The Original Chuck D.

UK Vet Reforms to Increase Pricing Transparency

Long-time readers of the blog know I have a background in ferreting out health care and other frauds and have, in the past, described veterinary medicine as “the petri plate that’s never seen an antibiotic”.

And by that, I mean that veterinary medicine, as compared to human medicine, is virtually unregulated in the arena of pricing, fraud, and legal accountability.

One of the proposals I’ve suggested in the past is posting transparent pricing for basic services, such as vaccines and spay-neuters.  

Now The Guardian newspaper in the UK reports that serious veterinary reform is on the consumer-interest agenda.

“The biggest shake-up of the UK veterinary sector for 60 years should push down costs for pet owners by requiring practices to make their pricing clearer, the government has said.

“Ministers have announced a package of measures after an investigation into reported high prices found problems in the vet sector could be costing UK households at least £1bn over five years.

“The proposals, which will now be consulted on, would require vet practices to publish price lists for common treatments and be transparent about the various options, making it easier for owners to make the right choice for their pets, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) said. ‘Knowing key prices beforehand helps owners to choose the best value,’ it added.

“It is estimated that 60% of UK households – about 17 million – have a pet, and owners spent about £6.3bn on veterinary and other services in 2024, according to the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), which found that vet fees had risen at nearly twice the rate of inflation. 

“That figure works out at an average of just over £365 for each pet-owning household, but some owners end up paying much more than that.

Surgery for cruciate ligament disease – a common procedure for dogs – can cost up to £5,000, and occasionally more.

“The CMA has been investigating the sector since 2024 and published its provisional findings and remedies in October, with its final report due in February or March this year. The Defra announcement suggests ministers are keen to move swiftly, with many of the government proposals the same or similar to those put forward by the markets watchdog.

“Under the Defra plans, vet businesses will have to disclose who owns them so pet owners know if their local practice is part of a larger chain or is independent. It said this would increase competition and bring down costs over time. 

“Meanwhile, every vet practice will need an official operating licence – similar to GP surgeries and care homes – and there are plans for an easier and more effective route for customers to raise concerns and complaints.

“Other proposals include introducing regulatory oversight for veterinary businesses, not just individual vets, and updating the processes for vet registration and ‘fitness to practice’.

“Specific measures proposed by the CMA in October included capping the cost of providing prescriptions at £16, prices in writing for treatments costing more than £500, and pricing breakdowns for pet care plans in an attempt to improve value for money. It also proposed creating a comprehensive price comparison website. 

“Martin Coleman, the chair of the CMA inquiry group, said: ‘We welcome the government’s consultation … Our vets investigation is ongoing, but we have already set out our strong concern that the current rules are not fit for purpose.’

“Defra said clearer pricing ‘will help pet owners compare costs and shop around, saving families money’.  Some of the measures will involve updating the Veterinary Surgeons Act 1966 ‘when parliamentary time allows’.

Link to Guardian article >> https://shorturl.at/tz2BH

Happy Darwin Day!

Today is DARWIN DAY, the day that celebrate Charles Darwin’s birthday on the 12th of February, 1809.

If you haven't read Darwin's treatise on worms, you are missing a huge part of the story.  

Quite serious.  And yes, there’s a terrier in the story.  

                           ▪️ ————————-▪️

"Is everything connected to terriers?" a friend of mine once asked me.

"No," I replied. "Everything is connected to everything."

And so it is. Take Charles Darwin, and his treatise on earth worms.

To begin with, young Charles Darwin was a youth of the right sort. He spent so much time with his dog that his father did not think he would ever amount to much. "You care for nothing but shooting, dogs and rat-catching, and you will be a disgrace to yourself and your family," his father lectured.

Which was nearly true.

Darwin entered college planning to be a clergyman (an occupation that promised to leave a lot time for chasing butterflies), but there was the little matter of God.

It was not that Darwin did not believe, exactly. It was just that there was not much evidence that God -- as pushed and interpreted by the Church -- actually existed.

And so when young Darwin got a chance to go on a round-the-world cruise as a young unpaid naturalist, he snapped up the opportunity. Ironically, Darwin's five-year voyage was on a ship called the HMS Beagle.

Though Darwin made a great deal of observations on the trip, he did not come up with his theory of evolution while on board ship. That came many years later, and only after observing the rapid transformation of domestic livestock -- including dogs -- that was occurring thanks to the rise of the Enclosure Movement, and the advent of controlled sire selection as practiced by Robert Bakewell and others.

It is worth noting that Darwin (1809-1882) lived during the period when terriers were being "speciated" into breeds, and was a contemporary of the Reverend John Russell, creator of one of the first -- and certainly oldest -- working terrier breeds.

As a grown man Darwin continued to have large numbers of dogs about, and they are featured prominently in his correspondence -- dogs by the name of Dash, Nina, Pincher, Sheilah, Spark, and Sappho.

On fact, one of these dogs, Sappho, is mentioned in Darwin's work on The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication:

"The following case has been communicated to me on good authority, and may, I believe, be fully trusted: a pointer-bitch produced seven puppies; four were marked with blue and white, which is so unusual a colour with pointers that she was thought to have played false with one of the greyhounds, and the whole litter was condemned; but the gamekeeper was permitted to save one as a curiosity. Two years afterwards a friend of the owner saw the young dog, and declared that he was the image of his old pointer-bitch Sappho, the only blue and white pointer of pure descent which he had ever seen. This led to close inquiry, and it was proved that he was the great-great-grandson of Sappho; so that, according to the common expression, he had only 1/16th of her blood in his veins."

In fact, the person with the "old pointer-bitch Sappho," was none other than Darwin himself!

Darwin's observation that coat color had a genetic origin and that some characteristics (good, bad and unusual) could pop up in progeny several generations down the line was right on the money. We now attribute this phenomenon to the power of recessive genes -- a power first noted (as far as I know) in Genesis 30:25-43, in which Laban and Jacob work out a deal for wages (to be paid in sheep and goats) which Jacob wins despite Laban's cheating.

Though Charles Darwin had numerous dogs over the course of his life, he was particularly fond of terriers, and counted one of them, a white fox terrier by the name of Polly (what we would now call a Jack Russell terrier), as his closest out-of-doors walking companion at the end of his life.

It was Polly that led, by a circuitous route, to Darwin writing his last great work on earth worms.

When he moved into the house at Downe in Bromley, in the Sussex Region of England, Darwin bought a small adjoining field and created there a "sandwalk" where he could pace in thought with his dog by his side.

Upon purchasing the land for the sandwalk, Darwin had treated a portion of the soil with a layer of broken chalk (probably to knock down soil alkalinity) and another with coal ash (probably to increase phosphorous), and in the middle of the field, he planted a copse of trees. The sandwalk circled the whole.

Darwin counted his turns around the sandwalk by kicking flints to a corner of a turn. When he started out, shortly after the sandwalk's construction, there were a lot of flints in the field since it had been plowed prior to his acquisition of the property. As the years passed, however, Darwin notice that there seemed to be fewer and fewer flints about, and it was only the digging of his terrier, Polly, that told them where they had gone -- they lay just beneath the surface of the soil.

Somewhat perplexed, Darwin discovered that all the flints that had existed on his land all those years before were, in fact, still there -- lying just beneath the soil and covered up, ever so slowly, by the action of millions of worms tossing their castings out of their burrows.

Darwin had workers dig a trench at the location where the broken chalk had been put down some 29 years earlier, and there he found the chalk, now lying seven inches below the surface. Simple arithmetic suggested that worms on his property were building up soil at the rate of about 0.22 inches a year, and that over time, such action could result in entire cities being buried by the actions of worms alone. An excavation at the site where the ash had been layed down showed the worms were similarly employed burying that material, and at about the same rate of speed.

Darwin's observations about worms were turned into his last major work, entitled: "The Formation of Vegetable Mould Through the Action of Worms With Observations of Their Habits".

But what of Polly, the dog that helped start this line of inquiry? Polly got old with Darwin and, a few days after Darwin died in April of 1882, she was put down -- fed to the worms if you will. 

Or gone to ground, if you prefer.

Snow Starting to Melt

The snow is melting faster than I thought.  I’ve got some push piles 4 feet deep, so those will take more than a week.  Still — I think we’ve had our last snow of the year.

After the Big Thaw

Coprolite Songs

There are quite a lot of songs about coprolites. Not kidding. Go to Youtube and type "coprolite song" into the search bar.  Amazing!

Elon Musk Knows Nothing About Hunting

Last Year at this time, Elon Musk and his team of 20-year old incels came to Washington to ferret out fraud and shoot it dead. 

They were cock sure that finding fraud against the government was as easy as plugging in a lap top and erasing all the information that appeared on forward-facing government web sites.

Easy, peasie, am-I-right??

City boys. Crypto-currency yahoos.

What could *possibly* go wrong?

I was, let us say, a wee bit skeptical. 

You see, I spent over two decades immersed in the mechanics of Medicare, Medicaid, pension, and Social Security funding.  

For 14 years, I worked on issues associated with massive frauds against the government, talking to whistleblowers and lawyers filing cases under the False Claims Act, which has, so far, returned over $85 billion of taxpayer money back to the American people.

All this by way of saying I know a bit about fraud, and especially about fraud against the US Government.

Back in 2009, I took a meeting at SEIU (Service Employees International Union), in which a panel of staffers demanded to know how to find fraud. 

Yes — it really was a demand. They wanted to find fraud and get rich doing it.  Surely it was so easy it was knowledge that could be conveyed in a few minutes time, and for free?

Right?.

Riiiii-ght.

I assure you it’s not that easy, and if anyone thinks it is, they can file a quick and easy (cough :: cough) False Claims Act lawsuit that is sure to make them a millionaire within a week (cough :: cough).

What could go wrong? Nothing!

Of course, it’s bullshit.  

Fraud is like a good magic show — you’re not supposed to see it or understand it from the cheap seats.

In the end, Musk and his Team of Incels failed to find and file even one fraud case.

They not only killed off essential government programs needed for American safety, health, and economic security, they actually raised the financial cost of government and spurred on the debt.

Which brings me to this post that I wrote over 15 years ago. Ostensibly, it’s about hunting, but it was spurred by that SEIU meeting with a couple of young-uns that were sure, like Elon Musk, that fraud-fighting was so easy they could learn the fundamentals in an afternoon.

MAGICAL THINKING

I sometimes run into people who want me to explain to them how to do something. No problem there -- I am always willing to share information. But sometimes things are not as simple as they appear from the outside, are they?

And more often than not, the person asking the question is not really that interested in learning, are they? If they were, they would have gotten a book, drilled on the Internet, and shown a lot more initiative a lot earlier than now.

In my experience, most folks are not really interested in doing the hard, slogging work of getting good at something; they want the easy miracles that come from pixy dust and magic wands. Give them a book on a subject, and they will not even read it.

In this world of one-minute rice, it seems everyone wants to know the "tricks of the trade," without actually taking the time to learn the trade.

I was reminded of this earlier in the week when a woman at work asked me a question that suggested something I knew to be very hard was, in fact, very easy and that there must be some short-cut to getting it done. What was that miracle short-cut she wanted to know?

I always find such questions offensive, because they assume knowledge is given away on a plate and served up for the asking, and that no real investment of time and energy is needed.

In fact a lot of people feel that way about a lot of things, and hunting and fishing are not exceptions.

“How do you hunt and fish?”

Well, which one do you want to do?

“Hunt, I guess.”

What do you want to hunt?

“I don’t know. Say deer.”

OK. Well, let me ask you a question: Why do you want to hunt?

“Why does that matter?”

Well, is it for meat, or for trophy, or is this pure outdoor sport?

“There's a difference?”

There is.

“OK. . . . How about trophy ... for sport.”

OK. How do you want to hunt?

“What do you mean?”

Do you want to use a rifle, a shotgun, a bow, or black powder?

“What's the difference?”

You can use a shotgun anywhere, but you have to be closer, while a rifle is prohibited in a lot of areas of the East Coast. Black powder is increasingly popular, but is not quite as accurate as a rifle, but the ball goes farther than a shotgun.

“Oh. . . . Well let's shoot black powder then.”

OK, well you're going to need a gun, a hunting license, a tree stand, some cold weather clothes, a decent pair of boots, a bit of camouflage, some blaze orange stuff, a skinning kit, and a place to freeze the meat.

“What's all that going to cost?”

Figure $1,000.

“Wow. That's a lot of money. I can get deer jerky on EBay for $8 a pound.”

Yes, you can.

“OK, but how do you hunt? I mean, assuming you have all the equipment?”

Well you have to learn how to use the equipment. You will need to take a gun safety course just to get a hunting license, and you will need to practice setting up a deer stand too, as more people die falling out of deer stands than you want to think about. And then you have to learn how to shoot, and reload, and clean the gun as well.

“How long is all that going to take?”

If you start on it right now, at least a couple of weeks.

“Oh. . . . OK, suppose I do all that. Then what?”

Well, then you have to get permission to hunt on someone's land.

“Can't I just go to a National Forest or something?”

Yes you can, but you are not likely to see too many deer in a National Forest. Deer are an edge creature, and there are far more of them in farm country than there are in a National Forest where there is not as much good food to browse.

“But I thought there were a lot of deer in America. I read that. And I see them on the road sometimes when I am in the country.”

There are a lot of deer. Especially in areas where there is mixed development with a lot of crops, scattered houses, and small forest plots in between. A lot of America looks like that now, but you cannot always hunt in those locations. A gun can push a bullet a long way, and it can kill people accidentally, so you cannot shoot a gun near a road or within eyesight of a building.

“Oh. . . . So how do I get farm property to hunt on?”

Well, you have to ask, and it helps if you know someone. A lot of places are too small to have deer, and a lot of farmers are not anxious to have deer hunters on their land because they want to hunt their own deer on their own land. Other folks are worried about liability in case a hunter shoots a neighbor, or a cow, or accidentally kills himself or a hunting partner while crossing over a fence.

“But I won't sue.”

It doesn't matter. Folks fear lawsuits, and it's not a crazy fear in this day and age. As far as a farmer is concerned, there is no benefit to them if you hunt their property. In fact, with so many hunters leaving open the gates and driving through wet fields and leaving ruts, hunters are almost always more trouble than they are worth.

“OK . . . but suppose I find a place to hunt?”

And suppose you have bought the equipment and also learned how to use it?

“Uh, yes. That's right. I have it all. Now what?”

Well, let's assume you are hunting a 2,000 acre farm. That's about three square miles. There will be deer on there, but there will be no deer at all on 99 percent of the land, 99 percent of the time. So that's your problem.

“So what do I do?”

Learn about deer.

“But that's what I'm asking you about.”

What do you want to know?

“Where are they?”

They are taking care of their needs. They are bedding down in thick areas in the daylight, and moving to or from feeding areas in late afternoon or early morning. That's their routine, and they tend to follow routines.

“Well, how do I find their bedding areas?”

You are hunting them?

“Yes.”

OK, if you are hunting deer, it's late Fall or Winter and the leaves are just coming off.

“You can't hunt in Spring or Summer?”

No. There's a season.

“Oh.”

So, you are looking for deer in late Fall or Winter, and there is less cover. The deer will be looking to get out of the wind, and to stay out of sight, so you can guess that they will be in a little hollow, out of the wind and out of eye sight, and preferably near some thicket of evergreen, like honeysuckle. But you are probably not looking to shoot a deer in its bed -- they will hear you coming before you get there, and they will probably be gone. And you will also have a very hard time seeing them because they lie down almost flat and do not move.

“They have good hearing?”

They do. And a terrific sense of smell, and keen eyesight too. If everyone could shoot a trophy buck, there would be no bragging rights to the act.

“But what about all those trophy deer I see shot on television every Sunday? They talk when they are filming and the deer do not run. And those are enormous deer.”

Those are canned hunts.

“What's a canned hunt?”

It's a hunt inside a fence, and often on deer that have been acclimated to the presence of humans. The owner of that property has been feeding those deer for weeks, so the pay-to-shoot guides will know just where they will be and when they will be there.

“That doesn't seem fair.”

It's bad ethically and aesthetically, in my book, but there it is. It's not hunting, that's for sure, since you know where the deer will be, and you have guarantees.

“OK, I'm not going to do that. I want to hunt. How do you do that?”

You mean after you have bought the equipment, and also learned how to use it, and have acquired access to 2,000 acres of land on which to hunt?

“Yes.”

Well, you locate the bedding areas for the deer, as I told you, and then you try to guess where they are moving in order to get food and water. Deer trails will tell you a lot, and so too will track, scat, and rubs.

“What are those last two?”

Scat is deer shit. Look for it, and also what is in it. Tracks will tell you something about size and sex. Since you are looking for a trophy buck, you will want to be looking for big tracks. A rub is a spot on a small tree or large bush where a deer has been rubbing its antlers to get velvet off, and it's also a spot where a buck will spray his scent to mark territory. Dominant bucks will tend to keep coming back to rubs, and if you pay attention you can sometimes tell how big a buck is by how far up the rub is, and where it is located.

“This is starting to sound like a lot of work. I mean, I've never even seen a rub. Where would I start to look for one?”

Well, you have to spend a lot of time in the woods. You have to get to know the land, and how to read the movement of wildlife. You have to start thinking like a deer.

“But I don't want to start thinking like a deer. I want to kill a deer. How do I do that?”

Go up a tree stand, aim the gun, and pull the trigger when you see a deer.

“That's the answer I wanted!”

Glad I could be of help. Good luck trophy hunting in the field.

“Can I ask you another question?”

Sure.

“How do you fish?”

Have We Seen Our Last Snow of the Year?

It’s warmer than predicted today, and things are melting faster than I expected. I’m a bit squirrelly from the weather, so this is good news. The forecast is for 40 to 60 degrees over the next 10 days which is fantastic. I’m ready for winter to be over! 

The iron terrier going to ground in this flower pot is consumed by impatients from June to November. It’s the exact size as my old Mountain Girl, and I will treat her for rust and touch her paint up a bit once it gets warmer.

Rise of the Dachshunds

This set up is different from what I once had for my terriers, but not entirely unrelated. In addition to a stone dog house at my old house, the terrierd also had access to the garage (and the seasonally heated dog houses inside) through a dog door that entered a ground-level window. After entering the dog door, there was a short staircase down to the big dog house, which was tucked under the stairs.  The top of the inside dog house was flat, and had a loafing area on top in case the terriers got too warm or wanted to get away from one another.  That setup working great for over 25 years. Of course the dogs slept inside the house at night, in crates in the laundry room.
.

When Terrier Training Theory Fails

A reader asked for citations to an old post which noted that clicker-maven Karen Pryor could not take her Border Terrier off-leash in the woods and used an Invisible Fence system to keep her dog in the yard.  

Apparently the links in my 2017 post no longer work. 🤷‍♂️

Ah well, here are the sources for those that need them.  It appears that with Ms. Pryor’s death, her web sites are being taken down, but computers and the Way Back Machine never sleep.

In the 1999 edition of “Don't Shoot the Dog,” Ms. Pryor writes:

"The same principle is at work in the Invisible Fence systems for keeping a dog on your property. A radio wire is strung around the area in which you want to confine the dog. The dog wears a collar with a receiver in it. If the dog gets too near the line, the collar shocks it. However, a few feet before that point, the collar gives a warning buzz. The warning buzzer is a discriminative stimulus for "Don't go any further." If the setup is properly installed, a trained dog can be effectively confined and will never receive an actual shock. I used such a fence when my terrier and I lived in a house in the woods. An actual fence would have been a perpetual invitation to try to dig under it or escape through an open gate; the conditioned warning signal and the Invisible Fence were far more secure."  

Google books has the 1999 edition online and searchable (see “search inside”) >> https://www.google.com/books/edition/Don_t_Shoot_the_Dog/SgwoXzJG2-kC?hl=en&gl=US

And what about my note that Ms. Pryor could not train her Border Terrier not to chase squirrels?  

That used to be found on her own web site, but that too has been taken down with her  death.  

The good news is that the original can be found on the “Way Back Machine” (web archive) >> https://web.archive.org/web/20200807181150/https://clickertraining.com/node/1344

"Going from that collie to terriers in the woods is just a shaping staircase; if you want to do it, it can be done, but it involves a lot of steps. For me, that's too much like work. My practical solution is a mix of training and management. The backyard is fenced, and there the dogs can bark and chase squirrels all they want. Outside the front door, on the sidewalk, we enjoy a shaped behavior of stalking squirrels, with an occasional brief 'chase' reinforcer. In the woods, my poodle, whose lust for squirrels is mitigated by his general timidity, can be off-leash, because he was quite easily shaped to come when called, even from squirrels. My 17-year-old border terrier, however, stays on-leash in the woods. From her standpoint, it's a lot better than no woods at all."

There’s No Terrier In a Pit Bull

This Roman bas relief is from 3rd Century AD.  The mosaic is from 3rd or 4th Century AD in Sicily.

The same “sanglier,” or wild pig, and the same Pit Bull-type dog are found in the field today.

Terriers?  They would be created in about 1,300 years… and no terrier breed would be named for 1,600 years.

It reminds me of the old Dorothy Sayers line:

“How fleeting are all human passions compared with the massive continuity of ducks.”

Thoroughbred Horses Are Mutts?

Back in 2017, I noted that:

“It's commonly said that all Thoroughbreds can be traced back to just three stallions, but it's not true. You see, three stallions get you no progeny -- so it's three stallions and a lot of mares. Of course, it also wasn't three stallions. In fact, over 150 stallions of ‘oriental’ origin make up the lineage of the Thoroughbred, and hundreds of mares too. 

“The Thorougbred line is 400 years old now, and there's been a lot of infusion and drift. Saying that a modern horse can be traced back to one of the original sires, is a bit like me saying I am related to Prince Charles or the Aghan Khan; even if true, it does not tell us much. There is a reason we do not prohibit second cousins from marrying, and why moving much past a 5-generation pedigree is pretty pointless in terms of genetics.”

That last line may be controversial, but I stand by it.

The other day, Patty Young forwarding to me this fascinating write-up by Heather David over on Facebook (Jan. 20, 2026).  I post it here for posterity and permanence, as Facebook is ephemeral and this is too good to lose.

Like all the rest of you,, we have been bowled over by the extraordinary revelations that came from the deep dive into the equine mitochondrial DNA - and what it has exposed about horse breeding. 

The remarkable Dr Emmaline Hill - the young Irish (genius) geneticist who knocked on the door of Jim Bolger, one of the wealthiest and most influential thoroughbred breeders and trainers in Ireland and asked him for a loan to back her research - has now managed to turn thoroughbred breeding on its head. 

After 300 years of a tightly controlled Stud Book - and all the mythology that the thoroughbred breed was effectively descended from just a handful of Arabian horses - the real truth was finally revealed.

While there was certainly four or five Arabian horses, such as the Darley Arabian and the Godolphin Arabian who were all brought back to England from the Middle East , it turns out that overwhelmingly, the core base of the thoroughbred came from anything with four legs: Shetland ponies, carriage horses, farm horses, Draft horses.. you name it.

It seems that a couple of hundred years ago, all you needed to get into the Thoroughbred Stud book was to be the fastest horse at the races held down on the Village Green .

As I've mentioned in previous posts, Dr Hill has identified the real source of speed in the legendary Canadian sire Northern Dancer as being a Shetland pony mare who raced in an English village in the 16th century.

While the physical ‘type’ of the Shetland pony has disappeared over the long, 300 year history of the thoroughbred breed - that particular speed gene has been passed through intact into the Northern Dancer breed. 

Dr Hill has also revealed some concerning research that shows the original thoroughbred - which she calls the TT type, the true tough stayer with all the expected characteristics of the thoroughbred - is now effectively being bred out of fashion.

While the second category is the TC Horse  - that's the middle distance horse - what the world really wants today it seems is the CC  horse which is all about early speed and the early running two-year-old and three-year-olds. 

The thing about the mitochondrial DNA is that it is absolutely 100% accurate - it is tracing the exact footprints of the mothers mother's mother's mother's mother DNA - and so on 

Further recent research by other geneticists into the mitochondrial DNA has traced the journey of pony blood into the American horse  - and in particular,  the American cutting horse.

Once Dr Hill established the code - how to scientifically ‘track down the tigers’ if you like - then she opened the field right up for other geneticists to track the mitochondrial path in numerous other breeds and species. 

It appears that Smart Little Lena -  the major sire influence of the last 30 years - actually originated from a line of Welsh mountain ponies on his female side. 

He was extremely small  - some say only around 13.2 hands high - with the typical cute dish face, bug eyes and quirky ways of the Welsh mountain pony. 

Added to this are the revelations around the 'pink' or or strawberry roan gene and the 'blue roan' gene.

These pretty and unusual colours have rapidly risen to prominence in such champion horses as Royal Blue Boon and her various descendants as well as the popular 'pink roan' horses by horses such as Peptoboonsmal and Metallic Cat. 

These breeds of horses also have a particular physical type that - when compared to the Welsh mountain pony and the Connemara - appear to be incredibly similar.

The geneticists tell us that the pony gene is completely separate to the thoroughbred gene pool from which most quarter horses and Australian stock horses were originally descended.

Because the pony gene pool is so far removed as a complete 'outlier', it is therefore going to be overwhelmingly dominant across the existing AQHA and ASHS gene pools.

In other words, if you think of the dominance that the Bos Indicus (Brahman) had over Bos Taurus (British breeds) then you will start to

understand how it all works.

The revelation that so much Welsh and Connemara pony blood is now carried so closely in these 'pink' and 'blue' genes probably explains their smaller physical type - shorter legs, prettier heads and less speed - when compared to other horses that are descended from thoroughbreds. 

Dr Emmaline Hill has been able to establish a ‘speed gene’ and she has been able to trace it using genetic markers. 

The speed gene is only carried in the thoroughbred. No other breed of horse carries it in the world. 

In fact her search for the ‘speed gene’ was the ‘hook’ that convinced Irish beeeder and trainer Jim Bolger to put the funding up to make her research possible. 

In any case, seeing really is believing - and the comparison of photographs between famous horses and ponies (see below) is enlightening - to say the least.

While the Australian Stock Horse was mostly based on colonial thoroughbred bloodlines - along with a dash of brumby, Arab, Percheron, you name it - there was apparently also a good dash of pony in several 'breeds' such as Cecil Bruce and Paleroo Peter the sire of Rivoli Ray. 

So where did the pony actually come from? Well, it's probably a no-brainer. Australian graziers and farmers all had children - no different to American ranchers and farmers.

They were kids ponies that eventually had a foal 'by that stallion down the road' and when they rode the progeny they discovered it was hardy, sure-footed and clever - and usually extremely small.

While the breed was around in some fragmented form since early American settlement, the American AQHA was only established as a formal organisation in 1940. 

This is relatively recent compared to the Thoroughbred Stud book which was established in England over 300 years ago. 

That means that while ponies might have been in the ‘faraway fragments’ of the breed for a very long time, those dominant Welsh or Connemara strains that found their way into horses such as Smart Little Lena, Royal Blue Boon and Metallic Cat have only been in genetic ‘play’ for a comparatively brief time - 84 years as compared to the 300 plus if the thoroughbreds.

That means all their primary physical characteristics remain strongly in place to this day - for instance, their smaller size, their colour, distinctive heads, legs etc. 

These pony characterises may have been enhanced by the concentrated level of inbreeding that has been practised in recent years which has ‘enhanced’ these characteristics by constant repetition. 

In other words, it appears to have stabilised a ‘type’. 

It may also suggest that their superior performance characteristics (cutting ability) might be linked into their (similar) physical characteristics so the phenotype (what they actually look like) managed to ‘hitch a ride’. 

So what can we learn from the revelations of the mitochondrial DNA that has so dramatically 'pulled back the genetic curtains' and brought forth all of these interesting family secrets? 

That the pony will always - ALWAYS - easily dominate any gene pool that has been based on thoroughbred blood. 

So saddle up folks, for all those pretty pink and blue coat colours - along with their shorter legs, cuter heads and much more limited speed - because the pony always rules - and that’s that.

They may only be small - but they sure can pack a punch.

Excellent stuff, and more discussion of the same over at Equus.

Three House Nooks

THE MUD ROOM is a nice feature of this house.  Shoes and boots are in the grey cabinet and the bottom of the brown cubbies. Grey bins hold batteries, collars, and the like. Top left has e-bike chargers, a spare leash, and a hat or two, while top right has game cameras and a small drone.  Behind me are a washer and dryer and a big farm sink. There is a laundry chute which feeds invisibly into a cabinet above the sink. The padded chair is a nice place to sit while lacing up shoes or loafing with a book while the laundry takes a spin. The coat rack to the left of the chair is always overloaded this time of year, and the chair takes the overage going in and out. At night, one of the house dogs sleeps in a crate in this room, generally lulled to sleep by the dryer.

THE BREAKFAST NOOK, below, is right off the kitchen and the living room. Big bay windows look out on 8 bird feeders and an over-story of 80-90 foot oaks. The fused-glass piece hanging in the window was picked up in Shepherdstown, Maryland. The left side of the bay window looks out on a large deck, accessible from both the living room and a spare bedroom.  This deck has over-sized outdoor furniture on it, a sliding shade awning, and a hot tub. From the hot tub, I can see the bee hives as well as the owl nest box installed high in a tree over the garden shed.

THE READING NOOK, below, houses one of three bookcases holding natural history and other exotica.  Next to the  bookcase is an antique Chinese butter churn, which holds a few utilitarian walking sticks. On top of the chest of drawers are skulls of various types, most jumbled into a large glass canister.  I have some African art (masks) to hang up, but sloth has stalked me. The bit of tapestry above the chest of drawers is a bag face collected in Turkey. The red rug us Tunisian, and has been in the family for over 60 years.  The wooden twig rocker was picked up in a big antique emporium in Emmitsburgh, Maryland.  In this room, in addition to the padded reading chair in the pictured corner is another identical chair in the opposite corner.  Unseen are two large wall pieces — a 5-foot tall Dogon Mask from the border of Mali and Burkina Faso, and an ornate wooden ceiling panel from Morocco. Large sand roses (rose de sable) from Algeria, and cross sections of fossilized tree trunks from the American southwest, are on the floor.  A wooden screen hides a small desk and chair against the same wall as the window.  The window looks out on the small orchard (18 trees) that I planted below the house.

Daylight Fox

A very large red fox walking through the back yard. Shot with iPhone through window and screen.  The bee hives and wind screen for the hives (yellow and green) are at left.

Einstein Wrote It Down

Why Holding Dogs Hostage Is a Weak Hand

Over in Britain, conservative Member of Parliament Mark Pritchard has said the “Trail hunt ban will result in 300 dog deaths in one county” alone.

Oof.

These kinds of arguments are why fox hunting is on a back leg in the UK.

“Let us continue as before, or we'll kill our dogs" is not as good an argument as some folks in the mounted fox-hunting world seem to think it is.

For starters, it sounds like the argument of a sociopath, which adds fuel to the caricature painted by the “antis”.

It does not help that that argument has been tried before, most notably when the Greyhound tracks closed.

The problem with the Greyhound argument was that the racing industry had spent 70 years shooting dogs and burying them in ditches, and this was both widely know and well-documented. 

The “adopt a racing Greyhound” program was only created *after* that exposé.

Now that same argument is being trotted out by the mounted hunts, but again there’s a problem; 200 years of so many mounted hunts shooting old foxhounds in the head at around age 7 or 8.  Again, this is well-documented, and well-known.

Are some old foxhounds adopted out?  Sure, but a dog that has been pack-housed in a kennel and never been housebroken and which likely has only a few more years to live, is not seen by most as a perfect pet.  

That said, I have no doubt that a stronger push will be made to rehome some old foxhounds, if only for the optics.

But, to be honest, it’s unlikely there will be a rush to the guns.

The reality that most hunt hounds will continue as hunt hounds, only now they will be following a drag scented with something like aniseed oil, rather than a trail that has been scented with fox urine.

Yep, that’s it.  The difference between “trail hunting” and drag hunting really is that small — the scent on the bumper being dragged by a runner, horse, or quad bike.

Will most trail hunt hounds simply switch over to drag hunting?

I think you can count in it.  

The mounted hunts are mostly about riding horses, dressing up, and socializing. Dogs are part of it, of course, but the fox has always been a bit player.

Some Chainsaw Work Ahead

Two big trees came down in the big winds we had the other day.  Driveway not blocked, and nothing hit. One tree fell on my side, and the other on my neighbors; both pushed over at the rootball. I’ll chainsaw them into sections for splitting when it thaws.

I plan on stacking a few log sections to make some wildlife shelters.  I figure two big logs, spaced apart and topped by a third log, should make a very serviceble artificial den.  I have no idea why I’ve never heard of anyone doing that before.  Perhaps in the doing I will discover the answer.

On the consumer side of life, a four-pack of new chains for my chainsaw costs less than the per-chain cost of sharpening an old chain.  Amazing.

Inbred Thinking Without End

Pictured is the 2021 Westminster Dog Show winner, a Pekingese named Wasabi.  

Wasabi's grandfather was Malachy, who won the Westminster Dog Show in 2012.

Wasabi's great-grandfather was Malachy, who won the Westminster Dog Show in 2012.

And Wasabi's great-great-grandfather was also Malachy, who won the Westminster Dog Show in 2012.

There’s a family tree that looks like a cable-knit sweater!

Some 20 years back, I wrote a piece called “Inbred Thinking,” about the closed-loop, self-reinforcing back-patting and back-scratching that goes on within the Kennel Clubs.

I was reminded of that with this picture, which shows Wasabi owner David Fitzpatrick with his dog.

Guess who was the “best in show” judge at Westminster who selected Penny the Doberman as top dog just last week?

None other than David Fitzpatrick!

Twenty years ago I wrote:

“The Kennel Club is a huge money-making bureaucracy dependent upon selling people on the ‘exclusivity’ of a closed registry and a scrap of paper that says a dog is a ‘pure breed’.  So long as people are willing to buy Kennel Club registered dogs that have predictably higher chances of serious physical impairments than cross-bred dogs, the Kennel Club (and Kennel Club breeders) have little motivation to change the way they do business.

“Let me hasten to say that the Kennel Club is not filled with evil people intent on doing harm to dogs. It is, in fact, filled with regular people who are different from the rest of the world only in the degree (and the way) they seek ego-gratification and are status-seeking.

“This last point is import: the Kennel Club is not primarily about dogs. Dogs do not care about ribbons, pedigrees, titles, and points. These are human obsessions. The reason a human will drive several hundred miles and stand around all day waiting for 10 minutes in the ring is not because of the dog, but because the human needs that ribbon, that title, and that little bit of extra status that comes from a win.

“Each to his own, but let us be honest about what dog shows are about -- they are about ribbons for people. The dogs themselves could not give a damn.

“It is unfair to fault individual breeders and breed clubs for the failures of the Kennel Club, as these smaller units are powerless to change the larger whole.

“Breed clubs are small and largely impotent by design. Because the Kennel Club does not require breeders, pet owners, or even show ring ribbon-chasers to join a breed club as a condition of registration, these entities remain small, underfunded, and unrepresentative.

“Breed clubs, like dog shows themselves, are also steeped in internecine politics and dominated by big breeders and people who over-value ‘conformation.’

“It is only by conforming to the AKC system for decades that anyone can hope to move up in the AKC hierarchy -- a situation that guarantees intellectual and bureaucratic inbreeding.

“In the end, the AKC is a closed registry in every sense of that word. It continues to embrace the failed genetic theories of Victorian England because it is incapable of serious reform within the Club itself.”

What was true then, is true now.

So am I surprised that the breeder of the very inbred Pekingese Wasabi was also the Westminster judge who tapped a Doberman as top dog last week?

Not a bit.

And, to be clear, this post is not about David Fitzpatrick, who is, by all accounts, a wonderful person. 

This post is about something larger; inbred thinking.  

Which is to say **of course** a top AKC show judge would inbreed the hell out of hist own dogs, and **of course** the Westminster Kennel Club would assume that someone who engages in that level of inbreeding would be just the sort of expert they’d want to select their top dog at Westminster.

Inbred thinking?   Yes indeed.

Why Holding Hounds Hostage Is a Weak Hand

Over in Britain, conservative Member of Parliament Mark Pritchard has said the “Trail hunt ban will result in 300 dog deaths in one county” alone.

Oof.

These kinds of arguments are why foxhunting is on a back leg in the UK.

“Let us continue as before, or we'll kill our dogs" is not as good an argument as some folks in the mounted fox-hunting world seem to think it is.

For starters, it sounds like the argument of a sociopath, which adds fuel to the caricature painted by the “antis”.

It does not help that argument has been tried before, most notably when the Greyhound tracks closed.

The problem with the Greyhound argument was that the racing industry had spent 70 years shooting dogs and burying them in ditches, and this was both widely know and well-documented. 

The “adopt a racing Greyhound” program was only created *after* that exposé.

Now that same argument is being trotted out by the mounted hunts, but again there’s a problem; 200 years of so many mounted hunts shooting old foxhounds in the head at around age 7 or 8.  Again, this is well-documented, and well-known.

Are some old foxhounds adopted out?  Sure, but a dog that has been pack-housed in a kennel and never been housebroken and which likely has only a few more years to live, is not seen by most as a perfect pet.  

That said, I have no doubt that a stronger push will be made to rehome some old foxhounds, if only for the optics.

But, to be honest, it’s unlikely there will be a rush to the guns.

The reality that most hunt hounds will continue as hunt hounds, only now they will be following a drag scented with something like aniseed oil, rather than a trail that has been scented with fox urine.

Yep, that’s it.  The difference between “trail hunting” and drag hunting really is that small — the scent on the bumper being dragged by a runner, horse, or quad bike.

Will most trail hunt hounds simply switch over to drag hunting?

I think you can count in it.  

The mounted hunts are mostly about riding horses, dressing up, and socializing. Dogs are part of it, of course, but the fox has always been a bit player.

https://www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/country-and-farming/trail-hunt-ban-will-result-in-300-dog-deaths-in-one-county-5498297?

A Type of Dog As Old As Rome

 

The Pit Bull is a type of dog (not a breed) created in middle Europe as a catch and drover’s dog used on cattle and pigs.  

Some form of this dog is at least a thousand years old, was fought in Rome against both men, dogs, and wild animals .

Imported to the UK with the Romans, the dogs were fought, based on size, against everything from rats to monkeys, men to lions, and bears to bulls. And, of course, they were matched against other dogs.

Terriers, of course, were created in the UK, at least 600 years later.  Despite the name, there is no terrier in a Pit Bull, and why would there be?  You do not create a 30-80 pound fighting dog with a 12-18 pound working terrier who is bred to not fight with packs of hounds!

This Land Was Lost to Townhouses

Only I remember who lived, loved, and moved on this little bit of waste land.

This glory was killed by the vandalism that is human population growth.

We can’t grow on like this. 

Pavlov Trained Himself

Oblivion Is Under-valued

A Fictional Dog

Let’s start at the beginning….

The "Dandie Dinmont" (first picture) is a terrier named after a character in a Walter Scott novel (Guy Mannering), which was first published in 1815.  

Dandie Dinmont was a border farmer from Liddesdale who was said to have terriers by the name of "Mustard" and "Pepper" which he trained for work the same as dogs are still trained today:

“I had them a’ regularly entered, first wi’ rottens — then wi’ stots or weasels — and then wi’ the tods and brocks— and now they fear naething that ever cam wi’ a hairy skin on ’t.’”

The novel itself is a very bad romantic tale supposedly taking place between 1760 and 1780 in Scotland, but it *does* mention fox hunting -- the first real mention in British literature, and the timing is not a coincidence, as the Enclosure Movement, which did so much to drive the rise of fox hunting and the development of dogs, was starting to roar along at this time.

So, to begin, we start with a fictional dog.

How fictional?

Nearly 20 years ago, I challenged anyone to show a picture of ANY Dandie Dinmont, ANYWHERE, that had actually been worked to ground by ANYONE in the preceding 50 years.  

That post is here, and worth a read >> https://terriermandotcom.blogspot.com/2006/11/more-on-dandie-dinmonts-and-small.html?

Guess what?  No takers.  

So now we have 70 years of … nothing.

In fact, I can find scant evidence that a Dandie Dinmont has ever worked anything underground EVER.  

This is, well and truly, a dog created by fiction.

Why do I bring this up?

Well, it seems the Dandie Dinmont breeders think the sway back and short legs of their strange-looking and unpopular dog is necessary for work (see appended sign-on form letter being circulated in the UK)

They are?  

That’s news to me and everyone else who has dug a thousand holes over hundreds of animals over several decades.

And, of course, it’s complete nonsense and pure fantasy untempered by actual experience with shovel in hand and locator collar on dog.

As for the rest of the letter, I have no idea what it means, and I suspect the author does not either.  

What is incontestable is that Dandies have health issues and a very small gene pool.

Is continuing to breed this exaggerated and non-working dog, with fairly serious morphological issues, in a small, closed gene pool a good idea?

Nope.  The good news is that, whatever happens next with this dog, the world has voted with its feet and its pocketbook.  

Or, as I once wrote about this and several other rare breeds:  DANGER — Market Forces at Work.