a democratic republic while the world looked away. She walked through bombed villages. Sat in refugee camps. Broadcast on Madrid Radio. Sent dispatches from the rubble pleading for the world to pay attention.

When she came home she wrote: "I know that there are things that never have been funny, and never will be."

The woman whose entire reputation was built on devastating wit had found the one subjectshe couldn't joke about.

The FBI opened a file on her.

Then another. Then another.

By the time they were done: over a thousand pages documenting her meetings, her donations, her speeches, the names of everyone she'd spoken to. The government was carefully recording the woman who had tried to warn it about fascism.

After Pearl Harbor finally brought America into the war she'd predicted for five years, Parker applied for a passport to cover the conflict as a journalist.

She was refused. The government now considered her a security risk.

The blacklist arrived in 1950.

Her name appeared in Red Channels — a publication listing suspected Communists in entertainment. No trial. No evidence. No opportunity to respond.

Just her name on a page.

The woman who co-wrote A Star Is Born, who collaborated with Hitchcock, who had been twice nominated for the Academy Award — was suddenly unemployable.

The very studio heads who had ignored her warnings about Hitler now used those same warnings as proof she was dangerous.

She had been right. That was her crime.

For the next seventeen years, Dorothy Parker lived quietly in a hotel room in New York. Career finished. Money gone.

The brilliant circle of friends from the Algonquin days scattered or dead.

She wrote when she could. She drank more than she should.

On June 7, 1967, she died alone in her room at the Hotel Volney. She was 73.

Then her will was read.

She had left her entire estate to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Not to a literary foundation. Not to a university. Not to a theatre that would put her name on a wall.

To the leader of the Civil Rights Movement.

Because Dorothy Parker had understood something for sixty years that took the rest of the world much longer to grasp.

The men with purple hands in the blizzard. The refugees in the Spanish camps. The Black Americans marching in the streets.

It was one fight, wearing different faces.

Less than a year after her death, Dr. King was assassinated. Under the terms of her will, her estate passed directly to the NAACP.

In 2026, the NAACP still receives royalties from Dorothy Parker's work.

Every time someone reads her poetry, buys her short stories, or watches a film she wrote — the money flows to the organization fighting for civil rights.

A woman who died nearly sixty years ago, dismissed as hysterical and un-American, is still funding justice from the grave.

She was right too early, again and again and again.

The world punished her for it every single time.

She kept being right anyway.

And even now — she's still fighting.

Tommy Edwards :: It’s All In the Game

 The music to this tune was written by Charles Dawes, who was not only a Brigadier General, AND Vice President of the United States under Calvin Coolidge, but ALSO a winner of the Nobel Peace Prize.  Beat that!!!

When the Kennel Club Chose Sickness and Death

The portrait of Kate Edith and Grace Maud Hoare, is by John Everett Millais, who was an English painter and illustrator who, after about 1850, developed a powerful form of realism that can be seen in this painting of two twins born into the peerage.

And what of the deerhound?

This picture was painted in 1876, three years after the Kennel Club was created.

Just 20 years later, the Kennel Club was presented with serious questions about the health consequence of inbreeding in Scottish Deerhounds.

And what did the Kennel Club do?

The opposite of what they should have done.

In a 1905 publication entitled “The Kennel Club: Its History and Record of Its Work,” Edward William Jaquet, secretary of the Kennel Club, writes about the 1897 debate about Scottish Deerhounds that resulted in all the Kennel Club registries being slammed shut:

“At the same meeting of the roth July letters were read from Mrs. E. Maude Everitt and Mr. R. Hood Wright relative to the registration by Mr. Wood Wright of a dog. a cross between a Borzoi and a Deerhound.

“Mrs. Everittcomplained that as Secretary to the Borzoi Club, and a prominent breeder and exhibitor of Deer- hounds, Mr. Hood Wright ought, as a matter of duty, to use every endeavour to keep up purity of breed.

“Mr. Hood Wright, in his reply, asserted that, in his opinion, it was absolutely necessary to introduce fresh blood into the particular breed, asDeerhound were rapidly becoming so inbred that a large proportion of the pups died at birth, being too weak to suck, were difficult to rear, and when reared even the best seem especially liable to various diseases, and this entirely owing to the practice of inbreeding.

“The question having been fully discussed, the Committee decided that it cannot be permitted to register a cross-bred dog as belonging to a breed already recognised in the Kennel Club's classification of breeds.”

Right.  

Health or purity? 

Purity of course!  

A dead dog is not a liability, after all; it's an opportunity for dog dealers to sell more dogs, and for wannabe rosette winners to try again with new stock. 

Perfect!

Of course, it should be pointed out that Scottish Deerhounds ARE living longer now than they did only a few years ago.

Excellent!

So did the Kennel Club change its tune and decide to embrace a little outcrossing?

No, of course not!

Instead, they now suggest that all RKC and AKC dog owners buy veterinary insurance, which comes in so very handy when it comes time to pay for the chemotherapy!

———-

To read the 1905 publication entitled “The Kennel Club: Its History and Record of Its Work” by Edward William Jaquet, secretary of the Kennel Club, see >>

www.terrierman.com/Kennel-Club-history.pdf

The Farm Vs the Kennel Club

One of the first stud books to document the breeding of animals was created for Shorthorn Cattle in 1822.

It was also the first studbook to illuminate the deleterious impact of inbreeding too much and for too long

What was different with farmers, than with dog owners, was that down on the farm there was a clear axis of production, while in the Kennel Club there was nothing but the sniffing pretension of ego, exclusivity, and conspicuous consumption.

Farmers inbreeding animals for improvement began to notice that fertility rates began to drop after a few generations. In some lines disease popped up, or defects such as weak hocks appeared.  A breed was not “better” or “improved” if it cost more, produced less, or died sooner.

Because farm herds are large and often kept by families for generations, farmers were able to "tease out" data indicating drops in production, increases in mortality, declining fecundity, and a steady rise in disease and illness.

Inbreeding, which had initially boosted production, now appeared to be reducing it.

Because farmers had a clear "steak and eggs" axis for evaluation of stock, they were ready and willing to outcross to achieve the best results for their needs and their land. Consumers, after all, do not much care what breed of chicken their eggs come from, or what "champion" bull sired their steak.

Through experimentation, farmers discovered that outcrosses and hybrids of two "pure" types produce as well or better, while remaining more disease resistant, more fecund, and longer-lived than deeply homogeneous stock.

What may appear to be a pure Angus (the most common breed of beef cattle in the world) is likely to have a wide variety of cattle genes coursing through its system. In fact, entire breeds of cattle are now kept solely for their outcross potential. On today's farms the cattle in the field may be Brangus (Brahman-Angus crosses), Braford (Brahmam-Hereford crosses), Beefmasters (a cross of Hereford, Shorthorn and Brahman), or any other combination or mix.

If you go to any farm or garden center today, you will find nearly everything is hybrid, from hybrid Pioneer seed corn to hybrid roses.

In the food marketplace, we find hybrid tomatoes and potatoes, as well as apples and cucumbers. Entire types, such as Broccoli, Kale, and Brussels Sprouts are, in fact, hybrids of the same plant.

In the poultry section, every chicken is a man-made crossbreed, whether it’s egg-producing ISA Browns, Bovans Goldline, or California Whites, and whether it’s meat chickens like Freedom Rangers or Cornish Crosses.

Dog breeds are also a product of outcrossing, whether to achieve performance success or aesthetic satisfaction.  

The difference with dogs, however, is that owners and breeders are mostly divorced from each other, are divorced from work and performance metrics, and are operating in a very small numerical pool.  

A “big breeder” of dogs might have a kennel of just ten dogs, have pedigree records going back only five generations, have health testing on very few dogs and for very few issues, and have no track record at all on the health, fecundity, and mortality of their get.  

Is it any wonder that dogs are not being improved in the Kennel Clubs at that same speed that farm stock (both plant and animal) has been improved on the farm?