"Some Practical Solutions to Welfare Problems in Dog Breeding," was published in Animal Welfare in 1999.
Authored by P.D. McGreevey and F.W. Nicholas of the Department of Animal Science, University of Sydney, Australia, the paper correctly notes that if The Kennel Club and AKC embrace a "dogs first" approach to canine health, they are going to have to deal with some breed standards head-on and without flinching.
The reason for this is rather simple. As the authors note, "some show standards place more importance on appearance than on functionality" and "[b]reeders compete with one another to see how well they can produce phenotypes that conform to a written standard -- including traits that have, at best, questionable welfare benefits."
In short, a lot of Kennel Club dogs are selected for extreme exageration, and some breeds are very close to being little more than "freaks on a leash."
The authors give concrete examples of what they are talking about:
The following examples are taken from current breed standards. The Pug, for example, should have eyes that are 'very large, globular in shape' (Kennel Club, London 1994; FCI Standard No 253). Is it a coincidence that Pugs have a tendency to present at veterinary clinics with exophthalmoses and exposure keratitis?
For the British Bulldog, the 'skull should be very large - the larger the better' (Pre-1987 Kennel Club, London). This is a breed in which large foetal head size commonly leads to dystocia (difficulties in birthing). This same breed is also required to have curved 'roach' backs. It is perhaps not surprising that they are sometimes born with twisted spines, ie hemivertebrae.
Finally, the requirement that in Dachshunds (Wire-haired), 'the whole trunk should be long' (Pre-1987 Kennel Club, London) is surely contributing to the prevalence of prolapsed intervertebral discs in this breed.
Sometimes breed standards are confusing, blurred and contradictory. For example, the Japanese Chin is required to have a head that is 'large in proportion to [the] size of dog, broad skull, rounded in front, and between [the] ears, but never domed' (Kennel Club, London 1994). How can one achieve a broad skull, rounded in the front and between the ears, without being domed?Similarly, the Shar Pei (Kennel Club, London 1994; FCI Standard No 309) is required to have 'loose skin' and a 'frowning expression', but function of the eyeball or lid [should] in no way [be] disturbed by surrounding skin, folds and hair', and dogs should be 'free from entropion' (rolled-in eyelids). In fact, the combination of loose skin and a frowning expression is likely to predispose to entropion.
Furthermore, breed standards can affect temperament. For example, in a breed such as the Puli which should have 'long hair [that] overshadows [the] eyes like an umbrella' (Kennel Club, London 1987), simply cutting the hair that obstructs a dog's vision can improve its temperament (Houpt 1991). Interestingly, the same breed standard describes a temperament that is 'wary of strangers'.
Scott and Fuller (1965) argued that cranial morphology has a direct relationship with brain dysfunction. Citing post-mortem evidence of mild hydrocephaly in Cocker Spaniels (American), they conjectured that, 'in selecting for skull shape, the breeders accidentally selected for a brain defect'. The breed standard (American Kennel Club 1992; FCI Standard No 167) favours a skull that is 'rounded but not exaggerated with no tendency toward flatness; the eyebrows are clearly defined with a pronounced stop' (i.e. a pronounced junction between the nasal planum and frontal bone). The combination of roundness in the skull, definition in the brow and pronunciation of the stop must have contributed to an unhealthy skull shape.
In some cases, traits that are best regarded as defects have actually been included in breed standards. For example, brachiocephaly is prompted by the standard for the Boston Terrier (American Kennel Club 1990; FCI Standard No 140) that requires an animal to be 'short headed' and to possess a 'square head and jaw' with a muzzle that 'is short, square, wide and deep . . . shorter in length than in depth; not exceeding in length approximately one-third of the length of the skull'.
The fine legs of the Miniature Poodle and the Italian Greyhound are susceptible to fracture as a sequel to jumping. The unusual conformation of their radii relative to the mass of their bodies, increases the risk that these dogs will damage themselves while performing an innate behaviour (jumping).
Even the Australian native dog is under threat, with dog fanciers showing interest in having dingoes appear in shows (Lemonick & Smith 1995). How can we improve on animals that have succeeded in a hostile environment for thousands of years? The creation of a written breed standard for such animals, and its pursuit in the show ring, speaks of either considerable naivety or arrogance.
Read the whole thing here.
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Even worse are the ad hoc fads that aren't written in the standard that are still adhered to by overzealous breeders who find problems that don't exist and solutions that don't work.
ReplyDeleteIt's bad enough when they are religious zealots following a holy book written by men, it's worse when they make up their virtues and sins on the fly.
Dingoes as show dogs? You can't even import them, because Australia counts them as native fauna. Native fauna cannot be exported for private purposes according to Australian law.
ReplyDeleteThe dingo isn't the first. They've doing it with the Israeli pariah dog, calling it the Canaan dog. It was used by the Israeli army as a sniffer dog for explosives.
The dingo, though, still exists as a wild animal or, at the very least, somewhere between wolf and dog. Although one was trained as a guide dog and allegedly one was trained to herd sheep (and not kill them), it is still not exactly domesticated.
There are only a few "pure" populations of dingo left, because they've bred with imported dogs. My guess is that if they do this, they'll do all they can to collect from these populations. Hopefully, the Australian and Australian state governments won't allow it. Several states in Australia ban dingo ownership, so that's a plus.
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As for the earlier comment about ad hoc fads, the English-type show golden retriever looks and behaves about as much like the original as the show collie looks like the farm collie. That very, very light color never existed in the breed until sometime in the 1950's or 1960's. The American show type golden's biggest problem was that it had too much coat to swim quickly (which is why the golden is rarely considered a working retriever). It just bogs down in the water.
Then they took the English golden ideal of putting as much bone as possible on extremely short legs. Most Olympic swimmers have big feet and hands and long limbs. You want this in a working retriever as much as possible, while still maintaining volume to keep the dog from becoming chilled in the water. Those short-legged heavily boned dogs are entirely useless in the water or running on the land. The gait is too choppy, and the dogs wear out from exhaustion or from too much stress on the joints easily.
Plus, I think that breeding for this body type increases the likelihood of hip dysplasia, although I've not seen any studies that show that these heavily built dogs have worse hips on average than the other kind. The only goldens I've seen that were OFA Excellent were field-types, though.
The original golden looked a lot like the flat-coated retriever does today (and it was registered as the same breed).
What amazes me is that many golden fanciers are shocked that no one uses them for their original purpose these days (or at least, not the the extent the do with the Labs). They also lament that the breed has split into show and field types, but instead of trying to figure out why, they decide that what the golden needs is to have more dual purpose dogs, which means introducing all of the poor working conformation of the show type into the field type. What they really need to do is come up with a standard that reflects what works in the field, and stop trying to breed yellow Newfoundlands.