George Bernard Shaw at the Pound

George Bernard Shaw made his own blinders.

There is a general tendency for those on the political left to assume eugenics is an expression of right-wing fanaticism.  In fact, eugenics is an apolitical idea and it was embraced by such diverse names as Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Winston Churchill, Alexander Graham Bell, Konrad Lorenz, Oliver Wendell Homes, Margaret Sanger, Luther Burbank, John Maynard Keynes, Bertrand Russell, Leland Stanford, and H. G. Wells, among others. 

To say there was widespread support for eugenics in the first few decades before and after the turn of the 20th Century is not to say there were not some controversies!

Hitler, for example, was bent on sterilizing and killing Jews, but many opposed this plan, not because they were against forced sterilization or state-sponsored murder, but because they thought the Jews were absolutely the wrong group.  A lot of Jews were smart and industrious!  Keep them!   The folks you wanted to round up to sterilize kill were the lazy, the crazy, the "unfit", and the old, sick and broken.

And who pushed this school of thought?  One vocal advocate was none other than liberal Fabian George Bernard Shaw, author of both Pygmalion and Man and Superman fame, and winner of the 1925 Nobel Prize for literature.







What most people do not know about G. B. Shaw is that he was not only a writer, but also an economist who was a co-founder of the London School of Economics. 

Shaw was also a vocal proponent of eugenics.  At the back of Man and Superman, he penned a section on "Good Breeding" and "Property and Marriage" where he synthesized and homogenized a new form of eugenic socialism in which he advocated all production as being put forward for the collective good.

Shaw was in the thick of the eugenics movement, and a leading thinker and vocal advocate.  At a meeting of the Eugenic Education Society on March 3, 1910, Shaw suggested the need to create  a "lethal chamber" to solve "the problem" of poor producers dragging down society, and he also called for the creation of a "deadly" but "humane" gas for the purpose of killing many "unfit" people at a time.  Sound familiar? 

This kind of talk was not idle chatter or ironic polemicism or satire -- sterilization and gas chambers were put forth by Shaw as very serious "solutions" to the "quality of people" problem and were seen as the inevitable way forward by many others.

Where did this idea come from? 

Why from the animal breeders of course, and the dog breeders in particular.  To this day, sterilization, gas chambers and closed canine breeding pools are the back bone of the Kennel Club systems in the U.S., the U.K., and around the world.

Which is not to say that the Kennel Club invented all this.  The push to "improve" animals through selective breeding at the hand of man can be traced back to Robert Bakewell and earlier.

No less a luminary than Charles Darwin noted that with humans, the healing hand of natural selection was being interfered with by medicine and social institutions that protected the weak, and it was thought that not much good could come from that!   As Darwin wrote in The Descent of Man (1882):

With savages, the weak in body or mind are soon eliminated; and those that survive commonly exhibit a vigorous state of health. We civilised men, on the other hand, do our utmost to check the process of elimination; we build asylums for the imbecile, the maimed, and the sick; we institute poor-laws; and our medical men exert their utmost skill to save the life of every one to the last moment. There is reason to believe that vaccination has preserved thousands, who from a weak constitution would formerly have succumbed to small-pox. Thus the weak members of civilised societies propagate their kind. No one who has attended to the breeding of domestic animals will doubt that this must be highly injurious to the race of man. It is surprising how soon a want of care, or care wrongly directed, leads to the degeneration of a domestic race; but excepting in the case of man itself, hardly any one is so ignorant as to allow his worst animals to breed.

Of course, this was all pseudo-science to justify social position, and to monumentalize the selfish desire to avoid taxation to help the poor. Why spend money feeding and housing poor people (or abandoned dogs) when for less than the price of a bullet, you could "humanely" gas them wholesale?

Today, of course, to note that the Kennel Club and the eugenics movement spring from common roots and were self-reinforcing, is a heresy. Simple history is omitted, redacted or swept under the rug. As author Micheal Crichton has noted:

After World War II, nobody was a eugenicist, and nobody had ever been a eugenicist. Biographers of the celebrated and the powerful did not dwell on the attractions of this philosophy to their subjects, and sometimes did not mention it at all.

Right. The Kennel Club practice eugenics with sterilization, gas chambers, and closed breeding pools? Well yes, but that's not eugenics -- that's dog breeding! 

As for George Bernard Shaw, many of his supporters have attempted to suggest his support for eugenics was a kind of Irish irony, along the lines of Jonathan Swift's Modest Proposal.  Perhaps.  There is no question Shaw was a kind of linguistic Lady Gaga, willing to say anything to get attention and in love with his own voice and self-fanning fame.  That said, Shaw did attend meetings of the Eugenic Education society, did praise Adolph Hitler, and did it all without too much irony being in self-evidence. 

• Related Links:
  ** Inbred Thinking
  ** The Eugenics Man and the Kennel Club
  ** From Bassetts to Auschwitz in 50 Years
  ** The Francis Galton Dog Show
  ** A Fear of Foreign Blood
  ** Stonehenge:  The Roots of the Inbreeding Problem
  ** On Eugenics and Dogs, Circa 1942
  ** Gas Chambers, Dog Breeders and "Shelters" .

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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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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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Darwin's Little Lesson on Inbreeding

From New Scientist:

Widespread inbreeding between the Darwin and Wedgwood families was probably to blame for Charles Darwin's ill health, and the childhood tragedies and infertility that blighted his family.

That's the conclusion of an analysis examining links between ill health over four generations of the Darwin-Wedgwood dynasty and the degree of inbreeding between the families.

The analysis supports Darwin's fears that inbreeding was damaging his health and that of his children, following his ground-breaking studies demonstrating that cross-bred plants are far fitter and more vigorous than self-fertilised plants. "This caused him to reflect on his own condition," says Tim Berra of Ohio State University in Mansfield.

After Darwin married his first cousin, Emma Wedgwood, they had 10 children, three of whom died as children. Three of the others married but remained childless, suggesting infertility problems. And Darwin himself, who suffered unremitting ill health following his epic trip on The Beagle, was the product of an "inter-Wedgwood" union, his maternal grandparents being third cousins to each another.

Nothing too new here. I told the tale, relating it to dogs of course, in an earlier post on this blog entitled Inbred Thinking. That said, it's nice to see the story getting out to a wider audience.



This is the pedigree of the Darwin/Wedgwood dynasty.

From Scientific American:

The analysis, led by Tim Berra, professor emeritus in the Department of Evolution, Ecology and Organismal Biology at the Ohio State University in Mansfield, found that Darwin's kids did have "a moderate level of inbreeding" and in the family's children, there was "a significant positive association between child mortality and inbreeding."

When two individuals mate, genetic material from both parents is passed on to the progeny. So even if one parent carries a harmful recessive trait, the other parent is likely to have a healthier version, which will manifest itself in the offspring. If both parents, however, carry a recessive allele—which is more likely to happen if they share much of their genetic material, as close relatives do—then they raise the chances that their child will have only the bad genes.

A first cousin marriage does not, of course, mean instant problems. In fact, across the world, first-cousin marriages represent about 10% of all marriages.

That said, first cousin marriages do increase the chance for genetic defect.

How much?

A first-cousin marriage raises the risk of birth defect and mortality about as much as giving birth at age 41 instead of age 30.

Of course, if a society has a history of marrying first-cousins, Coefficients of Inbreeding can rise rapidly, and with it genetic defect

In Pakistan, where this kind of thing still occurs, one study estimated infant mortality at 12.7 percent for married double first cousins versus 5.1 percent for the progeny of unrelated parents.
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The Tribe of the Dog

Lakota woman with dog travois, Rosebud reservation.

This piece is from the July 2009 issue of Dogs Today.

From a great distance the indigenous people of the U.S. appear be "American Indian," but as you travel west, you discover it's not one people, but many tribes, and by the time you get to North Datoka, the question is not whether you are Sioux, but what type of Sioux -- Lakota, Yankton, or Santee?

Much the same goes on in the world of angling where we also find tribalism at work. From a distance, it's all "fishing," but in fact the 12-year old bait-baller with a cane pole on the bank has a different world view than the 60-year old man with a deep sea rod trolling for shark off-shore.

In the world of dogs, it is much the same. People obsessed with dogs may fall into any one of dozens of over-lapping categories, and move from one tribe to another over the years.

To an outsider, it is all rather confusing, and the cacophony of bitter voices and conflicting perspectives is a bit overwhelming.

Pit Bull rescuers damn the lunatics at PETA who say the only good Pit Bull is a dead one.

Vegan cucumber crunchers curse dog show matrons and their pedigree pooches, arguing that with so many dogs in shelters, “Every dog bred is another one dead.”

The small hobby breeder, only 10 years in dogs, parrots a potted history made up whole cloth 100 years ago by a dog dealer. The problem is the “backyard breeder” he says, never defining the term, but speaking in the confident tone of one who is certain he is not one. He points to a classified ad for retriever pups, $250 apiece, and a phone number.

On the telephone the woman describes her dogs as “fur babies,” and says she is not one of “those horrible commercial breeders.” Does she have hip scores for the sire and dam? No, but she has papers, she says hopefully.

The commercial breeder has hip scores – at least for some dogs. He is rather vague. What breed do you want? He has 200 dogs and raises 15 breeds, most of them lap dogs raised in battery cages similar to those used for chickens. He points out that the floors of his cages are made of plastic mesh, not chicken wire, and he says his waste management system is “state of the art.” All 200 of the dogs are taken care of by his wife and himself alone. And are there papers? Oh sure! Kennel Club papers for one price, another registry for a bit less – whichever you prefer.

In a telephone conversation, the breed club President waves off the commercial breeder. Only a fool would look there for a dog he says, oblivious to the fact that the head of the American Kennel Club says he started in dogs this way, and that he thinks the financial future of the AKC lies in more puppy mill registrations.

And so it goes, in a round-robin of blame and questions, challenged ethics, and sniffing aesthetics.

The people roar, but is anyone listening to the dog?

And what is it that we should be listening for? How do we read signs that are not written in pen? How do we translate language that is not written in words? How can we tell if we are doing good or doing bad?

One small idea is to look to original design. It is not hard to see what God intended. Left to their own devices, dogs devolve quickly to “pye-dogs” or pariah dogs weighing 30-45 pounds with short yellow coats and pointed faces.

This animal is not a Wolf, but it can breed with wolves and produce fertile young, same as it can breed with a Coyote, Golden Jackal, or Dingo and produce a fertile cross.

What can we say about these natural dogs? Well, for one thing, none have the kind of crooked or “benched” legs common to anchondroplastic breeds such as Bassets, Dachshunds, Bulldogs, and the like.

None have the smashed-in faces common to brachycelphalic breeds, such as Pugs, Toy Spaniels, French Bulldogs, Boston Terriers, and the like.

None have long coats with wild hair cascading down their sides. All have erect ears.

Most of the wild canids are sized between 10 pounds (a small red fox) and 150 pounds (a massive wolf).

In all cases, inbreeding is sharply discouraged. The “lone wolf,” after all, not a myth – it is a very young or old male driven out of the pack to find a harem of its own or die trying. The same occurs with coyote, fox, dingo, and jackal. Mother Nature prefers an out-cross.

What do we hear if we listen to pedigree dogs?

The data here is not deeply hidden. Canine pet insurance companies keep vast data sets on breeds and cross-breeds alike, and they will tell you that mutts are healthier than Kennel Club dogs, and they price their premiums accordingly.

Not only is there less inbreeding among cross-bred dogs than among their Kennel Club analogs, there is also less morphological exaggeration.

With mixed breeds you are less likely to get teacup dogs with serious teeth and neurological issues, and you are less likely to get giant dogs with torsion, cancer, and heart issues.

A mixed breed is less likely to have the skin problems found in deeply wrinkled dogs, and more likely to have the kind of muzzle that prevents eye damage and predictable respiratory and palette problems.

With Kennel Club dogs, there is not only a tendency to select for morphologies unseen in nature, but there is also the requirement that these exaggeration be maintained in a closed registry system in which coefficients of inbreeding tend to drift upward due to popular sire selection.

Of course, what I have said here is not new. Biologists, canine genetic experts, and working dog people have been making these points for decades. But their quiet message has been drowned out by the foot-stomping of those with economic and political interests.

Much the same has occurred with indigenous people the world over.

Their concerns too have been blotted out by issues of money, power, and prestige.

"The native tribes? Who cares about them? The natives don't vote and they don't pay taxes."

And of course neither do the dogs.

But does that mean we should not be listening to them?

Does the welfare of dogs not matter at the top?

Who will speak for the tribe called Dog?

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Isle Royale Wolves on Thin Ice

In an earlier post entitled Islands of Wolves, Rats, Lions and Dogs, I detailed the different social-demographic-and genetic loads and problems that occur when different species occupy islands or otherwise suffer from extremely isolated (and therefore inbred) populations. 

As I noted, what species an animal is, where it feeds on the pyramid, and how it lives and loves are very important issues so far as genetic health and long-term population viability are concerned.

To illuminate that point I compared the extreme genetic isolation of the Isle Royale Wolves in Michigan to what has occurred when rats, and lions have found themselves on similar sized islands.

Now comes word that scientists are worried that the Isle Royale Wolves may go extinct. 

Isle Royale National Park's gray wolves, one of the world's most closely monitored predator populations, are at their lowest ebb in more than a half-century and could die out within a few years, scientists said Friday.

Only nine wolves still wander the wilderness island chain in western Lake Superior and just one is known to be a female, raising doubts they'll bounce back from a recent free-fall unless people lend a hand... There were 24 wolves — roughly their long-term average number — as recently as 2009.... The only intact pack had six members. One wolf wandered alone, while a couple — including the only known female — staked out territory and apparently mated.

Should the Isle Royale Wolves be allowed to go extinct?

If that happens, what will happen to the moose population, and what will that mean for the island's vegetation?

To be clear here, there is no great decision to be made here. 

We have many thousands of wild wolves all over the lower-48 now, and extremely healthy wolf populations  exist all over Canada and Alaska as well.  The wolf is an animal that is not only off the Endangered Species List, but is allowed to be hunted in a few states. 

The fate of a dozen wolves on Isle Royale, then is largely a philosophical debate, and not necessarily one of great import or permanence.  After all, wolves did not exist on Isle Royale at all just 70 years ago.  Even if all the wolves on the island died out this year (a very unlikely scenario), a hard freeze over Lake Superior next winter might return a new population from the mainland soon enough.
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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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Are Defective Dogs Subject to a 4-Year Warranty?

Here's a case that could ruin the AKC and end pet shop puppy sales forever.

A woman who can best be described as a poorly informed consumer, is suing the "Raising Rover" pet store in Manhattan because the Brussels Griffon she bought there began whimpering and limping in pain at the age of four or five months.

Under New York's "Puppy Lemon Law" a new owner can return a dog that gets sick within 14 days, but since the dog, Umka, didn't show symptoms until months later, it's not covered.

The lawyer for Elena Zakharova, Umka's owner, argues that "Pets must be recognized as living souls, not inanimate property," and that under New York State's Uniform Commercial Code, a buyer should be able to return a dog at any time up to four years later provided it can be show to be a "defective product."

Ms. Zakharova argues that her dog's health problems, pain and suffering are due to the fact that the pet store sold her a dog with genetic abnormalities that were entirely avoidable had the pup not been bred from other dogs with defects and disabilities.

But, of course, there are dozens of dog breeds which are defined by their defects, deformities and diseases, from brachycephalic breeds like the Bulldog and Pug, to achondroplastic breeds like Dachshunds and Bassetts.

If we throw in inbreeding due to closed gene pools, and the breeding of dogs with high and known rates of dysplasia, cancer, and other diseases, you are looking at a canine consumer time bomb of the First Order.

So far, Ms. Zakharova, who purchased the pooch for $1,600, has paid $4,000 toward vet bills and is expecting to spend $4,000 more.

Will New York's court see her costs as a "stupidity tax" and the dog's misery as a "never mind," or will the court say that the distributor and producer of these dogs willfully failed to avoid predictable, known, and well-documented quality-control problems associated with breeding pedigree dogs?

The case may swing on the facts: What specific evidence does Ms. Zakarova and her lawyer have that this specific puppy was bred from other dogs with known or unknown genetic defects and disabilities?

• Related Posts:
  ** We Want Our Mutant Dogs, Never Mind Their Pain
  ** AKC Loves Puppy Mills ... and the Naïve
  ** The Vanishing Pet Shop Puppy
  ** Ten Tips to Finding the Right Dog
  ** AKC Continues to Tailspin Into the Ground
   

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Islands of Wolves, Rats, Lions and Dogs

Isle Royale, Michigan.  An island of wolves.

In the real world, population bottlenecks are not always quite as big a problem as some people imagine, nor are they quite as easy to correct as some people hope. 

If that sounds like two statements in direct opposition, then you have grasped a core message of this post, which is that not all animal populations are the same, that few real-world cases line up squarely with simple theory, and that there are multiple facets to both genetic isolation and genetic rescue.

In order to understand a little more, let's look at four real-world animal populations:

Imagine a pregnant rat jumps ship on to a large island that is 200 square miles in size.  The population of rats multiplies very rapidly but without any apparent long term problems due to inbreeding.  How is that possible?  Answer:  With rats, massive population numbers within a short period of time are possible, and a mid-sized island of 200 square miles (over 259,000 acres) can easily hold a million rats.  In this situation, genetic drift and mutation will eventually result in a population with little or no obvious genetic dysfunction.  On an island with 1,000,000 rats, in which each rat lives for a year or so, a 100-year old population of theoretically "inbred" rats will have very low coefficients of inbreeding, no inbreeding depression, and no discernible early mortality due to genetic weakness.  To be clear, this is not a theory; rats have colonized almost every island in the world exactly this way.

Now imagine that a pregnant wolf lands on an island that is 200 square miles in size.  The wolf whelps five pups, and the pups interbreed and the population grows for a time until it hits some sort of food-availability threshold.  A boreal island that is 200 square miles in size and with a sizable moose population can, for a while, feed a population of 50 wolves, but eventually that population can be expected to collapse down to as few as dozen individuals before it rises again and falls again due to the vagaries of disease and weather which will impact prey species such as moose, deer and rabbit.  After 75 years, the population of wolves on this island will be very inbred, and infecundity and disease will be common.  The reason for this is simple:  wolves typically live between six or seven years in the wild, and the smaller number of wolves on the island, combined with the smaller number of generations, means that there will be very little room for genetic drift or mutation.  Is is possible to import a single individual wolf to achieve a "genetic rescue" of this heavily inbred wolf population?  A single wolf, sadly, is not likely to do it.  The reason for this is simple:  the small number of wolves on the island (a population of 24, on average) and their high rate of infecundity due to inbreeding, means that the genes of the new male wolf will quickly dominate.  Inbreeding will then continue as before.  Though there may be a short temporal  improvement in population health, that may not be observed if there is a counter-balancing downtick in food sources occurring at the same time.  To be clear, this scenario is not one I have made up; it appears this is exactly what happened with the wolves on Isle Royale, Michigan.

Now imagine a large population of lions that has been reduced by hunting to just 30 individuals living on an isolated isthmus 200 square miles in size.  The population is so isolated that the coefficients of inbreeding within the lion population begin to rise, and a rise of infecundity and an increase in genetic defect is feared.   The good news, however, is that this isthmus is not at carrying capacity for lion, and so eight completely unrelated female lions are imported from another country more than 1,000 miles away -- a 25% population boost representing a massive increase in genetic diversity.  What happens?   A rather significant improvement in species health and fecundity seems to occur, and the lions begin colonizing more space on the isthmus.  Why did this genetic rescue work?  Well, for one thing, the original 30-lion population was more diverse than it at first appeared.  Remember that these 30 lions did not actually spring from a closed registry of two individuals, but were the remainder left from a massive population that once numbered scores of thousands.  While inbreeding to failure appeared to threaten this lion population, the actual genetic diversity beating under the hood was likely to be quite a bit more expansive than a purely mathematical population model would suggest.  Factor in the relative size of the genetic infusion coming from the other side of the country, and the ground is set up for a successful genetic rescue.  To be clear, this scenario is not one I have made up; this is exactly what happened with the lions of Southern Florida (aka, the Eastern Puma, Florida Panther, or Eastern Mountain Lion).

Now imagine a pair of dogs that are mated and their pups are then inbred to each other for 25 years at which time another dog is added to the population and the result is further inbred for another 40 years.  The result is a population of about 180 potential breeding dogs (30 dogs are born a year, and not all dogs will be bred) which have a Coefficient of Inbreeding of 80 percent.  What would it take to have a successful genetic rescue here?  If we use the Florida Panther model as a guide, we would need to see an addition of 45 new dogs to the gene pool.  Would the addition of  one or two dogs be enough to turn the tide?   Probably not.   The addition of only a handful of dogs in a show-breed situation, where dominant sire selection will continue unabated, will not provide the genetic fix needed to turn things around.  Remember we are starting here with a very high COI, and the public demand for these dogs is apparently quite low; this is a breed that hits its consumer "carrying capacity" with just 30 to 40 puppies a year.  To be clear, this scenario is not one I have made up; the dog presented here is the Cesky terrier, a breed that has never been very popular.

So what's the point? 
 
The point is this:  the issues associated with population bottle necks are not quite as simple as some imagine.  Yes, the relative size of the founding population matters, but so too does the genetic health of the founding population, the total number of animals bred, the number of generations it took for the population to achieve a large size, and whether the animal in question was breeding randomly or within an organized scheme that encouraged (or discouraged) genetic diversity.

Consider, for a moment, a dog breed that was drawn into a closed registry 120 years ago with 150 dogs in its foundation registry.  The breed grew rather quickly so that after 40 years it had a worldwide population of 125,000 dogs; a population it has maintained for the last 80 years.  Coefficients of inbreeding in the modern population of this dog will, on the whole, be quite low, and though the apparent "effective population size" may have dropped from 150 dogs to 80 dogs due to dominant sire selection, effective population size is quite a meaningless number when you have bred well north of 1 million dogs over a 100-year span.  In a situation like this diversity is not destroyed over time, but created through the sheer beat of numbers over vast distances.
 
Of course, there is another factor in all this, and it is an important one, and one that is too often left out.

You see, in the world of Kennel Club dogs there has always been a little "pedigree leakage."  

Pedigree leakage may be small or even nonexistent in a very rare breed where everyone knows everyone else, and the dog in question is likely to look a bit odd or extreme and not have an obvious analog in another breed or cross-breed.

But what of the other more popular breeds, where there are a lot more dogs in the wind, and only a small number are likely to ever see the inside of a show ring, and analogs exist all over? 

In a situation like this, instead of a reduction in effective population size, there may actually be a little growth! 

After all, a Labrador Retriever with five-generation pedigree papers from the AKC may, in fact, have a Flat-coated sire, or even be whelped by a cross-bred dog of "pedigree unknown." 

A Miniature Poodle may have a little Maltese coursing through its veins only a generation or two back. 

And what does it matter?  Not a whit if the cross was a sound one and did not add a new or heavier genetic load to the mix.

The bottom line is that there is more to population genetics than any one number, and while it's important to be worried, and to take action to increase breed genetic diversity, it's equally important to recognize that one can fall in love with less than robust genetic theory and falsely specific numbers just as easily as one can fall in love with cocked up doggy histories and the romance of breed purity.   In the end, population science and genetics is about more than one number; it's about a small stack of numbers meeting a real gene pool coursing through the flesh and blood of a real population that is living in a real environment (whether wild or artificial, free-feeding or subsidized).

Yes, let us work to increase diversity, but let us also look towards Mother Nature as well. 

Remember that while Mother Nature abhors closed breed pools, she also manages to work out solutions for most of those that wash up as single or paired animals on tropical islands or are introduced to foreign lands.  Observe the birds in the park.  How many Starlings did we start off with here in America?  How many English Sparrows?  How many Red Fox?   How many wolves in Yellowstone?  They are clearly thriving.  How is that possible?  And, of course, the answer is that they colonized in vast numbers over a vast space of land, and in the slow beat of numbers and space they managed forge their own genetic health.
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The First Dogs and and Genetic Drift

From Inbreeding and Genetic Diversity in Dogs: Results from DNA Analysis by Claire M. Wade:

The projected number of wolf founders of domestic dogs is 51 if the foundation event was closer to 16,000 years ago and could be as high as several hundred maternal founders if domestication was at the recent end of the projected range. This difference in estimates arises because time allows new mutations to accumulate, providing an alternative explanation for the diversity of haplotypes observed. It should be recognised that even founder females are likely to have carried a mixture of mitochondrial haplotypes

As this paragraph suggests, and as I have noted in the past, time, numbers, breeding habits, and generation length have a great deal to do with genetic variability. This is as true in dogs as it is in wolves.

The wolf-dog nexis is a particularly problematic fork to put a date on, as the wolf is:

1. a top predator, and big fierce predators are always rare due to their place in the food chain;
2. because only the top male and top female in a wolf pack will mate, and;
3. because wolves will only mate once a year.

Of course the domestication of the wolf at the hand of man has done several things.  It has:

1. increased the density of proto-wolves (i.e dogs and dog-morphs) on the landscape thanks to their association with man;
2. it has freed most domestic dog "packs" from the tyranny of having only the top male and top female mate, and;
3. it has increased the number of estrus's from one to two for most domestic dogs.

What's that mean?  Simply put it means if you are trying to pick a date for wolf-dog divergence, you are either going to have to pick a very wide time range, or you are going to have to make some assumptions for which there is, as yet, very little concrete evidence.

In fact, by at least one measure of speciation, a dog-wolf fork has not yet been made. After all, wolves, coyotes, domestic dogs, dingo, golden jackals, and New Guinea singing dogs can all interbreed and produce fertile young.
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