Pedigree Dogs Not as Healthy as Mutts & Mixes

In a comment to an earlier post, a reader writes to suggest that one reason folks may think mutts are healthier than pedigree dogs is "because vets don't attribute specific problems to their breeding - how could they? It's a mix!"

An interesting point, but actually, that's not the reason.

We think mutts are healthier than pure-breeds because they actually are healthier!

And the research, as I noted in an earlier post entitled Pet Insurance Data Shows Mutts ARE Healthier!, is not closely held.

When it comes to warranties and insurance, predictive values are important, and fortunes are made by determining the correct digits to place to the right of a point mark.

What does this have to do with dogs?

Quite a lot.

You see, pet insurance companies are in a competitive business to get your dollar. If they get the numbers wrong, and price a premium too high, potential customers may forgo pet insurance altogether or else sign up with a competitor's plan. On the other hand, if the company routinely prices insurance premiums too low, they may push themselves into bankruptcy.

And so, pet insurance companies have collected data on hundreds of thousands of dogs and analyzed that data, in order to assign correct premiums to predictive risks.

And what do the insurance records show? As I note, by way of example:

Embrace Pet Insurance... will insure a mixed breed dog up to 8 years of age, but the cut-off for purebred dogs is 6 years.

What's that about?

Simple: Taken as a whole, there is a "health gap" between cross-bred and pedigree dogs, and that gap is about two years. The insurance industry is simply mirroring in policy, what has been proven true on the ground.

Of course, there is more data. Over at the Cold Wet Nose blog, Beverley Cuddy has put up some of the citations from Jemima Harrison's current piece in Dogs Today which reviews some of the literature. Citations, with a summary "kicker" quote line to encapsulate the piece, follow:

• B.N. Bonnett, A. Egenvall, P. Olson, A. Hedhammar, Mortality in Swedish dogs: rates and causes of death in various breeds, The Veterinary Record, 1997. ("Mongrels were consistently in the low-risk category.")
• P.D. McGreevy & W.F. Nicholas, Some Practical Solutions to Welfare Problems in Pedigree Dog Breeding, Animal Welfare, 1999. ("Hybrids have a far lower chance of exhibiting the disorders that are common with the parental breeds. Their genetic health will be substantially higher.")
• A. Egenvall, B.N. Bonnett, P. Olson, A. Hedhammar, Gender, age, breed and distribution of morbidity and mortality in insured dogs in Sweden during 1995 and 1996, The Veterinary Record, 2000. ("Mongrel dogs are less prone to many diseases then the average purebred dog.")
• A. R. Michell, Longevity of British breeds of dog and its relationship with sex, size, cardiovascular variables and disease, Veterinary Record, 1999. ("There was a significant correlation between body weight and longevity. Crossbreeds lived longer than average but several pure breeds lived longer than cross breeds, notably Jack Russell, miniature poodles and whippets.”)
• G.J. Patronek, D.J. Walters, L.T. Glickman, Comparative Longevity of Pet Dogs and Humans: Implications for Gerontology Research, Journal of Gerontology, Biological Sciences, 1997. ("The median age at death was 8.5 years for all mixed breed dogs and 6.7 years for all pure breed dogs. For each weight group, the age at death of pure breed dogs was significantly less than for mixed breed dogs.")
• H.F. Proschofsky et al, Mortality of purebred and mixed breed dogs in Denmark, Preventive Veterinary Medicine, 2003. (Higher average longevity of mixed breed dogs. Age at death when split into three age bands: mixed breeds 8,11,13, purebreds 6, 10, 12.)
  
• Marta Vascellar et al, Animal tumour registry of two provinces in northern Italy: incidence of spontaneous tumours in dogs and cats. BMC Veterinary Research 2009. (“In both dogs and cats, purebreds had an almost two-fold higher incidence of malignant tumours than mixed breeds.”)
• Agneta Egenvall et al, Mortality in over 350,000 Insured Swedish Dogs from 1995–2000; Breed-Specific Age and Survival Patterns and Relative Risk for Causes of Death. Acta Veterinaria Scandinavica, 2005. (No difference overall, but mongrels low-risk for locomotor problems and heart disease.)

Of course, not all pure breed dogs are a complete mess, and not all mongrels or mixes are the picture of health. "Hybrid vigor" does not quite live up to its hype either. Mix two genetic messes, and you may not get gold out of the opposite side.

That said, all things being equal, mongrels and mixes ARE healthier than pure breeds. Fancy that! And yes, the pun is intended.
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Making and Breaking Dogs In the Show Ring

The story of Kennel Club dogs is pretty much the same from one breed to the next:

1. A relatively small numbers of dogs are brought into the Kennel Club;
2. The registry is closed so no new genetic material can find its way in;
3. The show ring selection system results in a relatively small number of dominant (ribbon-winning) sires being elevated in the gene pool;
4. The breed splits due to differences between types (coat color, size, lay of the ear), further reducing the already-small gene pool;
5. An extremely condensed gene pool (10,000 dogs may have the genetic diversity of 50) means that negative recessive genes are able to easily find each other and double down within a litter, resulting in offspring with disease or deformity.

With any Kennel Club breed, the only three variables in this story are:

1. The genetic quality of the dogs in the original Kennel Club pool;
2. The length of time the dogs are in the Kennel Club, and;
3. The degree to which the breed standard calls for negative morphological selection.

The genetic quality of the original Kennel Club pool is obviously important, but it cannot provide salvation, for even a pool of dogs without negative genetic traits is doomed under a closed registry and show-ring selection system.

The reason for this is the pairing of two phenomenon called genetic mutation and genetic drift.

Most genetic mutations are recessive, and remain unseen and unexpressed in the form of visible defect. In a large and "wild" population of animals most of these negative genes will "drift" out of the population just as they drifted in.

In a closed registry system with a relatively small number of dogs, however, negative recessive genes can quickly find each other and spread through the population -- especially if they are passed on by a show-winning sire with many offspring.

The result is a rapidly rising level of "spontaneous" disease and deformity out of what was once thought of as a "healthy" population of animals.

Time is a variable in the Kennel Club destruction process for the simple reason that some breeds have not been in the Club long enough to be completely wrecked.

It takes time (about 50 years in practice) for a small, but diverse population of dogs to become inbred to the point that recessive genes start to dominate, resulting in a noticeable increase in infecundity, mortality, deformity, and disease.



Negative morphological selection is the third variable, and the easiest to see because it is so extreme and so overt.

Negative morphological selection is simply the practice of show ring breeders and Kennel Club standard writers to positively select for negative health traits.

These negative health traits include (but are not limited to) extreme size (very small dogs or very large dogs), dwarfism, bizarre hip angulations, overly wrinkled skin, flat faces, massive heads, and the elevation of certain coat colors (such as merle) and eye colors (blue) which are linked to deafness.

Contrary to what some folks think, the history and health problems of the Cavalier King Charles Spaniel, the German Shepherd, the Pug, and the Rhodesian Ridgeback, to name a few of the dogs shown in the BBC special Pedigree Dogs Exposed, are not unusual -- only the degree to which they are easily visible to the naked eye.

Nor is a genetic bottle neck within a breed unusual in the Kennel Club. In fact, it is what the entire system is designed to do. Hence the name: "pure breed."

Genetic diversity is the opposite of what the Kennel Club wants -- what they want is "conformity" to a beauty show standard. Hence the name "conformation show."

Below are links to Kennel Club health survey results. I have selected one breed from every canine group, but you can see other breeds here.

Overall, The Kennel Club reports that of the 36,006 dogs surveyed, 37.4% had at least one reported health condition, and that the average age of the dogs surveyed was just five years.

Of the health problems reported, 14.4% were reproductive (Pyometra, false pregnancy, dystochia, infertility, cryptorchid, irregular heats), 12.9% were musculoskeletal (arthritis, cruciate ligament injury, hip dysplasia, patellar luxation), 10.5% were dermatologic, and 9.6 were ocular (cataract, entropion, corneal ulcer, epiphora, KCS, cherry eye, distichiasis).

And to repeat: Nearly 40 percent of dogs had one more more health problems even though the average age of the dogs in question was only 5 years old!


Scottish Terrier (PDF) - Terrier Group

• The median age at death for Scottish Terriers was 10 years and 3 months.
• More than 47.5% of deaths were from cancer.
• In a dog population with a median age of 4 years and 11 months, 46% were reported to have at least one reported health condition. Of these conditions, 28.3% were issues or reproduction (dystochia, infertility; infertility; pyometra; agalactia; vaginitis), 15% were dermatological, and 11% were respiratory.

The Flat-coated Retriever (PDF) - Gundog Group

• The median age at death for Flatcoated Retrievers was 9 years and 10 months.
• More than 54% of deaths were from cancer.
• In a dog population with a median age of 5 years, 41% were reported to have at least one reported health condition. Of these, 15.2% were musculoskeletal (arthritis; patellar luxation; lameness, dysplasia, spondylitis), 13.1% were benign neoplasia(lipoma; histiocytoma; cysts; fibroma; granuloma), 12.0% were reproductive (false pregnancy; pyometra; irregular heat cycles; dystochia), 9.8% were dermatological, 8.3% were gastrointestinal (bloat, colitis; foreign body obstruction; pancreatitis), and 7.8% were ocular (distichiasis, goniodysgenesis, entropion, glaucoma).

Bernese Mountain Dog (PDF) - Working Group

• The median age at death for Bernese Mountain Dogs was 8 years.
• More than 45% of deaths were from cancer.
• In a dog population with a median age of 4 years, 46% were reported to have at least one reported health condition. Of these, 31.5% were musculoskeletal (arthritis, dysplasia), 13.9% were reproductive (pyometra; false pregnancy; dystochia, infertility), 9.4% were dermatological, 8.4% were gastrointestinal, and 6.4% were ocular.

Deerhound (PDF) - Hound Group

• The median age at death for Deerhounds was 8 years and 8 months.
• More than 24% of deaths were from cardiac problem, with cancer accounting for an additional 18.8% of deaths.



• In a dog population with a median age of 4 years and 2 months, 32% of dogs had at least one reported health condition. Of these, 17.5% were reproductive (pyometra, vaginitis, dystochia), 14.8% were musculoskeletal (arthritis, dysplasia), 13.2% were gastrointestinal (bloat, diarrhoea), and 10% were respiratory.

Border Collie (PDF) - Pastoral Group

• The median age at death for Border Collies was 12 years and 3 months.



• More than 23% of deaths were from cancer. Another 9.4% were from strokes, and 6.6% from cardiac issues.
• In a dog population with a median age of 5 years, 29% were reported to have at least one reported health condition. Of these 18.6% were musculoskeletal (arthritis, lamenes, dysplasia), 14% were reproductive (dystochia, false pregnancy, cryptorchid), 11.6% were respiratory, 8.7% were dermatological.

British Bulldog (PDF) - Utility Group

• The median age at death for Bulldogs was 6 years and 3 months.
• More than 20% of deaths were from cardiac issues, with an additional 18.3% from cancer, 4.4% from respiratory failure, and 4.4% from strokes.
• In a dog population with a median age of 3 years and 1 month, 46% were reported to have at least one reported health condition. Of these, 31.6% were ocular (cherry eye, entropion, dry eye, corneal ulcer), 15.2% were dermatological, 10.8% were reproductive (dystochia, infertility, false pregnancy, cryptorchid, pyometra), 10.4% were respiratory, 9.2% were musculoskeletal (arthritis, lameness, dysplasia, patellar luxation).

Pekingese (PDF) - Toy Group

• The median age at death for Pekingese was 11 years and 5 months.
• More than 23% of deaths were from cardiac issues, and another 9% were from neurological issues.
• In a dog population with a median age of 5 years, 37% were reported to have at least one reported health condition. Of these 20.4% were issues or reproduction (infertility; false pregnancy; cryptorchid; agalactia; eclipse; mastitis; pyometra), 13.9% were neurologic (intervertebral disc disease, deafness), 11.1% were dermatological, 10.2% were respiratory, 8.3% were ocular, and 7.4% were cardiac.

Clearly, different breeds have different health issues, but just as clearly, none of the breeds listed can be said to be problem free.

In fact, the breeds listed above, are so often fraught with problems that they would be subject to massive class action litigation and product recalls if they were a manufactured commodity.

So how does the Kennel Club get away with a business plan that guarantees that most dogs sold "with papers" will die sooner and have more expensive health conditions than most run-of-the-mill mutts?

The answer can be found in the all-absolving language to be found on The Kennel Club's web site which says that:

"The Kennel Club makes no warranty as to the quality or fitness of any puppies offered for sale and can accept no responsibility for any transaction between purchaser and vendor arising from publication of the listing."

In short, the Kennel Club offers no warranty and accepts no responsibility for the genetic wreckage you may be about to buy.

Good luck, and you're on your own.

And don't let us know if it doesn't work out!
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"Parson Russell Terriers" go to the show. And never mind that the Reverand Jack Russell refused to register his own dogs. To read more about the history of this breed, click here.

Pedigree Dogs Exposed: Three Years On

Pedigree Dogs Exposed 2, aka Pedigree Dogs Exposed: Three Years On is scheduled for airing in the U.K. tonight at 9 pm.

It's the Pick of the Day in today's Guardian:

"Three years ago, Jemima Harrison exposed pedigree breeding practices that left many dogs with severe health problems. Since then, she's become a campaigner for canine welfare and now she revisits the issue to see if anything has really changed. Although there have been some improvements, she uncovers a depressing lack of progress. Flat-faced breeds such as pugs and bulldogs may look good enough to win prizes in dog shows, but sadly they're struggling to breathe."

Check it out!
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Four Minutes of Lies and Confusion

This morning, the Kennel Club came out with a 27-minute video entitled "Dogs -- A Healthy Future".

I do not have time this morning to go through all 27-minutes of the video, but it turns out I do not have to in order to make the essential point, which is that this is an in-house industrial self-promotion video which does NOT tell the true history of the Kennel Club, nor does it actually tell you what is wrong in the world of pedigree dogs, or the way forward in the world of dogs.

You can see the video yourself, here, but let me detail the first four minutes:  what is said, what is not said, what is an outright lie, and what small steps forward are actually being taken.

1. Killing off working dogs.  The video starts off (at 0.38) with the narrator gushing about Poodles, Old English Sheep Dogs, and Border Terriers.  What is not said is these three breeds were once working dogs, but they do not work anymore. In fact, these are three perfect examples of what happens when you draw a dog into the Kennel Club and the dogs are either denatured or exaggerated to the point that they are useless in the field. Work a dog? The Kennel Club affords ZERO points for work, same as it affords ZERO points for health.  The result is what you see in the Kennel Club:  guns dogs that have never heard a shotgun, sheep dogs that have never seen a sheep, and terriers too big to go to ground on a fox.
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2. A nation of dog lovers?  The narrator says (at 0.42) that to visit a dog show is to see that Britain is a nation of dog lovers. You will notice, however, that the announcer does not advise visiting a Kennel Club-approved puppy farm to see the horrifying scenes there, nor do they advise visiting a local kill shelter, such as Battersea, where about a third of all healthy dogs are put down because no one wants them. A nation of dog lovers? Yes, there are a lot of dogs in Britain, but there is a lot of institutionalized cruelty as well, and the Kennel Club and its paid apologists have been part of that cruelty for 140 years, banging the gong for predictably diseased dogs bred in a closed registry system, saluting deformity and exaggeration at every turn, and always pushing back at those who say the nation can do better.
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3. One big, happy (entirely white) family.  Steve Dean, the new head of the Kennel Club, shows up to suggest (at 0.51) how friendly and fun everything is at a Kennel Club dog show.  This is the same Steve Dean who, when asked just ten days ago whether the Kennel Club would welcome as members everyone in the world of pedigree dogs, answered: ”It is not open to everybody as this carries risks: if you do not filter the applicants then any group of people can join and thus effectively change the entire organisation.” Right. Watch the film and see if there is anyone in it who would not look perfect in an Aryan Nations film.  Britain is a very diverse place, but the Kennel Club is not very diverse, and they do not see any problem with that, as their own self-promotion film makes clear.  A non-white face in a 27-minute Kennel Club film?  What an odd idea!  And yet the tin-ears at the Kennel Club seem shocked that anyone would note that while the world went from Bassets to Auschwitz in 50 years, the Kennel Club never left that stage, saluting closed gene pools at the front end while winking at sterilization and gas chambers at the back end, all the while keeping a firm eye on coat color and social class -- of people and dogs alike.
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4. Looking after canine welfare?  The narrator claims (at 1.00) that the Kennel Club has been looking after the welfare of pedigree dogs for almost 150 years. This is a naked lie. In fact the single greatest threat to the welfare of pedigree dogs has been the Kennel Club itself. The reason for this is that the Kennel Club has:
   
   ... a) Generally closed breed registries with less than 50 dogs;
   ... b) Required all dogs be bred within closed gene pools;
   ... c) Routinely saluted morphological exaggeration, and;
   . . d) Afforded zero points to health in the show ring.
   
   The result, today, is that breed after breed on the Kennel Club's roster is a genetic and structural wreck.  Canine insurance companies now charge higher premiums for Kennel Club dogs which are deemed to be less healthy than cross-breeds or mutts.  Can there be any more powerful indictment of what 150 years of Kennel Club stewardship has meant for pedigree dogs?
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5. The ethos of the Kennel Club is health? Steve Dean, the new head of the Kennel Club, is seen sprawling on the grass (at 1:10) while dressed in black pants, blazer jacket, tie, and penny loafers (mind the dog poop Mr. Dean!).  He tells us that "the whole ethos of the Kennel Club is the health and welfare of dogs, and that includes "all dogs, pedigree dogs, cross-bred dogs, mongrels."  This is, of course, complete nonsense.  To refresh, the Kennel Club is an organization that is focused on registering purebred dogs, it is an organization that is pushing people to buy only purebred dogs from registered breeders, and it affords ZERO points to the health of any dog in the show ring. This is an organization that registers thousands of puppy farm dogs a year, and which does nothing to promote adoption from shelters. In short, Steve Dean's statements here are as tortured and contrived as his squat in the grass.
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6. The Kennel Club runs Crufts, the most famous dog show in the world. Following the showing of Pedigree Dogs Exposed in 2008, the Kennel Club lost all of its major corporate sponsors for Crufts. Scrambling for any major sponsor, the Kennel Club accepted sponsorship from a discount furniture chain which required it to change Cruft's logo to include a sofa.  No, I am not making this up! Now, Crufts has lost that discount furniture store sponsor, and other major sponsors have yet to come forward. And why would they, when Crufts and the Kennel Club are more likely to be associated with canine misery and defect than quality?!
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7. The Kennel Club registers all dogs.  The narrator claims (at 1.32) that the Kennel Club registers "all dogs" but in fact that is a dramatic overstatement. The Kennel Club is focused on registering purebred dogs, and only those dogs whose owners want them registered, and will pay a fee. In fact, most dogs in the UK are not registered with the Kennel Club.
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8. The Kennel Club regulates 708 breed clubs. The narrator goes on to note (at 1.32) that the Kennel Club "regulates the 708 breed clubs." Are we to take it that this means the Kennel Club is in charge and can make the breed clubs do what it wants when that needs to be done?  Does this mean that if there is a problem with pedigree dog health, it's not the fault of the breed clubs, but the Kennel Club's hierarchy itself?  Is the Kennel Club finally going to stop hiding behind the skirts of breed club matrons and (supposed) legal impotence?  Time will tell!
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9. The Kennel Club helps to stamp out puppy farmers?  The narrator claims (at 1.45) that the Kennel Club works to stamp out puppy farms, but this is a lie. The Kennel Club has actively recruited puppy farmers and registered their product since the beginning, and it continues to do so to this day. The objection of the Kennel Club is not to puppy farms -- but to anyone that might be breeding a cross-bred (and therefore unregistered) "Cocker-Poo" or "Dorgi, as well as to anyone who might be breeding pedigree dogs that are not registered by the Kennel Club.
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10. The Kennel Club registers a quarter of a million puppies a year.  Steve Dean tells us (at 2.22) that the Kennel Club registers a quarter of a million puppies a year. Amazingly, however, the Kennel Club puts its brand on these dogs even as the organization manages to slip out from under all consumer regulation. How does that work? The Kennel Club licenses breeders, its creates and sanctifies breed standards, and it says it regulates all the breed clubs and is dedicated to canine health, and yet the Kennel Club accepts NO responsibility for defective, diseased and deformed dogs, and it offers NO guarantee about the health of any dog or puppy carrying its brand. Amazing! How is that possible? If a car company put its logo on a car, could it claim it had nothing do with the defective brakes that came from its supplier? How then, does the Kennel Club not fall within similar regulatory oversight since, according to its own statements, it controls all facets of pedigree dog breeding under its own registry?
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11. The Kennel Club is trying to 'control the loss of genetic diversity in dogs?'  We are told (at 2.40) that the Kennel Club is trying to "control the loss of genetic diversity in dogs." Really? What does that mean? Not what you think! In the Kennel Club, "controlling the loss of genetic diversity" means that you keep breeds separate and in a closed breeding pool. In fact, the entire rationale for the Kennel Club is not to promote genetic diversity, but to trap dog breeds in genetic bottles cut off from the rest of the canine gene pool. When the Kennel Club talks about "controlling the loss of genetic diversity" what they really mean is putting more dogs in more breed bottles!
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12. The Kennel Club is working to eliminate inherited diseases?  When the Kennel Club says it is "working to eliminate inherited disease," is does not mean that the Kennel Club is opening up its roles in order to increase genetic diversity and reduce the level of inbreeding.  It does not mean that the club is banning brachycephalic breeds with faces so pushed in they cannot breathe. It does not mean they are banning super tiny dogs whose brains cannot fit in their skulls, and it does not mean they are banning giant breeds that die of heart failure only a few years after they stop growing. What the Kennel Club means when it says it is "working to eliminate inherited diseases" is that it is looking for new health care tests so that already-too-small breed pools can be pared down even more. And even here, the solutions talked about are often complete nonsense. How do you get rid of mitral heart valve disease in Cavalier King Charles Spaniels when 85% of the dogs will die with that affliction? It cannot be done!  How do you get rid of brachycephalic breathing disorders and whelping problems in the English Bulldog when the breed standard requires smashed faces and huge heads?
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13. The Kennel Club is working to tighten regulations at dog shows?  We are told the Kennel Club is "working" to tighten regulations at dog shows. Really? Again, what does that mean?  All Kennel Club shows operate under the dictatorship of the Kennel Club. It is the Kennel Club that creates and legitimizes breed standards, which trains and writes the rules for dog show judges, and which sanctions and promotes the dog shows themselves. Every regulatory aspect of a dog show is under the Kennel Club's control, so there is no "working" to regulate a dog show; either the Kennel Club does it, or it allows the dysfunction, disease, deformity and defect that is on parade. In fact, the Kennel Club has winked at defect, deformity and disease at dog shows for more than 140 years.
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14. We must unite to fight "inherited diseases." Having just told us that the Kennel Club has complete control over pedigree dogs, and that it has always put canine health front and center, the announcer tells us (at 2.45) that the world of pedigree dogs must unite to fight inherited diseases. What?! There are widespread health problems in the world of pedigree dogs?  How did that happen if the Kennel Club has complete power and has been putting breed health first for nearly 150 years? Suddenly, the entire narrative comes crashing down, and it comes crashing down for a very good reason:  almost everything we have heard up to now has been a lie.
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15. "They're a working breed... or they came from a working breed." In the Kennel Club's self-promotion video, we are shown some dachshunds, and an owner tells us (at 3:20) that "They're a working breed... or they came from a working breed."  Right.  Came from a working breed.  The Kennel Club dachshund is not a working breed now. A working dachshund is called a "teckel" to differentiate it from the non-working joke paraded around on a string lead at a Kennel Club dog show. We are told "we do have a back problem" with dachshunds, but we are not told what that problem is.  Here's a hint:  it involves paralysis of the back legs, and the dog is either put down or put into a wheeled rack where it spends the rest of its life scooting around the living room. This small "problem" is fobbed off as being in "some lines" and is said to be a "conformation" problem. Not said is that the odd structure of the dachshund is in no way related to the work it does underground. Working terriers are found all over Britain, Europe, Canada, and the United States, and none have the stretched back or the history of spinal injury and rear leg paralysis we see with the dachshund.
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16. The Kennel Club has always taken the lead in inherited diseases. We are told (at 3.45) that "the Kennel Club has always taken the lead in addressing the problem of inherited diseases."  Heads up! A small word game is being played here. You see, the Kennel Club has always taken the lead in CREATING the closed gene pools that make inherited diseases so common in the world of dogs. And, to be clear, the Kennel Club continues to salute those closed registry gene pools. By saluting closed gene pools, and encouraging further reductions within them, the Kennel Club keeps the wheels of inherited disease spinning forward at an ever-increasing rate. The history is clear here, and the Kennel Club's own publication tells it. Back in 1897, when the issue of inherited disease sprang up in the world of the Scottish Deerhound, the response of the Kennel Club was not to rush in to outcross to improve breed health, but to rush in to close the registry to preserve breed purity. So YES, the Kennel Club has "always taken the lead in inherited diseases," but not in eliminating them, but in fostering them!
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17. The Kennel Club's weak stance on hips.  The announcer tells us (at 3.44) of the Kennel Club's scheme to get rid of hip dysplasia, which they tell us has been in place since 1965.  Not said, is that the scheme has not worked, and it has not worked because the Kennel Club does not require breeders who want to register Kennel Club puppies to follow it!  Dysplasia in Kennel Club dogs has not gotten better.
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18. Sequencing of the canine genome. The announcer prattles on  about the sequencing of the canine genome in 2004 (at 4.16), but fails to mention the obvious, which is that we do not need to sequence genomes to know how to breed healthier dogs. We know how to breed healthier dogs NOW, and it is not a closely held secret: 
    a) Get rid of breeds that are selected for defect and extreme exaggeration, and;
    b) Allow breeds to "fall upward" to type so that dogs are bred for real function rather than for a scrap of paper proclaiming breed purity. 

Will we get rid of all canine health problem by simply doing those two things alone? 

No, of course, not.  It would, however, be a simple, quick and immediate step forward.  

Remember:  right now Kennel Club dogs are NOT as healthy as cross breeds and mutts.  

That fact alone stands as an indictment of the Kennel Club's way of doing business.

Is this to say there is nothing good going on? 

No, that would not be true. 

The Kennel Club has suddenly discovered Coefficients of Inbreeding (COI), something that has been around since 1922, and it is providing a computer program to make it easier for breeders to calculate those equations.

The Kennel Club has banned very close incest breeding (sire to daughter, dam to son) which is the kind of thing that has been banned in humans since the days of the Old Testament.

The Kennel Club has named 14 breeds of particular concern -- a real step in the right direction, and one for which they should get some applause, despite the still-timid way that they are going about operationalizing it.

So YES, there are some good things happening, and YES, let's recognize that the Kennel Club is under some duress to "build forward" out of the wreckage of its past, even as it keeps the cash box full.

That said, let's be clear that NOT ONE of these recent changes occurred because of the Kennel Club's own initiative. 

Every single one of these recent changes has occurred because of the exposure and shame heaped on the Kennel Club by the BBC documentary Pedigree Dogs Exposed.

The Kennel Club did not see the light until they felt the heat, and it has taken several concerted years of heat to get the modest change we see here. 

That's the real story, but it's the story the Kennel Club attempts to sweep under the rug with four minutes of bold-faced lies at the front end of this self-promotional film.

Sorry, but the era of lies and disinformation is over. Someone please tell Steve Dean and Caroline Kisko.

Now, do you want to see pictures from the Richmond dog show (the one featured in the film) taken by someone who was not a paid apologist for the Kennel Club?  Good news then!  Those are up over at Jemima Harrison's blog.  Yes, her pictures are more powerful than my text.   See for yourself!

•  Related Links:
  ** So You Want a Dog?
  ** Making and Breaking Dogs In the Show Ring
  ** Inbred Thinking
  ** Dogs as Breed Products
  ** Kennel Club Inbreeding: Data Revealed
  ** Carnival Barkers at the Dog Shows .
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The Kennel Club's Empty Chair

Over in the U.K. the Kennel Club continues to engage in one public relations blunder after another. Let's go straight to the Dog World "breaking news" story in order to save me a little typing:

THE KENNEL Club refused to turn up for an important House of Lords meeting about dog breeding on Tuesday evening after it heard that Passionate Productions would be filming it for the new Pedigree Dogs Exposed programme due to be broadcast early next year.

The Associate Parliamentary Group for Animal Welfare (APGAW) had invited along the main players to hear what progress had been made in the three years since the first programme was aired and following the various reports into dog breeding.

The KC should have joined a panel comprising Dog Advisory Council (DAC) chairman Prof Sheila Crispin, former British Veterinary Association president Harvey Locke, DAC member and former Dogs Trust veterinary director Chris Laurence, and the RSPCA’s head of companion animals James Yeates for a thorough airing of the current state of play.

But at the start of the meeting APGAW chairman Neil Parish announced that the KC had declined his invitation, and read out a statement from the club instead.

So why the empty chair?

It seems the Kennel Club is TERRIFIED of appearing on camera talking about pedigree dogs, even when no dogs are in the room and even in a formal meeting in which nothing is going to occur but stale talk about what has occurred in the last three years... and what has not.

The claim, of course, is that Passionate Productions (Jemima Harrison and her camera man Jon Lane) will somehow be able to film... WHAT exactly?

What is the Kennel Club terrified of? What film horror is going to come from a bunch of stiff middle-aged white people reading off their talking points at a carefully controlled meeting of dog people in a lecture hall?

What horror is going on at a Kennel Club dog show that cannot be filmed?

Apparently quite a lot!

The Kennel Club's position seems to be "Who are you go to believe, your lying eyes, or our press release?"

The good news is that time for empty chairs and empty heads seems to have come to an end.

Dog World reports that:

[T]here was a consensus view that although a lot of progress had been made, including much work by the KC, there should be an independent and expert review of the breed Standards. Mr Locke [former British Veterinary Association president] said the KC should be more aggressive and radical with them.

Trust veterinary director Chris Laurence noted:

The person who sets the Standards has to realise that the way a dog looks will affect the whole of its life. Some dogs can’t breathe and walk freely because of the way they look. They have to realise that and modify the Standards accordingly.

Well, yes, that would be an obvious start. I suppose the Kennel Club was TERRIFIED they might actually be seen as having heard all of that!
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How Much is That Bulldog in the Window?

Back in 2006, I wrote of the English Bulldog:

The famed English Bulldog... is mostly Chinese pug -- a show ring creation with legs so deformed it can barely walk, a jaw so undershot it cannot grab a Frisbee, and with a face so bracycephalic it cannot breathe. Add to these problems a deformed intestinal system (a by-product of achondroplasia or dwarfism) which makes the dog constantly fart, and a pig tail prone to infection, and you have a dog that considers its own death a blessed relief.

I have not changed my opinion, but you do not have to listen to me to hear about the congenital defects inherent to the breed.

Listen to what a top AKC show breeder told ABC television's Nightline program in April of 2009:



Why should anyone care that English Bulldogs are genetic and conformation wrecks?

Well for one, because this dog is a Top Ten AKC breed, along with the Golden Retriever, whose health care costs I have previously described.

We are talking about scores of thousands of dogs that will spend a lifetime in misery, struggling for breath even as they sleep.

And this struggle is not some sort of accident or an unintended genetic aberration.

This is perpetual torture by design, and it is common to one of the most abundant dogs to be found in the American Kennel Club.

Then there is the expense of taking care of these dogs. As with Golden Retrievers, the financial costs can be jaw-dropping.

Consider some of the common health care expenses that Embrace Pet Insurance has documented with this breed:



Embrace Pet Insurance pulls no punches in their description of the health of English Bulldogs:

The Bulldog may be perfect in spirit, but in the flesh is a different story. These dogs are intolerant of warm weather, and may die if over-heated. Too much exercise or stress can make it difficult for them to breath. Without exception, Bulldogs must live indoors, and need air conditioning in all but the mildest summer weather.

More than 90 percent of all Bulldogs are born by C-section. Because breeding them is expensive, the puppies are, too. Love is an expensive proposition when you own a Bulldog....

...Bulldogs' hips and spines are often malformed, as are their mouths. They suffer from a long list of respiratory ailments. Their many wrinkles and folds, and tightly curled tails, mean lots of skin infections. Cherry eye, inverted eyelids, cataracts and dry eye are just a few of the eye abnormalities that can affect the Bulldog.

...Many conditions have no screening tests, even though they're known or believed to be genetic. These include seizure disorders, allergies and skin problems, several kinds of bladder stone, a long list of airway defects, birth defects, infertility and cancer, and more. Bulldogs are also at high risk for "bloat and torsion," where the stomach twists on itself, trapping air inside, and requiring immediate emergency surgery.

Of course, more could be said.

Embrace Pet Insurance mentions the high cost of Cesarean births, but they do not mention the rape racks that are used in mating because this dog is so deformed and defective that it can only rarely breed on its own.

Do you still want an English Bulldog?

So you still think they are "oh so cute?"

Are you still reading all-breed books that leave all the important information out?

• Related Links:
  ** Terrierman's Top Ten Tips for Avoiding Expense & Misery
  ** Ten Tips to Finding the Right Dog .
  ** Bulldogs: How Did We Come to Select for Defect?
  ** Does the Breed Standard Require a Rape Rack?
  ** Bull Dogs in Rape Racks & Canaries In Coal Mines
  ** We Want Our Mutant Dogs, Never Mind Their Pain
  ** The Kennel Club Freak Show
  ** C-Sections at the Kennel Club
  ** Complete English Bulldog Skeleton in a Bag
  ** Counterfeit Collies and Transvestite Terriers
  ** Kennel Club Dogs: Unnatural Selection for Defect
  ** The AKC Top Ten: A Sad & Grim Joke
  ** Deformity and Disease Due to Exaggeration
  .

You Will Know It By ... Her Master's Voice

In a world of 6.7 billion people, it seems only a trusted and much-loved member of the Kennel Club could chair the new Advisory Council on Welfare Issues of Dog Breeding in the U.K.

The new chair, Sheila Crispin, is a veterinary opthamologist who has spent decades in dogs and yet has never been vocal in criticizing the Kennel Club about it practices, and never mind the obvious pain and misery caused by those practices.

Is this opthamologist blind? We shall see.

Here's what I suspect will happen: a lot of movement and not much action.

Look for Crispin to tackle everything but the real issues of contrived standards leading to deformed dogs in misery, and inbreeding practices leading to jaw-dropping rates of disease.

Open the registries? Require working dogs to work in order to win rosettes? Those are words that will never pass her lips.

Instead, look for her to launch off on a campaign against puppy mills, and perhaps to initiate a drive to mandate microchipping.

Those are worthy problems deserving attention, but they are not why this Advisory Council was created.

They will be within her comfort zone, however.

Her comfort zone, after all, has always been close to the Kennel Club's hierarchy which has given her an honorary membership and tapped her as a member of its own "Breed Health and Welfare Strategy Group" which, you will remember, is the cause of the current mess.

Will I be wrong?

Nothing would make me happier if I am! But when it comes to dogs, I have learned to keep my expectations low, and this is a good example.

Patrick Bateson promised that this new Advisory Council on Welfare Issues of Dog Breeding would be appointed on the Nolan Principles. I am not sure how appointing a Kennel Club member and insider to "reform" the world of dog breeding fits those principles. In fact, let me say quite clearly that I think it does not.

Job One for Crispin, if she is serious (and I hope she is!), is to repudiate the nonsense put out by the Kennel Club which says that "the vast majority of breeds and dogs are healthy." This is demonstrably not true as even the most cursory examination of the Kennel Club's own health surveys make clear.

Truth and reform cannot start with lies and distraction. Let us see which way Crispin heads...
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The Humane Society did WHAT?

Has Hell frozen over?

You might think so.

You see, the Humane Society of the U.S. (HSUS) is quoting this blog in the cover story of All Animals magazine, which is HSUS's full-color bimonthly membership magazine which goes out to their 10 million members.

In a long, well-written, and fair piece, author Carrie Allan lays out The Purebred Paradox whose strap line is "Is the quest for the 'perfect dog' driving a genetic health crisis?"

Once upon a time, people believed that purebred dogs were naturally healthier than mixed breeds. How have we arrived at a point where it may be safer to presume the opposite? ....

.... The more limited the number of mates, the greater the chance a dog will be bred with a relative who shares similar genes. Genetic diseases are caused by recessive genes, so a good gene from one parent will trump a bad gene from the other. But if both parents have a bad gene—such as one that predisposes them to hip dysplasia or blindness—the likelihood of a sick puppy increases.

“What happens when you have a small and inbreeding population is that the probability of two negative recessive genes finding each other increases as the gene pool chokes down to a smaller and smaller pool,” says Patrick Burns, a Dogs Today columnist who frequently writes about genetic health issues on his blog, Terrierman’s Daily Dose.

A closed registry that allows no “new blood” into the mix exacerbates the problem, he argues: “In many AKC dogs, the founding gene pool was less than 50 dogs. For some breeds, it was less than 20 dogs.”

This year’s Westminster champion, a Scottish terrier named Sadie, hails from one of these tiny gene pools and is “very heavily inbred,” says Burns. The limited ancestry for AKC-registered Scotties, he adds, helps explain why 45 percent die of cancer.

“We do not need to have a closed registry to keep a breed,” Burns says, pointing out that breeds existed long before there was an organization to track them. “We did not create the dogs we love in a closed registry system—we have only ruined them there.”

Read the whole thing. The HTML version (multiple jump pages) is here, and the PDF version (8 pages) is here.

This is one of the longest and best articles done so far on the American "dog mess" that is a confluence between disease, deformity and defect caused by inbreeding and contrived and twisted breed standards, and the sick internacine economic relationships that exist between puppy mills and the AKC.

This article also details what has been going on in the United Kingdom since the advent of Pedigree Dogs Exposed. As Carrie Allan writes:

[I]in the United Kingdom, at least, there seems to be momentum for change. Whether that momentum will gather steam in the U.S. remains to be seen

Spread this article around!

Remember that if you want the Humane Society of the U.S. to move in the right direction, you need to click and treat.

I assure you this is the right direction. They have not taken any gratuitous swipes at pedigree dogs or dog breeders. Quite the opposite, in fact.

Take this line for example. Anyone think this is not fair and well-said?

At The HSUS, we’re big fans of adoption. By going to a local shelter or rescue group, you stand a good chance of both saving a life and finding a purebred — after all, they make up an estimated 25 percent of dogs in shelters.

When you can’t find the dog you’re looking for, however, responsible breeders are another option; they are devoted to their animals’ well-being and committed to placing them in loving homes. And if every shelter dog were adopted and every puppy mill were shuttered, there would still be a need for good breeders to supply dogs to American households.

Full applause to HSUS for this article, and to author Carrie Allan in particular. This is a big subject, and she has done an extraordinarily good job of wrapping herself around it and presenting it in a cogent and fair manner.

• Related Article:** Who Speaks for Dogs?
  .

Will Crufts Lose Its Discount Sofa Sponsor?

The Crufts dog show is like an old couch kicked to the curb and left out in the rain: a broken down thing that looks bad, smells worse, and is now looking for a place to die in peace.

The problems started a long time ago, of course, back when it was the Allied Terrier Show.

Perhaps a clear warning was that it was always a commercial venture. Charles Crufts himself, believe it or not, never even owned a dog.

Crufts has always celebrated the bizarre and contrived; dogs with pushed in faces, bug eyes, and coats so long and thick they satisfy the pent up needs of even the most frustrated of wannabe hair dressers.

And of course, work was never celebrated, and inbreeding was not only encouraged, but required in breed after breed.

How could anything but disaster come from this?

Everyone saw it, but it was not until Pedigree Dogs Exposed put it on tape and explained it, that the consciousness of consumers was properly shocked.

In rapid succession, companies pulled out of Crufts, not the least of which was the BBC and Pedigree dog food.

Who wanted their products identified with animal abuse, defect, disease and deformity?

No one!

Finally, the Kennel Club found Graham Kirkham, a wealthy breeder of Dalmatians (a breed famous for deafness and a uric acid disorder that requires some dogs to have a hole drilled into the base of their penis).

Kirkham had a company that sold discount furniture, and in exchange for Crufts adding a couch to its logo (no, we are not making this up), he agreed to have his corporation underwrite the Crufts fiasco show.

Now, however, Dog World reports:

THE FUTURE of DFS’ sponsorship of Crufts may be in doubt following owner and chairman Lord Kirkham’s decision to sell the Yorkshire-based company.

Kennel Club member and Dalmatian owner Graham Kirkham is believed to have pocketed about £300m from the sale to private equity firm Advent International.

DFS sponsored this year’s Crufts and told DOG WORLD at the time that the arrangement between the company and the Kennel Club was based on an informal arrangement with no contractual commitment.

DFS's contractual support for Crufts is assured through 2011, but after that, things are adrift.

Who wants to pick up this dirty, damaged and smelly couch and make it the center piece of their living room? Anyone? Time will tell.

• Related Links:
  ** The Defective Dog on the Defective Sofa
  ** Charles Crufts Never Owned a Dog
  ** The Farce That is Crufts
  ** BBC Pulls Out of Crufts!
  ** Pedigree Pulls Out of Crufts After 44 Years
  ** The Business of Diamonds .... and Dogs
  ** Basketcase: The Cavalier King Charles Spaniel
  ** The Transvestite Terriers of Westminster
  ** AKC In Bed With the Puppy Mill Industry
  ** Does the Breed Standard Require a Rape Rack?
  ** The Kennel Club Freak Show
  ** We Want Our Mutant Dogs, Never Mind Their Pain
  .

Pedigree Dogs Exposed on Chicago TV Tonight

Pedigree Dogs Exposed, Tonight, 8 p.m., WTTW-Channel 11

"They may be purebred, but in-breeding comes with health problems as well as papers."

To watch it now on your computer, see this old blog post.
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This Pack Does Not Have a True Leader

The Kennel Club pack does not have a true leader at the helm says veterinarian Peter Wedderburn, writing in The Telegraph.

Crufts, the world’s largest dog show, opens this morning with a strapline that some may regard as wishful thinking: “Celebrating happy, healthy dogs”. The show is still highly popular, with nearly 28,000 dogs attending, along with an anticipated audience of over 150,000 human visitors over the next four days. But the mood at the event will be very different to its glory days.

As recently as two years ago, Crufts was widely applauded as a manifestation of the traditional British “love of animals”. Then, in the autumn of 2008, the BBC documentary “Pedigree Dogs Exposed” changed everything. A different pall was cast on the notion of breeding dogs for the showring, with claims that dogs had been deliberately bred to look a certain way, despite the fact that their show-winning appearance was accompanied by poor health. The Kennel Club was accused of inaction in the face of evidence that pedigree dogs were suffering. The BBC and major sponsors withdrew support from Crufts. An event that had been central to British culture was sidelined.....

....But it’s not easy for casual onlookers to get an accurate sense of what’s really happening on the ground. When the Kennel Club takes actions and promises to take more actions, are changes really happening, or is the organisation just making sounds that are pleasing to the ear?

Jemima Harrison, the producer of the original BBC documentary, has continued to be a vocal and well-informed critic of the Kennel Club. In an open letter to the organisation, published today in the April edition of the Dogs Today magazine, she lists nine actions that she’d like the Kennel Club to take ...

....To a veterinary surgeon who’s been watching the debate carefully, these seem like reasonable requests. I know that the Kennel Club is an organisation run by dog lovers who want the best for the animals whose lives are affected by their decisions. I know that it can be difficult to take some unpopular but necessary actions when there’s a fear that members of the organisation may rebel or even leave to set up their own breed organisations. But if there ever was a time for leadership, it’s now.

Here’s a reminder of a simple definition: “to lead” means “to guide by going in front”. The Kennel Club; it’s over to you.

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The Farce That is Crufts

The face of a winner.

The farce that is the Crufts Dog Show continues unabated.

Named after a dog food salesman that never owned a dog, it started out as the Allied Terrier Show and helped speed the rapid destruction of almost ever breed of working terrier, from Fox and Welsh, to Borders and Bedlingtons.

Crufts is also the location where the genetic disaster know as the Cavalier King Charles Spaniel first appeared, spurred by an American by the name of Roswell Eldridge who put up a cash prize for anyone who could come up with a dog that looked like those in the paintings of van Dyck. The resulting dog was inbred to the point that today more than 50% of Cavaliers die from heart disease. In addition to jaw-dropping levels of heart disease, well over one-third of Cavaliers have Syringomyelia, a disorder of the brain and spinal cord.

In the last year, insult has been added to injury, as Crufts has now taken on a discount sofa company as its sponsor, going so far as to include a sofa in the Crufts logo. The owner of DFS, the discount sofa company, has said (and I could not make this up): "If DFS was a dog, it would be a Crufts champion." Translated into English that means: "We sell products that look good in the picture but they fall to pieces the moment you try and actually put them to use."

So what's the latest charade? Just this: The London Times is reporting that "The Kennel Club has rewritten the rules for the Crufts dog show to give a veterinary surgeon the authority to exclude any unfit dog."

Right.

And how does that work?

There are entire breeds that are unfit, starting with the English Bulldog.

Listen to the bobble-headed Bulldog breeder in the clip, below, explaining why all English Bulldogs are unfit for ANY function:

"In the heat and the lights of the show, they can overheat and actually go down in five minutes. Instead of a long snout, where it's an open airway, it's smashed like a coke can and the breathing has to go through many, many curves and turns."

Flash located here (right click on link to copy) Youtube link here


Now look at the German Shepherds below, which were show at the Manchester Kennel Club show in 2008.

I guarantee you will see exactly the same slope-backed wrecks walking on their hocks at the Crufts show in 2010!



Border Terrier breeder and veterinarian Steve Dean will be Crufts chief veterinarian, and his word is to be law.

But what good is the law if it will never cry foul?

When the Bulldogs enter the ring the whole thing will become a joke. The German Shepherds, Cavaliers, Pekingese, and Chinese Cresteds will simply be the punchline at the end of a long wind-up going back more than 100 years.
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When Direct Mail Is a Threat to Dogs

In the last week we have seen PeTA and the Humane Society of the U.S. inject themselves into the arena of pedigree dog health.

Wayne Pacelle wrote a piece over on his blog, trying to inject himself into the debate, while PeTA crashed center ring at the Westminster dog show with two activists holding placards that were laughably off-message.

My position is pretty simple: direct mail professionals and vegan clowns will not improve the debate on the health and future of pedigree dogs.

Here's a thought: The men and women who actually care about dogs have brought this debate up to to this point, and they continue to move things along quite smartly.

Maybe they don't need any "help" from people whose primary interest in dogs is direct mail fundraising?

Of course, I am not the first to say it.

Jemima Harrison, the producer of BBC's Pedigree Dogs Exposed, has already blasted PeTA for its stunt theatrics, noting that the world hardly needs a lesson in dog health from a group that kills 97% of the dogs brought to its shelter.

So why are PeTA and HSUS suddenly so interested in dog health?

It is not because these are new issues!

In fact, this debate is as old as the Humane Society and far older than PeTA. But for more than 100 years, the "humane" movement has said nothing. Problem? What problem?

In fact, as I have noted in the past, this silence was not entirely accidental. The animal rights movement and the parade of mutants we see in the Kennel Club show ring today are different roses that have sprouted from the same root. And that root has nothing to do with dogs.

"Pedigree people have pedigree dogs" sniff the over-weight matrons of the Kennel Club who seek to associate their common lives with aristocrats or historical figures who once owned "their" breed.

"And pedigree people do not abuse animals by hunting them, or eating them" sniff the under-weight vegans of PeTA who are trying to find a "cause" that will elevate their lives over the humdrum.

For both sides, the only "work" required of a dog is for it sit on a couch.

And that's why both sides are so dangerous to dogs.

You see, most dog types and breeds were created for something: improved function.

Herding dogs were created to herd.

Livestock guarding dogs were created to guard.

Terriers and dachshunds were created to go down tight holes to bolt or battle a fox or badger.

Pointers and setters were created to hold steady over birds -- first for nets, and later for firearms.

Retrievers were designed to retrieve shot birds, tossed boat lines, and pretty much anything else a human might suggest.

But of course the folks at PeTA and HSUS do not buy the premise.

These organizations are actually opposed to hunting and herding.

Have a husky pull a sled? That's cruel!

Have a greyhound catch a rabbit on the fly? That's cruel!

Have a collie herd sheep? Thats cruel!

PeTA and HSUS deny the functional reason hunting, herding, and pulling dogs exist.

For PeTA and HSUS the only purpose of a dog is to be a pet.

And since a pet has no real function other than not to bite the hand that feeds it, there is no need for dog breeds at all.

Knowing this, why would anyone ever listen to HSUS or PeTA when it comes to breed health?

A concern about breed health assumes you actually care about the breed.

But, of course, that is a bit hard when you have open contempt for the work that breed was created to do!

Which is not to say that the AKC and the Kennel Club are not thrilled to see PeTA and the HSUS start talking about canine health.

Perfect!'

Now the kennel clubs can try to frame the "debate" as being about "animal right lunatics" who are in opposition to all canine work and breed purposes, versus kennel club "dog experts".

And never mind that the Kennel Club's dog "experts" have never dug a terrier, shot a bird, hitched a sled, or coursed a rabbit.

And never mind that this debate was created and is being pursued by those who have put "Dogs First" rather than direct mail economics.

Neither side cares about that now.

For PeTA and HSUS this looks like a new topic with which to fill their direct mail coffers.

For the kennel clubs, this looks like a new development which can be used to deflect serious charges about pedigree dog health and welfare.

Each will try to use the other to carry on with their "business as usual."

And if that happens, the dogs are sure to suffer.
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