Dog Show Etiquette

That's one sure-fire way to get your sign read!

Plummer on the Rise of Mute Dogs

A repost from 2005

Forty Years Onwards, By D. Brian Plummer

I believe I have mentioned this before, but in the mid 1960's, Britain experienced 'Fell Fever' a time when a host of Lake District terrier men came south to judge Terrier Shows, They were treated like gods and many southern terrier buffs who had a reputation for being of sound mind suddenly began speaking in a Cumbrian accent. At that time Jack Russell terriers won most of the shows, though from time to time a rather spectacular Border terrier was selected as BIS (Best in show). Quite suddenly all the major prizes went to fell terriers, quite attractive dogs with excellent coats but sometimes over fourteen inches at the shoulder. In 1964 most winning terriers seemed to be twelve inches at the shoulder, but within ten years the winners seemed to be over fourteen inches at the withers. I'm losing the point of my article, so two points to the starboard to correct my drift. Some of the elderly terrier men who came south as savants to judge the shows had a good knowledge of working terriers others, - 'were not good enough to be allowed to carry my ferret box'. Many owned terriers which were devils to worry sheep and were totally uncontrollable in the field, and hence it became fashionable to allow a totally wild terrier to be hunted and stone daft comments such as, 'If he came out when I called him, I'll shoot him'. The reputation of the terrier man suffered greatly and those who owned working terriers were regarded as buffoons by the rest of the field sport fraternity. In the 1960's most terrier men expected their wards to behave while hunting, some terriers even dropped to shot when worked with the gun. Others retrieved to hand -'mine still do', yet the appeal of the self-entering easy to start fell terrier was such that tractability was sacrificed providing the terrier raced to ground and grabbed the fox. Prior to the 1960's hard terriers, those who would go to ground and grapple without giving tongue were not considered worthwhile. Indeed such dogs were sold for a song or given away. Game, but mute terriers which simply engaged the fox in silence were undesirable. Not only was such a dog virtually useless as a bolter of foxes, but it was difficult in the extreme to dig to such a terrier. In the 18th Century Iron-Hard ultra game terriers were mated to beagles, to give the hybrid 'voice' (Memories of The Old Charlton Hunt) Foxes rarely bolt if they are faced with a very hard dog in a natural earth, though a fox encountered in a smooth sided glazed drain will vacate the den quite quickly if faced with a hard dog. In a natural earth, particularly in a den interlaced with tree roots, matters are very different! A 'gentle' dog, one that bays at its fox rather than tackles it will, by dint of its barking, annoy a fox so much that it seeks to leave an earth for the sound of baying is multiplied ten fold in a deep earth. A harder dog races to ground and seizes its fox, foxes quite often adopt the practice of playing dead when attacked or frightened, though in point of fact the condition is closer to catatonia rather than a cleverly thought out plot. Hence the hard dog seizes its fox, which goes into a death like trance, only to find itself in a life and death encounter, when it recovers from its 'fit'. Such a fox cannot bolt and must fight to the death- though most terriers find it surprisingly difficult to kill a large fox in a subterranean struggle. Hence the terrier man of the 1960's did not require a very hard mute dog. Indeed such a dog was a liability where foxes were required to be bolted, yet changes in the way terriers would work foxes were at hand. In the 1960's moves were afoot to develop detectors, which would locate a terrier below ground. Hither to the barking of the terrier guided the digger to the fox (hence the mute terrier was a liability) now even mute terriers could be used providing the terrier was fitted out with a locator collar or the terrier had not engaged with the fox out of range of the locator. Absurd statements such as 'this terrier had never been known to make a sound below ground and I intended to found my strain on the dog' began to appear in the sporting press. Old timers shook their heads at such nonsense, but youngsters not old enough to know better, delighted in such rubbish and sought to buy dogs with similar attributes. The locator also changed the face of ferreting - once the sport of the patient and the silent now became the sport of those eager to catch a rabbit quickly with little regard to damaging the rabbit burrows. Ferrets were simply fitted with locators, put to ground and on encountering their rabbits were dug to in double quick time. If left to its own devices the rabbit would have bolted and hit the nets - with little or no damage to the burrow. Likewise the use of locators in the hunting of foxes. Many fresh foxes - not foxes chased to ground by hounds - will bolt when a terrier goes to ground and engages them. Most will bolt if the terrier engages them for long enough and noisily enough. Now by dent of using locators an amateur terrier man, and a crass amateur at that, is able to locate a fox with almost pinpoint accuracy and puts spade to sod instantly destroying age old earths which have housed a thousand or so foxes. Dan Russell. A savant of the 'old school' once wrote of the dangers of premature digging and not allowing the terrier to work its fox- and possibly bolt it. Sadly no one heeded his advice. Ronald Jones of West Wales, regarded by some as the greatest expert on the management of gun packs, once stated that he has yet to have encountered a terrier, which was too small for bolting foxes. These days a visit to a hunt terrier show will see huge sixteen-inch dogs winning classes - terriers far too large to work the majority of fox earths. Hideously scarred terriers are prized by terrier owners, most of whom seem unable to get a terrier to return to hand and well-trained terriers are noticeable by their absence. This is a study of the evolution of the terrier and its owner over nearly half a century, I confess that its not a pretty picture that has been painted , but never the less a true one. .

Victorian Snobbery on the Animal Estate

A book worth reading is The Animal Estate: The English and Other Creatures in the Victorian Age by Harriet Ritvo [Harvard University Press, 1989].

Ritvo points out that the Dog Show crowd and the Animal Rights crowd spring from the same root-stock of sentiment and snobbery, and in both cases the animals are the side-show, not the main event.

Ritvo writes that in the Victorian era, and into the 20th Century, dog show folks:

... elevated standards that had no basis in nature or aesethics but reflected the ignorant, self-interested caprices of fanciers who wished to boost the prestige of their own stock in order to associate themselves with people of good breeding.

And, of course, it paid, with show winners being sold for cash -- a quick way for people of low rank to buy themselves up the social ladder. If one had a dog that was "best of breed," then surely the owner must be of similar worth, right??

Ritvo notes that terriers were particularly singled out for attention by the show ring preeners and pretenders, and that:

The Fox Terrier Chronicle, the only 19th Century periodical devoted to a single breed of dogs, covered the terrier elite the way that newspapers and other periodicals covered human high society.

Ritvo notes that dog fanciers projected:

... an obsessively detailed vision of a stratified order, which sorted animals and, by implication, people into snug and appropriate niches" with dog shows offering "a dizzying range of classes and then abstracted from them a carefully calibrated hierarchy of animals, ranging from those who did not place even in their sub-breed category to the best in show.

In short, the attraction of dog shows was that people who themselves were as common as a turnip top could now fancy that they were among the social elite.

They did not have to have real knowledge of animals, or have an important job or title or large estate -- they just had to purchase a dog from a "reputable" show breeder and put on airs.

As one Victorian periodical noted,

Nobody now who is anybody can afford to be followed about by a mongrel dog.

Ritvo notes that:

Specialist clubs were supposed to defend their breeds against the vicissitudes of fashion, but they had few other guides in their attempts to establish standards for breeds and judges.

Even in the Victorian era, almost no one walking into the ring with a "working" breed actually worked their dogs.

After almost half a century of formal shows, the author of a manual for dog owners noted that,

The sportsman will as a rule have nothing to do with the fancier's production.

All of the above is from the second chapter of Ritvo's book. The third chapter is about the rise of the Animal Rights movement, and here we see the same class issues popping up that we did in the previous chapter.

Just as honest working dogs were labeled "mongrels best for the dustbin," so too were the people that owned them. The analogies made were simple and direct: Course people had course dogs and engaged in course behavior. Show people had "pedigree" dogs and they did not engage in course behavior.

Of course, not everything was quite as simple as this in the real world.

No matter -- the goal of the RSPCA was not entirely about animals anyway -- it was in no small part all about putting down the poor and the rural and castigating them for having "undisciplined" values.

Towards this end, Ritvo notes that the tracts of the RSPCA "implicitly identified the lower classes as the source of brutality," even as this same organization gave "the big wink" to fox hunting and grouse hunting which were common pastimes of the rich and landed.

Today, of course, the people you see at a PETA rally, and the folks that you see trotting their dogs around a show ring are not all that different demographically, and the general sentiment is still toward unalloyed snobbery.

Cruft: The Man That Never Owned a Dog

Charles Cruft was born in 1852 into a family of jewelers. Charles had no interest in his family's business, and upon graduation from college in 1876, took a job with American James Spratt who had set up a new venture in Holborn, London selling "dog cakes".

Charles Cruft did not own a dog, but he was an ambitious dog food salesman, and traveled around England and Scotland drumming up business for Spratt. Cruft's travels brought him in contact with large estates, sporting kennels and the first commercial dog breeders in the UK.

While traveling to Europe in 1878 hawking Spratt's dog biscuits, a group of French dog breeders invited the young Cruft (just two years out of college) to organize and promote the canine section of the Paris Exhibition, which he did.

Upon returning to England in 1886, Crufts took up the management of the Allied Terrier Club Show at the Royal Aquarium at Westminster, with an eye towards making money.

The first formal "Cruft's Show" was booked into the Royal Agricultural Hall, Islington in 1891. This was the first in a long series of dog shows that Crufts held there, each of them making an appealing profit for Cruft, who still did not own a dog himself.

In 1938 Charles Cruft died (still having never owned a dog!) and his widow ran the 1939 Crufts Dog Show. Three years later Mrs Cruft felt the responsibility for running the show too demanding and, in order to perpetuate the name of the show her husband had made world famous, she asked the Kennel Club to take it over and it was sold to them.

The 1948 Crufts Dog Show was the first under the Kennel Club auspices.

The Strange Fruit of Class Warfare

In The Animal Estate: The English and Other Creatures in the Victorian Age, author Harriet Ritvo [Harvard University Press, 1989] points out that the Dog Show crowd and the Animal Rights crowd spring from the same root-stock of sentiment, and in both cases the animals are the side-show, not the main event.

Ritvo writes that in the Victorian era and into the 20th Century dog show folks "elevated standards that had no basis in nature or aesthetics but reflected the ignorant, self-interested caprices of fanciers who wished to boost the prestige of their own stock in order to associate themselves with people of good breeding."

And, of course, it paid, with show winners being sold for cash -- a quick way for people of low rank to buy themselves up the social ladder. If one had a dog that was "best of breed," then surely the owner must be of similar worth, right??

Ritvo notes that terriers were particularly singled out for attention by the show ring preeners and pretenders, and that “The Fox Terrier Chronicle, the only 19th Century periodical devoted to a single breed of dogs, covered the terrier elite the way that newspapers and other periodicals covered human high society."

Ritvo notes that dog fanciers projected "an obsessively detailed vision of a stratified order, which sorted animals and, by implication, people into snug and appropriate niches" with dog shows offering "a dizzying range of classes and then abstracted from them a carefully calibrated hierarchy of animals, ranging from those who did not place even in their sub-breed category to the best in show."

In short, the attraction of dog shows was that people who themselves were as common as a turnip top could now fancy that they were among the social elite. They did not have to have real knowledge of animals, or have an important job or title or large estate -- they just had to purchase a dog from a "reputable" show breeder and put on airs.

As one Victorian periodical noted, "nobody now who is anybody can afford to be followed about by a mongrel dog." Ritvo notes that "Specialist clubs were supposed to defend their breeds against the vicissitudes of fashion, but they had few other guides in their attempts to establish standards for breeds and judges."

Even in the Victorian era, almost no one walking into the ring with a "working" breed actually worked their dogs. After almost half a century of formal shows, the author of a manual for dog owners noted that "the sportsman will, as a rule, have nothing to do with the fancier's production."

All of the above is from the Second chapter of Ritvo's book. The Third chapter is about the rise of the Animal Rights movement, and here we see the same class issues popping up that we did in the previous chapter.

Just as honest working dogs were labeled "mongrels best for the dustbin," so too were the people that owned them. The analogies made were simple and direct: Course people had course dogs and engaged in course behavior. Show people had "pedigree" dogs and they did not engage in course behavior. Of course, not everything was quite as simple as this in the real world. No matter -- the goal of the RSPCA was not entirely about animals anyway -- it was in no small part about putting down the poor and the rural and castigating them for having "undisciplined" values. Towards this end, Ritvo notes that the tracts of the RSPCA "implicitly identified the lower classes as the source of brutality," even as this same organization gave "the big wink" to fox hunting and grouse hunting which were common pastimes of the rich and landed.

Today, of course, the people you see at a PETA rally and the folks that you see trotting their dogs around a show ring are not all that different demographically. In his book "In Defense of Hunting," James A. Swan notes that the Animal Rights crowd is dominated by people that are "white, urban, predominantly female, nicely dressed" and that many of them are "people who have gone through painful divorces or have had traumatic childhoods or have otherwise been hurt by the norms of society."
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When Did Your Breed Show Up at Westminster?

American Kennel Club registrations have declined 75 percent over the last 30 years, even as the population of the U.S. has increased and the number of dogs (both total and per capita) have also increased. 

The AKC has added dozens of new breeds in an attempt to pad out its sagging membership numbers, but these breeds tend to be rare, and so things are not much improved.

1. Bull Terrier (Colored) 1877
2. Bull Terrier (White) 1877
3. Dandie Dinmont Terrier 1877
4. Fox Terrier (Smooth) 1877
5. Manchester Terrier (Standard) 1877
6. Scottish Terrier 1877
7. Skye Terrier 1877
8. Pointer 1877
9. Retriever (Chesapeake Bay) 1877
10. Setter (English) 1877
11. Setter (Gordon) 1877
12. Setter (Irish) 1877
13. Spaniel (Cocker) Black 1877
14. Spaniel (Field) 1877
15. Spaniel (Irish Water) 1877
16. Beagle 12 In. 1877
17. Beagle 15 In. 1877
18. Dachshund (Smooth) 1877
19. Foxhound (American) 1877
20. Greyhound 1877
21. Harrier 1877
22. Scottish Deerhound 1877
23. Great Dane 1877
24. Mastiff 1877
25. Newfoundland 1877
26. Saint Bernard 1877
27. English Toy Spaniel (B&PC) 1877
28. English Toy Spaniel (KC&R) 1877
29. Italian Greyhound 1877
30. Japanese Chin 1877
31. Pug 1877
32. Bulldog 1877
33. Dalmatian 1877
34. Poodle (Standard) 1877
35. Collie (Rough) 1877
36. Spaniel (Clumber) 1878
37. Bloodhound 1878
38. Yorkshire Terrier 1878
39. Irish Wolfhound 1879
40. Chihuahua (Smooth) 1879
41. Maltese 1879
42. Airedale Terrier 1881
43. Irish Terrier 1881
44. Fox Terrier (Wire) 1883
45. Chow Chow 1883
46. Bedlington Terrier 1884
47. Basset Hound 1884
48. Pomeranian 1886
49. Welsh Terrier 1888
50. Collie (Smooth) 1888
51. Old English Sheepdog 1888
52. Borzoi 1891
53. Foxhound (English) 1891
54. Schipperke 1891
55. Whippet 1893
56. Spaniel (Sussex) 1895
57. Boston Terrier 1895
58. French Bulldog 1897
59. Spaniel (Cocker) A.S.C.O.B. 1899
60. Spaniel (Cocker) Parti-Color 1899
61. Poodle (Toy) 1900
62. Brussels Griffon 1902
63. West Highland White Terrier 1906
64. Papillon 1906
65. Samoyed 1907
66. Pekingese 1907
67. Belgian Sheepdog 1907
68. German Shepherd Dog 1908
69. Otterhound 1909
70. Wirehaired Pointing Griffon 1911
71. Doberman Pinscher 1911
72. Sealyham Terrier 1912
73. Cairn Terrier 1914
74. Boxer 1914
75. Spaniel (English Springer) 1916
76. Kerry Blue Terrier 1922
77. Retriever (Labrador) 1923
78. Norwegian Elkhound 1925
79. Standard Schnauzer 1925
80. Manchester Terrier (Toy) 1925
81. Retriever (Curly-Coated) 1926
82. Retriever (Flat-Coated) 1926
83. Miniature Schnauzer 1927
84. Afghan Hound 1927
85. Shetland Sheepdog 1927
86. Retriever (Golden) 1928
87. Saluki 1928
88. Briard 1929
89. Border Terrier 1930
90. Dachshund (Wirehaired) 1930
91. Giant Schnauzer 1930
92. Miniature Pinscher 1930
93. Dachshund (Longhaired) 1931
94. Keeshond 1931
95. Bouvier des Flandres 1931
96. Poodle (Miniature) 1932
97. Siberian Husky 1933
98. Bullmastiff 1934
99. Great Pyrenees 1934
100. Lakeland Terrier 1935
101. Brittany Spaniel
102. Pointer (German Shorthaired) 1935
103. Kuvasz 1935
104. Rottweiler 1935
105. Welsh Corgi (Pembroke) 1935
106. Alaskan Malamute 1936
107. Lhasa Apso 1936
108. Welsh Corgi (Cardigan) 1936
109. American Staffordshire Terrier 1937
110. Norwich Terrier 1937
111. Spaniel (English Cocker) 1937
112. Puli 1937
113. Affenpinscher 1938
114. Komondor 1940
115. Weimaraner 1943
116. Bernese Mountain Dog 1943
117. Spaniel (American Water) 1945
118. Basenji 1946
119. Black and Tan Coonhound 1947
120. Chihuahua (Long) 1951
121. Spaniel (Welsh Springer) 1953
122. Rhodesian Ridgeback 1957
123. Pointer (German Wirehaired) 1960
124. Silky Terrier 1960
125. Australian Terrier 1961
126. Belgian Tervuren 1961
127. Vizsla 1962
128. Belgian Malinois 1967
129. Shih Tzu 1970
130. Soft Coated Wheaten Terrier 1974
131. Akita 1974
132. Bichon Frise 1974
133. Tibetan Terrier 1974
134. Staffordshire Bull Terrier 1976
135. Bearded Collie 1978
136. Norfolk Terrier 1979
137. Ibizan Hound 1980
138. Australian Cattle Dog 1981
139. Pharaoh Hound 1985
140. Portuguese Water Dog 1985
141. Tibetan Spaniel 1985
142. Finnish Spitz 1989
143. Petit Basset Griffons Vendeen 1992
144. Chinese Crested 1992
145. Miniature Bull Terrier 1993
146. Chinese Shar-pei 1993
147. Shiba Inu 1994
148. Australian Shepherd 1994
149. Greater Swiss Mountain Dog 1996
150. American Eskimo Dog 1996
151. Border Collie 1996
152. Cavalier King Charles Spaniel 1997
153. Canaan Dog 1998
154. Anatolian Shepherd Dog 2000
155. Havanese 2000
156. Lowchen 2000
157. Parson Russell Terrier 2001
158. Spinone Italiano 2001
159. Polish Lowland Sheepdog 2002
160. Retriever (Nova Scotia Duck Tolling) 2004
161. German Pinscher 2004
162. Toy Fox Terrier 2004
163. Glen of Imaal Terrier 2005
164. Black Russian Terrier 2005
165. Neapolitan Mastiff 2005
166. Plott 2008
167. Tibetan Mastiff 2008
168. Beauceron 2008
169. Swedish Vallhund 2008
170. Dogue de Bordeaux 2009
171. Bluetick Coonhound 2009
     
172. Boykin Spaniel 2009
     
173. Irish Red & White Setter 2009
     
174. Norwegian Buhund 2009
     
175. Pyrenean Shepherd 2009
     
176. Redbone Coonhound 2010
     
177. Cane Corso 2010
     
178. Icelandic Sheepdog 2010
     
179. Leonberger 2011
     
180. Cesky Terrier 2011
     
181. Entlebucher Mountain Dog 2011
     
182. Finnish Lapphund 2011
     
183. Norwegian Lundehund 2011
     
184. Xoloitzcuintli 2012
     
185. Russell Terrier 2012
     
186. Treeing Walker Coonhound 2013
     
187. Chinook 2013
     
188. Portuguese Podengo Pequeno 2013
     
189. Rat Terrier 2014
     
190. Coton de Tulear 2014
     
191. Wirehaired Vizsla 2015
     
192. Bergamasco 2015
     
193. Berger Picard 2015
     
194. Boerboel 2015
     
195. Cirneco dell’Etna 2015
     
196. Lagotto Romangnolo 2015
     
197. Miniature American Shepherd 2015
     
198. Spanish Water Dog 2016
     
199. American Hairless Terrier 2016
     
200. Pumi 2016
     
201. Sloughi 2018
     
202. Grand Basset Griffon Vandeen 2018
     
203. Nederlandse Kooikerhondje 2019
     
204. Azawakh - 2019

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Sick Puppies and Broken Dogs

Steve Dean is the new Chairman of the Kennel Club.
Art by Kevin Brockbank, for the August 2011 issue of  Dogs Today. 

It's Time To Stop Praying
at the Church of the Kennel Club.

I have a low tolerance for whiners and professional victims, and it comes out two ways in the world of dogs.

The most common way is in a kind of “compassion fatigue” for people who do not do serious research when it comes to buying dog.

If you bought a dog at a pet store or from an ad out of the back of a newspaper, and everything did not work out for you, please do not come complaining to me!

Ditto if you are the kind of person who got a Boston terrier or an English bulldog that cannot breathe, a dachshund with a back problem, or a show line German shepherd that walks like a drunk exiting a bar after midnight.

What part of “read a book,” “be a consumer,” and “this is an important decision” did you not understand?

On the other end of the stick, are the folks breeding and selling diseased and defective dogs with fabricated histories and contrived standards.

The world is no longer saluting your nonsense? Boo hoo! Let me pour you a big pot of pity and never mind the dogs!


Where Do Dogs Come From?

The good news is that the world is not chock full of fools.

In the U.S., more than half of all dogs are mixed breeds of some kind, and almost none of these are overly extreme in appearance or deeply inbred genetically.

Of the 47 percent of American dogs that are purebred, only 25 percent are registered with the American Kennel Club — the rest are not registered at all, are registered with a breed-specific registry, or hold paper from some other registry.

To put it another way, 87 percent of American dogs are not registered with the AKC

In the United Kingdom, two-thirds of all dogs are said to be purebred, but this number is a bit deceptive as the number two and number three breeds, in terms of popularity, are the Jack Russell terrier and the border collie.

These two “breeds” are really types, bred for function rather than for show. The owners of these dogs have never been too finicky about closing the gate on their respective gene pools.

If the dog works like a Jack Russell terrier or a border collie, and looks like one, then it’s pure enough. Oh, you have a piece of paper? Excellent, but I am not sure the fox or the sheep much care!

If you add the border collie and the Jack Russell terrier to the “not bred within a closed registry” tally, the non-pedigree population of dogs in the U.K comes within striking distance of what we see in the United States.

What about dogs bred within the closed registry systems of the Kennel Club?

The story here is mixed.

Some breeds, such as beagles, are quite healthy. Others are burdened by genetic problems, such as skin allergies, which may cause a lifetime of misery. Many have decent, if somewhat shortened, lives up until a few weeks or months prior to their death due to cancer, liver, or kidney disease. Quite a large number of Kennel Club dogs live to ripe old age with grey muzzle and rheumy eyes. In truth, most Kennel Club dogs are reasonably healthy, and only about two dozen breeds are so wrecked as to require a caution flag under any and all circumstances. What’s amazing is that these broken breeds still sell!


Failed Consumers Buy Defective Corporate Products

To be clear, there’s no shortage of crap breeds being produced by the Kennel Club. On this score I pull no punches. If you are buying a Pekingese, a pug, a cavalier, a Dogue De Bordeaux, an English bulldog or any of about two dozen other breeds I can rattle off in short order, you are simply a fool the same as someone buying a model of car famous for shoddy workmanship and dodgy design. You would never buy a car based solely on a dealer’s brochure, would you?

Yet people buy dogs all the time after doing little more than reading a Kennel Club sales brochure or an all-breed picture book, somehow oblivious to the fact that Kennel Club breeds are simply corporate products manufactured under license and with approved (if defective) standards.

It is sad, but true, that most folks spend more time planning their vacations than they do reading up on the health, training, temperament and exercise needs of a dog they hope to spend the next 15 years with.

And yet how often do we give these shoddy consumers a pass when they get a dog that is diseased, defective or unsuitable?

Too often!

Why? Has extending sympathy to such people helped the dogs? Not from what I can tell; in fact, quite the opposite. Too often these same people turn around and simply buy another dog of the same breed.

Is there a better definition of insanity than doing the same thing again and again and expecting a different result? If so, I have not heard it!

The time has come for a new approach – a kind of tough love. The simple truth is that stupid consumers and willful ignorants are not victims, they are participants in systematic canine abuse.

We are supposed to pity poor Harriet because she bought a Pekingese that cannot breath and now has to pay for expensive soft palette surgery for her dog? How about if we shun her instead?


Pedophiles and Puppies

In fact, how about if we treat everyone who owns a Kennel Club dog a bit like someone who announces they are Catholic?

You are Catholic, eh?

There is a pause. Both sides know what is being thought; now the only question is whether it will actually be said.

“What are your thoughts on the pedophilia?” you might ask. “Have you thought about changing churches, especially now that you have children?

How rude, some may say.

Really?

You think it rude to ask how -- in a world where there are a thousand ways to salute God -- someone would choose to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with a church hierarchy that winks at child buggery and has shied away from naming the problem and finding solutions for hundreds of years?

I guess we differ there!

But is it any different in the world of dogs?

When pressed about the physical abuse and pain heaped on dogs by extreme standards, and the systematic inbreeding of dogs within a closed registry system, the Kennel Club is quick to blame “the Victorians.” There is little they can do to change things quickly, they explain. It will take time. Reform will be slow. But good news; they have created an advisory committee of show dog breeders to point the way forward!

Right. And the Vatican has also put the question of what to do about pederasty to a group of celibate old men who think it perfectly fine to wear dresses to the office.

What? You are making a parallel between the Kennel Club and the Vatican? That’s outrageous!

Really? Which side have I offended?

And, of course the parallels go on.

When asked about pedophilia, the Catholic Church routinely claims such problems are quite localized. Yes, Saint Anthony’s church had “that problem,” but the Church is in “this world” and “not immune” from “such things.”

Now we know the truth: child buggery in the Catholic Church is a global problem and has gone on for centuries.

In fact, it has been so chronic and systematic that the Vatican has had a “pedophile referee” at the Vatican for decades.

That man is now the Pope.

But again, is any of this different from what we see at the Kennel Club?

The problems associated with extreme exaggeration or “selection for defect” are not new and neither are the diseases and illnesses associated with inbreeding.

These problems are not confined to one breed or one country, but cut across many breeds and many countries.

And who is the new Pope at the Kennel Club? What faces are we to see in the College of Cardinals choosing the way forward for the Church of the Kennel Club?

Why, none other than an unbroken phalanx of show dog breeders!


Vote With Your Feet… and Your Wallet

Do I think change is possible?

Absolutely.

In fact, I know change is possible for both the Kennel Club and the Catholic Church.

But neither side will see the light until they have first felt the heat.

Things will not change until the pews are bare and the collection plates are empty.

The way forward is not just to yell at the Kennel Club or to yell at the Church: it’s to vote with your feet and your wallet.

If you are buying a Kennel Club dog or attending a dog show, you are part of the problem, same as the Catholic Church parishioner who throws his fiver into the plate every Sunday morning, and who marches his child to alter boy practice on Tuesday and Thursday.

A victim? I think not. A participant!

_ _ _ A version of this piece appears in the August issue of Dogs Today
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Non-Extinct Terriers & Other Mysteries

Many of the terrier breeds that people now lament the "extinction" of never actually existed except in the minds of Victorian picture book makers.

In "The Welsh Terrier Leads the Way," Bardi McLennan recounts the relatively recent origins of the Welsh Terrier.

"In 1800 there were only 15 designated breeds of dogs, and 50 years later there were only 50."

That is of ALL dogs, not just terriers. As late as 1850, a lot of breeds were still not very distinct and several "breeds" were known by different names. For example, in 1851, the Yorkshire Terrier was also known as "the broken-haired scotch terrier." Only in 1870 was a Yorkshire Terrier firmly designated as a breed and breed name. Before then litter mates were often shown in different breed categories -- a situation that occurred with the first prize-winning Jack Russell, which had previously won shows as a "white Lakeland."

The Welsh Terrier and Old English Black and Tan terriers were the same dog -- a type of rough-stock Lakeland dog used in Wales and in the North. These dogs had a fair amount of variation in terms of size and shape, but generally had more color than the "white foxing terriers" preferred in the South.

These rough-coated terriers existed without too much conformity in name or shape (as they still do in the working terrier community in the U.K.), but conformity and a brand name were essential characteristics of Kennel Club registration, and an intrepid history (however fanciful) certainly did not hurt sales.

With the rise of dog shows in the 1860s, the race was on to give every odd-looking dog a name and "improve" them, and terriers were at the top of the list.

One group of Kennel Club breeders decided to embrace a rather ponderous name and an incredible assertion for the brown and black dogs.  They were, they asserted, "the root stock" of all terriers in the British Isles, and they were to be called the "Old English Broken-Haired Black and Tan."

The assertion that these dogs were the root stock of all terriers in the UK is rather laughable -- no one know what the "root stock" was, and in any case there probably was no single "tap root," but instead a fine net of "rootlets" that spread far and wide and included a lot of dogs that were not terriers at all -- dachshunds, whippets, beagles, and lap dogs, for example.

In any case, the Welsh were somewhat outraged to have the English bring down a few of "their" dogs and claim they were an "Old English" anything. These were Welsh dogs, and the Welshmen moved quickly to establish that fact. The Welsh got organized quickly, and in 1884 they held the first dog show with classes just for Welsh Terriers in Pwllheli, North Wales with 90 dogs in attendance -- a rather impressive opening shot in this little "terrier war."

For their part, proponents of the "Old English Black and Tan" moniker could not seem to coalesce into a real club; in fact they could not even agree on a name for their supposedly "Old English" breed. Some called it the Old English Broken-Haired Black and Tan Terrier, some the Old English Wire Haired Black and Tan, some the Broken-Haired Black and Tan, and some just "Black and Tan" -- a color-descriptive name that had been used about as often as "white dog" or "yellow hound".

Whatever they might have called the dogs, this new Kennel Club "breed" was in fact a put-up job comprised of a mix of terrier types and they had difficulty breeding true.

In 1885 a survey of the winning dogs in the ring found that all of them were, in fact, first generation dogs, i.e. not Black and Tans out of Black and Tan sires and dams, but Black and Tans produced out of crosses with other breeds. For example, the winner of the first show in 1884 was a dog named Crib that was a cross between a blue-black rough terrier and a famous smooth fox terrier owned by L.P.C. Ashley called Corinthian.

In 1885, the Kennel Club took a Solomonic approach to the name and breed standard for the dog, featuring both dogs at their 1885 show. On April 5, 1887, however, because the English could not get organized, they were dropped from Kennel Club listings, and the new "Welsh Terrier" breed was born, perhaps propelled forward in popularity a bit by the rise of David Lloyd George, the son of a Welsh cobbler, who himself has risen from humble origins to stand should-to-shoulder with the gentry.

The "Black and Tan" terrier is not the only breed that either never existed (or still exists today, depending on how you look at it).

At the same time that one faction was pushing for the introduction of the "Old English Black and Tan Terrier" another faction was pushing for the introduction of the "English White" terrier which, it should be said, has nothing to do with the old English White molosser dog used as a butcher's dog 150 years earlier.

In fact this new dog was really a toy breed created by crossing a small smooth-coated white foxing terrier with some sort of lap dog, which left the resulting progeny with a propensity towards deafness and a bulging "apple head" like that of many modern Chihuahuas.

Both the "Black and Tan" terrier and the "English White" terrier live on in the fevered minds of the breed-obsessed thanks to a book by Vero Shaw entitled "The Illustrated Book of the Dog."

Printed in 1881, right in the middle of the "terrier wars," this book contains about 100 chromo-lithograph plates and engravings of dog breeds that were being put forth as distinct entities at that time. Shaw rather optimistically included the "Black and Tan" as well as the "English White," betting that the political machinations of English Kennel Club dog breeders would prevail.

He was wrong, which is how two "ancient" breeds of terriers, that in fact never exited, managed to appear on the scene for less than 20 years and then disappear altogether.

Bill Cosby is Dog Show People

Back in February of 2007, I posted this missive on the blog. 

It seems like a good time for a re-post as, luck would have it, I posted a bit about Dandie Dinmonts earlier in the day and Mr. Cosby just got convicted for serial rape.

Fru Fru Fidos In the Terrier Ring at Westminster

The latest news out of the Westminster Kennel Club show in New York City is that a Dandie Dinmont won the terrier class. I cannot help but laugh, as this is a breed so far from it's origins and so far from being a true terrier as to be a joke on four legs.

Of course, this Dandie Dinmont will now get a lot of press coverage since it is co-owned by comedian Bill Cosby. Does anyone else think Bill Cosby's ownership might have been a small (or large) consideration in the judge's mind? What a great way to launch a small ring judge into the spotlight -- and get a picture with a celebrity as well! Plus the folks at Westminster will love you for it -- star power publicity is always good for business.

Cosby has been showing terriers for years, of course. Or, should I say, he has has been paying people to breed dogs and show them for him. He is neither the breeder nor the handler; he is the person with a lot of money, if not much time. Of course, neither Cosby, his handler, nor his breeder has ever heard of a locator collar. Who has in the world of show ring terriers? These folks are involved in a different "sport" -- the sport of writing checks, deciding which dog has sex with which dog, and parading the resulting progeny around a ring. How this is a sport is a bit of a mystery to me, but that's what they call it.

For those of you who are regular readers of this blog, you might remember that I wrote about Dandie Dinmont's back in November ("Danger: Market Forces at Work") and that I promptly received emails from two show-ring Dandie Dinmont breeders in the UK (Hilary Cheyne and Paul Keevil) who said their breed of dog was not wrecked by the ring, and of course it still worked.

This is complete hogwash, of course, and everyone who digs on their dogs knows it. And to underscore the point, I extended a small challenge to Ms. Cheyne and Mr. Keevil:

".... to find even one picture of a Kennel Club Dandie Dinmont that was dug to in the last 50 years. I want a photograph of a Dandie (wearing a locator collar) and his fox or badger standing next to a hole freshly dug. No roadkill photos now!"

Three months later and I am still waiting. Mr. Keevil sent me old illustrations of dogs standing in the counryside, etc. but he did not even have an illustration of a Dandie being dug to or working a fox -- an amazing thing since he is in the graphics arts business. I suggested to Mr. Keevil that he might try to get a picture from Alf Rhodes' family, but in truth Rhodes (who is dead) only claimed to have ever dug six foxes with a single Dandie Dinmont he had back in the 1970s. So much for Dandie's as a working breed!

As I have often note, there are more pictures of Sasquatch and the Loch Ness Monster than there are of most Kennel Club terrier breeds at work, and the Dandie Dinmont is no exception.

Charles Crufts Never Owned a Dog

An owner prepares her Chihuahua for the Crufts judges.

Charles Cruft, pictured below, was born in 1852 into a family of jewelers. Charles had no interest in his family's business, and upon graduation from college in 1876, took a job with American James Spratt, who had set up a new venture in Holborn, London selling "dog cakes".



Charles Cruft did not own a dog, but he was an ambitious dog food salesman, and traveled around England and Scotland drumming up business for Spratt. Cruft's travels brought him in contact with large estates, sporting kennels and the first commercial dog breeders in the U.K.

While traveling to Europe in 1878 hawking Spratt's dog biscuits, a group of French dog breeders invited the young Cruft (just two years out of college!) to organize and promote the canine section of the Paris Exhibition, which he did.

Upon returning to England in 1886, Crufts took up the management of the Allied Terrier Club Show at the Royal Aquarium at Westminster, with an eye towards making money.

The first formal "Cruft's Show" was booked into the Royal Agricultural Hall, Islington in 1891. This was the first in a long series of dog shows that Crufts held there, each of them making an appealing profit for Cruft who still did not own a dog himself.

In 1938 Charles Cruft died, still having never owned a dog, and his widow ran the 1939 Crufts Dog Show. Three years later Mrs Cruft felt the responsibility for running the show too demanding and, in order to perpetuate the name of the show her husband had made world famous, she asked the Kennel Club to take it over and it was sold to them.

The 1948 Crufts Dog Show was the first under the Kennel Club auspices.

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Science Remakes the Dog

An article, from the November 1936 issue of Popular Science magazine is a good representative of the kind of congratulatory back-patting that went on during this period, as show ring and hobby breeders worked overtime to draw more and more working dogs into the Kennel Club.

Not the tone of the article: "Science" is improving dogs so they will be better suited to the modern world of cars, apartments, and limited time for their care and feeding.

In fact, these market forces continue to this day, as I have noted in an earlier post entitled "Robert Bakewell's Apartment."

This Popular Science article was written when the Kennel Club was just 65 years old, but problems already seem to be cropping up.

Notice that the Cocker Spaniel seems to have been "improved" to the point that it no longer hunts.

The Scottish terrier's morphology has been transformed with the "improved" dog having a shorter back, a larger head, and a longer coat -- improvements that made the dog incapable of going down a hole after quarry, ruining it as a true working terrier.

Then you have the various types of setters where bench and field animals had already diverged to the point that they appeared to be different breeds.

Finally, the Afghan is mentioned as a new and exotic breed brought to America. How long before the show-ring variant was wrecked as a coursing dog? Not long!

It should also be noted that some of the "history" given here is Kennel Club bunk. The Airedale, for example, is a modern creation derived from the Otter hound, and bred specifically for the show ring. It was never a "night poacher's dog," being too slow and heavy for rabbit, fox, or deer. Hunting otter is not done at night; it is tough enough to see the things in the daylight!

Similarly, the English Bulldog has very little of the old bull-baiting dog in it, and quite a lot of the monstrous pug to which it is much more closely-related!

As for fox terriers, by the time this article was written, almost no one was using a Kennel Club dog for anything other than a companion dog, as a close reading of Jocelyn Lucas's book Hunt and Working Terriers (published in 1931) will reveal.

Fox-working dogs have not been "improved" by science or show ring breeders; they have only been ruined by the rosette chasers.

The original art for this article can be seen here >> Page 1, Page 2, Page 3

Science Remakes the Dog
How Breeders Are Changing The Appearance and Nature Of Our Canine Population To Bring Out the Qualities That Are Made Desirable By Modern Living Conditions

By Jesse F. Gelders


DOGS are getting smaller. Subject to style trends, the same as clothing, automobiles, and houses, they are adapting themselves— or, rather, being adapted—to the changed conditions of modern life.

People today are demanding dogs that can live in small homes or apartments, and ride in automobiles, without crowding out their human companions; dogs that can keep fit with a minimum of exercise; smart, good-natured dogs, and—an important consideration, sometimes—dogs that will not eat their masters out of house and home.To meet these new requirements, breeders are applying scientific principles of heredity in bringing out the desired qualities.

Already, the appearance and character of the nation’s dog population show the effects of their work—a modern version of the unceasing process which, in the past, has had such amazing consequences as the refinement of the popular Airedale terrier from a mongrel, the conversion of the strain of wolflike spitz into the little toy Pomeranian, and the development of the bulldog into an animal vastly unlike his bulldog ancestors of a century ago.

Largely as a result of the demand for smaller dogs, the Boston terrier, one of the only three breeds actually originated in the United States, today leads all others in American Kennel Club registrations. Next come three other small breeds, the cocker spaniel, the wire-haired fox terrier, and the Scotish terrier. As recently as 1926, the German shepherd, often loosely called a “police dog,” ranked first; but it is now in twentieth place, possibly because the depression made owners more conscious of the cost of dog food.

Through selective breeding, experts have been meeting the demands for smaller dogs, dogs which eat less and can be kept more economically; dogs which need less exercise, and therefore retain better health in cramped quarters. The motor age has restricted the exercise of dogs even more than that of men. It has created a need for breeds which remain in good physical condition when they are walked only on a leash, or at best in close company of their owners, instead of being allowed to run free. Thousands of motorists want dogs adapted to riding in cars instead of to loping for miles alongside horse-drawn coaches.

These changes, occurring now among pedigreed dogs, are by no means limited to that select group. Within a few years they will be reflected by the general dog population of the country. It is estimated that there are in the United States between 500,000 and 1,000,000 purebred dogs, and 15,000,000 or more mongrels; and nearly all their owners are affected by similar conditions.

The mongrels themselves gradually show effects of crossing with whatever pure breeds happen to be most numerous. Look around, and you will see that the “average” dogs today exhibit definite marks of the German shepherd or the Airedale, whose popularity swept the country in recent years. There are numerous inheritances too, from the collie and the bull terrier, while the bird-dog influence is especially strong in the smaller communities. Early in the century, there were widespread traces of the fawn-colored, looptailed pug, but most of them have been lost in the engulfing tide of other blood.

Being no snob in the matter of dogs myself, and having an equal fondness for pure-breds and others, I inquired of Kennel Club officials why every cross-bred is termed a mongrel. The distinction, I learned, is based not on snobbery, but on scientific fact.

When pure-bred dogs of the same breed are mated, the puppies are like the parents. But when two different breeds are crossed, even though both dogs are of the purest strains, the characteristics of the puppies cannot accurately be foretold.

A breeder told me of the chance mating of a Scottish terrier and a hound, from which five pups were born, with ears like hounds and bodies like Scotties. What their puppies would be like, nobody could guess. For when mongrels are mated, even two mongrels of exactly the same appearance, their pups may be entirely different, taking a new combination of characteristics from their ancestors. Once there is a mixture, only long, careful breeding can sift out and stabilize any definite type.

Heredity is so certain to play pranks, that kennel clubs refuse to register any dog as a pure-bred unless its ancestors are known for three generations. On the rare occasions when a new breed is to be recognized, proof is required that there has been no variation from the proper type, either in three generations of direct ancestors, or in any pup born in the same litter with any of them.

Breeders seeking dogs of new types for definite new purposes usually have a choice of two procedures. They may cross breeds, as a chemist compounds elements to obtain a new material, but this is a long and uncertain task. On the other hand, they may “refine” an already existing breed, taking dogs which are a little closer than the average to the type they want, and continuing the selection until the entire strain takes on the new, desired qualities.

By such processes, the Scottie has changed his appearance in the last twenty years, developing a more profuse coat, a squarer head, and a shorter body.

The cocker spaniel, originally a hunting dog and one of the first breeds in the American colonies, has since been bred smaller as a pet, and is now being guided back to greater size again, to be used for hunting.

The bench-show setters, bred for their looks, have changed so greatly that they almost have the appearance of a different breed from the field-trial setters, developed for speed and good noses.

Even before the principles of heredity were studied scientifically, breeders unconsciously made use of them, by patiently selecting dogs with the traits they desired to reproduce. There was the case of Polaris, the North Greenland Eskimo dog, whose sled-pulling ancestry gave him such an aptitude for the work that on his first introduction to the harness he pulled a heavy sled three miles through deep snow. The breeder of sheep-herding collies developed such intelligence in the animals that a dog could go alone and select his master’s sheep from the others grazing in the hills, bring them home, and separate the rams from the ewes and lambs before driving them to their quarters.

The short-legged Welsh corgi was bred to do a job of a different sort. He scattered his master’s cattle on the public grazing ground by nipping at their hocks, and when they kicked he had to dodge. In this risky work, his low stature often saved his life. With intelligence specially cultivated for his task, he knew when to go into action and when to stop, by the tone of his master’s whistle.

Among the strangest characteristics cultivated for particular jobs, are those of the Afghan hound, brought to America a few years ago, but used for many centuries as a hunting dog in the mountains of Afghanistan. While he is not so fast as many other hounds on level ground, he has developed high, wide-set hips which fit him especially for running on hills, and for leaping over obstacles. And because he frequently hunted in dense thickets, he has been bred to carry his tail high, like a flag, which his master could see above the concealing brush.

Even more fascinating than the shaping of traits in individual breeds of dogs, has been the creation of new breeds by crossing, for special purposes. Tremendous care was required, to select offspring with just the right inheritances from each stock.

BREEDERS of Chesapeake Bay retrievers, desiring to improve their scent, crossed them with hounds, but were able to preserve the chief characteristics which they had inherited from their other ancestors, supposedly curly-coated retrievers which had been mated with two New Foundland dogs taken from a wrecked ship. Their stamina and their rough, almost waterproof coats enable them to withstand severe storms and work in water chilled by floating ice.

The Chesapeakes share with American foxhounds and Boston terriers the distinction of being the only breeds originated in the United States. The foxhounds were said to have been developed by George Washington, who, to obtain a faster breed, crossed English foxhounds with French hounds given him by General Lafayette.

Boston terriers represent another success of breeders in obtaining just the desired characteristics from a parent stock, this time the English bulldog. Crossing it with the white English terrier, they obtained the bulldog type of head on a dog smaller and more agile than the bulldog. By that time the bulldog had been cultivated into a good-natured though still courageous animal, and those qualities were preserved.

Strangely, a somewhat similar set of ancestors produced the bull terrier, a very different dog. This time, the breeders wanted a fighter, so they chose the bulldog. They crossed him first with large black-and-tan terriers and white English terriers, producing a heavy-set, short-legged, fawn-colored dog. By careful selection they eliminated the short head and nearly all the other old bulldog qualities except the courage. Then the dog was crossed again with white terriers, and the white color, a recessive characteristic, was fixed, so that the dog became essentially the bull terrier we know today.

THE bulldog himself was the result of careful breeding of dogs for the barbarous sport of bull baiting. The bulls which were to be killed were roped to stakes, so the dog did not require real hunting ability, but only ferocity. The heavy, powerful mastiff was crossed with other breeds, among them probably the pug, for a peculiar reason. The bulldog’s chief requirement was to hang on, when he caught hold, and the pug’s short nose enabled him to breathe without letting go.

With the passing of bull baiting, the bulldog began to be cultivated with two oddly contrasting aims. The ferocity was bred out, until be became a really kindly beast, but at the same time, his ugliness of appearance was encouraged to such an exaggerated extent that it often interfered with his health. Breathing frequently was an effort for him, even in repose; and his lower jaw protruded so far that he often had trouble chewing his food, making him a prize example of unwisely directed heredity.

Like the bulldog, the Airedale terrier had his origin in a questionable pursuit.. Not only was he for a considerable time a mongrel, but he served as the helper of poachers on forbidden game preserves. The poachers worked at night, and wanted dark-colored dogs which would not be conspicuous, and which hunted without baying. They crossed old English terriers and otter hounds first, then Irish terriers and bull terriers, until finally the present type was evolved and stabilized.

CHANGES in the occupations of other dogs, as strange as the reformation of the Airedale and bulldog, have been effected by skillful crossing. The pointer, today’s widely used bird dog, was employed 300 years ago in England for finding rabbits to be chased by greyhounds, which hunt by sight.

Breeders crossed the English pointer with Spanish dogs, to get the superior “pointing” ability of the latter, but they bred out the foreign dog’s other characteristics, as inferior to the native’s. The original pointer stock is believed to have descended from “setting spaniels,” greyhounds, foxhounds, and bloodhounds. Later, to produce a kindlier disposition, the dogs were crossed with setters.

The English setter’s ancestry, quite curiously, includes the Spanish pointer, along with several types of spaniels. The setter himself had started work as a hunting dog long before the advent of firearms; he located birds and crouched while nets were drawn over them.

The English sportsmen’s desire for a dog to chase the fox out of his hole, resulted in the mingling of an amazing array of dog-talent, to produce the popular smooth-coated fox-terrier. Many experts believe the little animal carries the blood of black-and-tan terriers, beagles, greyhounds and bull terriers, with important heritages in alertness, scent, speed, or courage from each.

Another little dog, descended from different stock, became the wire-haired fox terrier. It was crossed with the smooth terrier, to get symmetry and white coloring, but the breeders were careful to retain the rough coat.

Almost as frequently as new breeds have been created, old ones have disappeared or suffered serious declines. The Irish wolfhound, one of the most famous breeds in history and perhaps the largest, degenerated and almost became extinct with the passing of conditions which had made it useful. But an English sportsman, wishing to restore it, crossed the remaining dogs with deerhounds, which he thought were of the same breed. Then he crossed them with Great Danes and Russian wolfhounds, until once again the Irish wolfhound became the tallest known dog, standing as high as thirty-six inches at the shoulder.

MANY other dogs which have become extinct, or almost so, are represented by new breeds in the making of which they had a part. The black-and-tan, or “rat terrier,” for example, whose unreliable temper cost him many friends, still flourishes today in a transformed and reformed state, as a part of the Boston, the bull terrier, the fox terrier, the striking and intelligent Dobermann Pinscher (first bred by a German dog catcher) and in many other popular breeds.

Changing tastes and living conditions which so often decree the end of a dog as a type, frequently make a new place for a part of him—and it is the job of the skillful breeder to see that the right part is saved.
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The Always New and Continuing Evolution of Dogs

A repost from this blog, circa February 2007.

A lot of people want the undifferentiating affection of a dog, but are not entirely willing to pay the price: forced awakenings at 7 am, expensive fencing, veterinary care, shedding coats, barking, and strange smells in the living room.

Dogs are small tyrants that crap on your rug, chew up your glasses and steal your sandwiches.

If you own a dog, you can still ride off into the sunset, but you better be back by 8:30 to feed it, and by midnight to put it to bed for the evening.

In the era of schooners and candles, when people lived on large farms with slow traffic, things were probably a little bit easier. Back then a large dog could sleep in the barn and roam more-or-less at will.

Now a lot of folks live in condominiums and multi-story apartment buildings surrounded by six-lanes of traffic. Others are retirees looking for less work. The result is a growing market for small dogs that are as easy to take care of as a cat.

In fact, what is wanted today is a dog that acts like a cat, and a cat that acts like a dog.

Towards that end breeders on both ends of the spectrum are working towards a middle ground, with cats that have affectionate personalities and legs too short to jump up on the furniture, and dogs that do not shed, rarely bark, and are so small they can be tucked inside a handbag.

I suppose all of this is simply a logical extension of Robert Bakewell's earlier efforts to control sires in order to produce animals for a particular function.

Cats, of course, were slow to domesticate as prior to the rise of the "indoor" cat, felines were free to roam and cross-breed at will.

Dogs, on the other hand, have been the product of controlled breeding for so long that most Kennel Club breeds now seem to specialize in two or three genetic defects. As a consequence, more and more prospective pet owners are are now looking at cross breeds in some hope of avoiding expensive veterinary work to "fix" defective canine hips, eyes, knees and teeth.

Another factor, of course, is that a lot of the small "toy" breeds are so fru-fru that no self-respecting heterosexual man is eager to be seen walking one. A Toy Poodle? A Papillon? Please.

A cross-bred small dog at least offers the potential dignity of being something a little "outside the box."A small dog described as a "little mutt" or "attack rat" by the husband, can be described by the wife as a Shitpoo (a Shih Tzu crossed with a Toy Poodle), a Cockapoo (a Cocker Spaniel crossed with a Toy Poodle), a Schnoodle (a Schnauzer crossed with a poodle), a Bagel (a Beagle crossed with a Bassett Hound) or a Puggle (a Pug crossed with a Beagle).

Pardon me if I do not join the Kennel Club crowd which clucks and moans about "little mongrels" being cranked out by puppy millers and "back yard breeders".

How, I would ask, does that differentiate these new dogs from most Kennel Club breeds? After all, most of the dog breeds on earth today are less than 140 years old, and most were invented by puppy peddlers doing their business between 1860 and 1900.

The harsh truth is that most canine breeds were not forged by honest field work, but by professional breeders seeking to sell dogs for the pet trade.

In short, the true history of most dog breeds is one of "backyard breeders" creating contrived names and fake histories for their dogs and producing enough of the dogs in a short enough period (a puppy mill by any name) to create a "class" of dogs to fill a Kennel Club ring.

And it's not like Kennel Club breeds cannot be improved by a little outcrossing!

The Yorkie has such serious teeth problems that they invariably require attention from expensive veterinary dentists.

The Pug's bulging eyes make it prone to eye injury, and nearly every one of them is born caesarian.

The Toy Poodle is a barker and often mentally unbalanced.

Dachshunds are prone to serious back and joint problems.

Papillons and Chihuahuas have all kinds of health problems, not the least of which are that their bones may be so light they can break jumping off the couch.

The Lhasa Apso is a walking mop requiring more grooming than a Hollywood starlet, and is often a mental case as well.

Of course, most cross-breeds are not all that successful, and only a very few show a marked advantage over a common pound dog.

That said, enough crosses are working out that a few crosses are developing into regular replicable breeds. The most obvious candidate for "new breed" distinction is the "Labradoodle" -- a cross between a Labrador Retriever and a Standard Poodle. In Australia, this very tractable dog has been standardized and now breeds true after more than 15-years of focused work. In the U.S., however, most "Labradoodles" remain hybrids which, when crossed with each other, throw a wide array of very different-looking pups.

Contrary to what many hybrid dog advocates will tell you, a hybrid dog is not always healthier that its purebred cousin. Genetic loads are never revealed in one breeding, and "hybrid vigor" is not a perfect curative for all canine ills.

A final note is that when dogs are combined, the positive characteristics of a breed are not necessarily those that are transfered.

The tale is told of the time when Marilyn Monroe met Albert Einstein and coyly mewed, "Professor Einstein, we should get together. With my looks and your brains, think of the wonderful babies we could produce."

To which Einstein is supposed to have replied: "Yes, but what if they have my looks and your brains? That too is an equal possibility."
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Howard Galton's Bloodhounds

I have written before about the intellectual history behind the the Kennel Club's theories, tracing them from Robert Bakewell to Erasmus Darwin to Charles Darwin and finally to Francis Galton (Charles Darwin's nephew) who was the father of eugenics.

Along the way, and without interruption, the talk was of dogs as well as other breeds of animals, including humans.

One of the more interesting notes is a letter from W.D. Fox to Charles Darwin about the effects of inbreeding in blood hounds owned by Howard Galton, who was Sir Francis Galton's uncle.

W.D. Fox quotes Howard Galton as saying:

"I have found from breeding in & in that there is considerable difficulty in keeping up the breed. Many of the females have never exhibited any sexual appetite & those which do so at all, very rarely.

The Knot in the tail appeared by accident in one of the finest Dog puppies I had, so fine that I kept it, notwithstanding this imperfection, and all his descendants had it until at last I got a cross with one of Lord Aylesfords' Bloodhounds, since which time it has disappeared.

The knot was always in the same part of the tail. Another consequence of breeding in and in is that the animals become prematurely old."

There is nothing new here, of course.

The deleterious effects of inbreeding have been known for as long as man has been alive, which is why there is a ban on it in all religions (one of the very few commonalities across the religious spectrum).

What is only notable here is the provenance of the observation: Darwin's inquiry into the effects of inbreeding in Howard Galton's blood hound pack dates back to 1838, more than 20 years before the first formal dog show in the U.K., and 35 years before the start of the Kennel Club.
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If John Russell Were Alive Today ...

A lot of time and energy is spent by people on the show ring circuit culling through pedigrees counting the number of "champions" they can find listed. This is called "selective breeding," by the Kennel Club folks, but what is it they are selecting for?

Among show ring aficionado's working ability is never the primary selection. Since, in the world of working dogs in which John Russell lived, the second slot is selection by size, and the third slot is selection by gender, the show ring breeder is (at best) promoting fourth-string characteristics to prime. This is a recipe for ruin, and it's a recipe the Reverend John Russell watched with concern during the early years of the British Kennel Club. As he noted about his own dogs:

"True terriers they were, but differing from the present show dogs as the wild eglantine differs from a garden rose."

If you do not work your dogs underground often, you have no idea of what you are breeding for when it comes to work.

It is not a matter of working a few weekends. A dog's working qualities and abilities are not made in a day. Nor should yours be, if you are a serious breeder. You need to dig quite a while to know the value of voice, the value of nose, and the nature of the balance point between having a dog that is too hard and too soft. It takes a few dogs and a few winters to fully appreciate the value of a good coat, and to understand the value of a small well-muscled dog.

The people in the AKC like to talk a lot about John Russell, but they manage to leave off the fact that he did not create his dogs in the show ring, but in the field and by testing them in the ground and under a spade. Though he occasionally judged dog shows, he did not register his own dogs as he feared dog shows would be the ruin of working terrier. He was not wrong!

If John Russell were alive today, most of the people who own Jack Russell terriers -- including many of those with working certificates -- could not show him a day in the field with the dogs. I think Russell would be rather embarrassed by that fact, and he would certainly by saddened.

A repost from 2009

When Breeds are Failures

Art by Kevin Brockbank for Dogs Today (May 2010 issue)

Is it time to thin the herd?

It's been said that the dog is the most successful wolf in the world -- the wolf that got man to adopt it, house it, feed it, and protect it.

Relatively docile wolves were fed and bred until, slowly, imperceptibly, they evolved into something different -- the domestic dog.

For 12,000 years, that's about as far as it progressed.


An Explosion of Breeds

Two hundred and fifty years ago, there were only about a dozen broad types of dogs.

Breeds, as we know them today with narrow written standards, were not yet known.

Your breed claims an ancient lineage?

Unless it's a greyhound, I can assure you it's almost certainly nonsense.

The Pharaoh Hound? Invented in the 20th Century to look like the dogs found on the side of the Egyptian tombs opened at the time of Carter.

The Chinese Crested? Not Chinese! Invented in America in the 1930s and popularized by burlesque stripper Gypsy Rose Lee.

Terriers? Retrievers? Setters? Spaniels? Pointers? Shepherds?

Analysis of Mitochondrial DNA shows that while the type may be old, the breed is -- almost invariably of relatively modern origin.

It's not like we created just a few breeds in the blink of an eye, is it? No, we created hundreds.

How did we do that? Mostly by selecting for odd types and then inbreeding to "fix" those types until they bred true.

The first breeds, of course, were created by merely tweaking Mother Nature's process. Herding dogs, for example, were selected because of function rather than looks. Ditto for running dogs, pulling dogs, bird dogs, guarding dogs, and terriers.

Dogs that were best adapted to function prospered, while those that did poorly were culled from the pool. The only difference was that the hand of man was now engaged in unnatural selection -- replacing Mother Nature, which had previously been employed in the task of natural selection.

Form Trumps Function

With the rise of dog shows, however, function took a back seat to form. Now the primary value celebrated was variability. And, of course, to get maximum variability, you had to green-light more and more breeds that were extreme, and in many cases maladaptive, including dogs that were brachycephalic (flat faced) and could not breath well, and dogs that were achondroplastic (dwarfs) and had joint and heart problems.

Added to these dogs were other extreme examples -- massive giants that had weak hearts and intestines prone to twist and bloat, tiny tea cup breeds prone to hydrocephalia and broken bones, hairless breeds prone to dental and skins issues, dogs with extreme skin wrinkles, ear length, and coats, and dogs with various spinal oddities such as over-long backs, roached backs, and spines that ended in a tight mass of twisted vertebrae.

And, of course, through it all you had to inbreed and line-breed in order to set type, and you had to invent ancient histories in order to speed the sales of these new creations.

The result has been a mixed bag. Some breeds have managed to stay healthy, and a few have even managed to be useful for work.

Most, however, have come down with one or more serious health problems, and most have devolved from working dog to mere pets.

There is nothing wrong with pets. There is, of course, something wrong with breeding dogs with serious health problems. Even here, however most genetic problems are manageable and most breeds are salvageable

But is that always the case? Are there dog breeds that are not salvageable?

This is not a small question.

When humans began breeding dogs, we began to act as Gods, but we failed to accept the full mantle of the Gods.

God culls misfits; man puts his in the Kennel Club.

Canine Failures

Let's talk about canine failures. They are not hard to find.

The Dandie Dinmont is a good example of a dog that has simply failed in the marketplace. Last year, more Pandas were born in captivity than Dandie Dinmonts were registered by the Kennel Club.

Named after a fictional character in a novel, and forced to compete head-to-head with other poodle-coated mops, this dog has found few customers due to its odd-looking sway back, poor movement, and complete uselessness in the field.

Add in the health problems suffered by Dandies -- cushings, hypothyroidism, and a narrow-angle glaucoma that is unique to Dandies -- and you stand at the cusp of a question.

Factor in the fact that more than 40% of dogs are born cesarean, and the case is made for intervention.

The old working terrier from which the modern Dandie claims descent was not a product of the Kennel Club and did not suffer these indignities.

Perhaps now is the time to release this breed from the inbreeding mandated by a tiny gene pool wedded to a closed registry system.

Perhaps now is the time to release this dog from the bondage of contrived show dog standards.

Yes, let us release this dog "back to the wild" of its working roots. It has not done well in "captivity". De-list this dog from the Kennel Club's roles, and move on.

Other breeds should also be delisted, and for much the same reason -- the Skye Terrier, the Clumber Spaniel, the Sussex Spaniel, the Glenn of Imaal Terrier, the Manchester Terrier, and the Sealyham Terrier.

None of these dogs were created in the Kennel Club -- they have only been deformed, emasculated, and inbred since their arrival. Release these dogs "back to the wild". They have not done well in "captivity", and they have failed in the marketplace.

And what about those breeds that are true genetic wrecks beyond salvation?

There are not many, but let's face the problem head on, and end the nonsense.

There is no reason to try to repair a Disney castle built on sand, with a blown foundation, rotten roof, walls riddled with termites, and a dangerous boiler about to explode in the basement.

Take the Cavalier King Charles Spaniel. This was a breed invented at the Crufts dog show in response to a prize offered up by an American by the name of Roswell Eldridge.

Thanks to a bad gene pool at the start, and the incredible inbreeding that followed, more than 80 percent of today's dogs end up with serious heart problems, while more than a third have a genetic brain disorder affecting the nervous system.

With this level of defect, and this thin history, why not sweep it all aside and start again?

Ditto for several other breeds with serious health problems -- the Miniature Bull Terrier (50% cesarean, dead at 6 years), the English Bull Dog (90% cesarean, dead at 6 years), the Scottish Terrier (60 percent cesarean, 45% cancer rate), the Dogue De Bordeaux (dead at less than six years).

Are there other breeds that might be "returned to the wild" through delisting and/or delisting and recreation (i.e. starting again with a healthy gene pool, scientific breeding, and a commonsense standard)?

Sure, but I think I have been controversial enough for one day, don't you?!

The question stands: Is it time to thin the herd? Is it time to end the Kennel Club's preservation of defect and failure?
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