What happens when you tell the truth about the Kennel Club program of breeding diseased, deformed, and defective nonworking dogs within a closed-registry system that virtually mandates rising levels of inbreeding?
Simple: the Kennel Club moves against you, as all cheating companies do when someone from within blows the whistle on the passing off of defective products.
And so, in the wake of the BBC program Pedigree Dogs Exposed, a top breeder of Cavalier King Charles Spaniels who blew the whistle on genetic brain disorders is being cued up to be pushed out of her breed club -- a fate others have suffered in the past when they spoke up.
Unfortunately for the Kennel Club, however, their tried-and-true response of ostracizing, demonizing, and barring those who speak up may no longer be working as well as it once did.
One problem is the Internet which makes it much easier for press, public and politicians (and dog buyers) to get the full story.
Pictures are available, as well as video. You do not have to run to the dusty shelves to read about genetics, nor is it possible to scuttle breed health reports.
Want to know what percent of Cavalier King Charles Spaniels have diseased hearts? The information is just a click away, as it is for virtually every other breed under the sun.
And, as a consequence, the press corps is starting to give real air time to those who are more than blue-blazer dog owners.
A good example of the new press being afforded The Kennel Club can be found in today's edition of The Telegraph which features a nice four-color picture of a lovely red-headed woman and her basset hound.
The title says it all: Top breeder says Kennel Club is in denial over 'deformed' dogs.
Notes Alison Jeffers, who runs a pack of 30 working basset hounds:"Bassets bred for shows like Crufts are so inbred that most are incapable of being working dogs even though they win prizes in that category.
"They weigh 35-40kg compared with our dogs' 20kg. They have very short legs, skin, ear and eye problems and suffer from arthritis, and yet judges turn a blind eye to all of that as if it is irrelevant.
"The Kennel Club and many breeders are in denial. They have to admit the scale of the problem and take urgent action to solve it."
Focused on working bassets, Ms. Jeffers had to outcross Kennel Club bassets in order to get back to the true working dog which is far removed from the dogs seen in the Kennel Club ring today."The Kennel Club-registered basset hound had developed into a ponderous mutant incapable of hunting so we had to outcross."
Interested in working bassets? Check out the web site of the Albany Bassets in the UK.
Similar clubs exist in the U.S. -- in fact, I know of one about and hour's drive from my house here in Virginia.
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1 comment:
Hi Patrick,
I'm interested to read about the working bassets.
In a previous comment I asked whether you knew about breeds which had a different approach to breeding to avoid the inbreeding problem. Since then I found a link to this website about the Africanis (http://www.africanis.co.za/). This is the name that has been recently given to the native dog of South Africa. This dog first came to South Africa with the arrival of the first Bantu speaking peoples. There is now a society dedicated to the preservation of the breed. They don't give too much information about how they breed dogs but they say that they are guided by conservation principles and that they are not looking to "develop" the breed but rather to maintain it the way it is in all its uniqueness and natural variability. In my view a lot of the trouble with the Kennel Club type of breeding is this belief that the breeders have that they are "improving" their breeds.
I hope that you find the site interesting.
Amanda
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