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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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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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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Pedigree Dogs Exposed - Three Years On

The BBC has announced that it has slated Pedigree Dogs Exposed - Three Years On for show sometime later this month, almost certainly to air the week before Crufts.

In 2008 Pedigree Dogs Exposed lifted the lid on the true extent of the health and welfare problems faced by pedigree dogs in the UK.

The startling expose of harmful breeding practices generated a massive reaction from the public and from those involved in dog breeding.

Now the programme’s producer Jemima Harrison returns to explore what has happened since she made the original film. Deeply affected by the issues that she uncovered, Jemima has become a campaigner on dog welfare.

In this programme she takes a personal look at the positive changes that have been introduced since the first film and investigates areas of continuing concern, particularly among breeds like the German Shepherd, the Bulldog and the Cavalier King Charles Spaniel. Jemima hears from dog breeders and a range of experts, many of whom express grave worries about the future of some of our best loved breeds.

No doubt the Kennel Club will now start up a full parade of lies and disinformation, with poodle poofters and breed club matrons wringing their hands about how unfair it is that anyone would talk about the Kennel Club breeding deformed, diseased and defective dogs in a closed registry system for more than 100 years.



The 'Baghdad Bobs' of the Kennel Club will say there is no reason to take more action, and besides they were already well on their way to reform all on their own, don't you know.

Right. Heard it all before, and for decades now.

Still breeding dogs in a closed registry system are they? Check.

Still giving rosettes to dogs that cannot breathe and cannot mate or whelp on their own, are they? Check.

Still counting health and work for zero at Kennel Club dog shows, are they? Check.

Still ushering in "new" breeds with incredibly small gene pools, are they? Check.

Right. So what's the Kennel Club done that is truly new and substantive?

A list of 14 breeds to watch and worry over?

A few word changes to a few standards?

Is that it? Is that all there is to Kennel Club reform three years on?
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Steven Seymour on the Kennel Club's Failure

Writing in Dog World, Steven Seymour notes that the Kennel Club continues to salute inbred thinking at every level.

I was deeply disappointed to read Kennel Club chairman Prof Steve Dean’s replies to some of Sheila Atter’s questions on her article titled ‘In the hot seat’. It really does seem that we are destined for more of the same.

Most upsetting was the answer to her question on membership of the KC. When asked “Would you like to see KC membership open to all who are actively involved with pedigree dogs,” we have the reply, ”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.”

Oh dear maybe our new chairman would like to explain exactly who the right sort of person is. Go back and read the question again and you will see it says “to all who are actively involved”.

There seems no logic or reason other than absolute arrogance to think that anyone who is actively breeding or showing or participating in any other canine activity would not be the right sort of person to join the KC.

Right. There's the problem as I noted in a 2006 blog post which led to my first email and telephone call from Jemima Harrison who later went on to produce the 2008 BBC documentary Pedigree Dogs Exposed:

The Kennel Club is a huge money-making bureaucracy dependent upon selling people on the "exclusivity" of a closed registry and a scrap of paper that says a dog is a "pure breed"....

[T]he Kennel Club is not primarily about dogs. Dogs do not care about ribbons, pedigrees, titles, and points. These are human obsessions...

In the end, [the Kennel Club] is a closed registry in every sense of that word. It continues to embrace the failed genetic theories of Victorian England because it is incapable of serious reform within the Club itself

Of course, as deep as the Kennel Club's problems are, and remain, they have been made worse by the complete hash that its public relations department has made of things. As Steven Seymour notes:

2012 will no doubt be another year of challenges for the KC on the health front and with the way dogs are bred and shown. Instead of playing silly games and sulking in the corner over Jemima Harrison, now is the time for the KC to stand up, act its age and accept that anyone, who has an interest in dogs for whatever reason, is entitled to have a voice.

What we have happening now is something that was initiated by our democratically elected government (I know that’s a hard one to swallow). Let me explain it. In a democracy, everyone is entitled to have a say. They may not get the result they want but we all are able to express our point of view.

The KC’s policy of not showing up at such an important meeting as the Associate Parliamentary Group for Animal Welfare (APGAW) one is the same as what happens when a business has a monopoly or when a head of state is unelected by the people. Slowly over time they think they are invincible and irreplaceable.

The KC has sent that message direct to Prof Crispin and her committee not once but now twice. The problems which pure breed dogs are now facing are not because of Pedigree Dogs Exposed and not because of Jemima Harrison. The more the KC acts like a spoilt teenager, the longer it will take to correct and improve the health of dogs. There are no winners in such a silly game. Maybe it is ego and pride or maybe it is just outright bad advice, but whoever is directing the KC along such a path needs to be sent packing quick smart. This is not the time to point-score or play hard to get.

Perfect, and right as rain at every turn.  Read the whole thing!

• Related Posts:
  ** Inbred Thinking
  ** Caroline Kisko Continues to Damage the Brand
  ** Fearing Foreign Blood at the Kennel Club
  ** Is There a Kennel Club Road to Reform?

"A Veritable Human Crufts"

Click to enlarge

In The Daily Telegraph, Ed West notes that inbreeding within the U.K.'s Pakistani immigrant community has made at least one insular neighborhood "a veritable human Crufts."

Nice.

The ironic bit here, of coure, is that the British National Party will no doubt use this as a catspaw for anti-immigrant sentiment, even as the Kennel Club's most fervent supporters pledge allegiance to inbreeding within the world of dogs.

Right. Discuss among yourselves. In the meanwhile, here's a little clip from Ed West's column:

It’s a strange irony that mass immigration, which is supposed to bring us diversity, has led to a massive increase in inbreeding.

Multi-cultural Britain was meant to be a Benetton advert of ethno-diversity, a new population as beautiful and colourful as that of Brazil, but hopefully without the massive levels of violent crime, inequality and squalor.

Instead, where once inbreeding and its related genetic problems was exceptionally rare in England, it is now commonplace; where this country was once a nation of mongrels (albeit pasty-faced ones), now we have plenty of thoroughbreds.

Bradford is a veritable human Crufts, with over three-quarters of the city’s ethnic Pakistanis marrying their first cousins, and this figure is not hugely above the national average of 50 per cent. Compare this to the percentage of British-Pakistanis who marry whites, 0.7 per cent, or British Hindus, just 0.1 per cent.

Unsurprisingly this has led to serious health problems, as television presenter, Tazeen Ahmad, explores in tonight’s Dispatches, “When Cousins Marry”.

As she writes: “We know the children of first cousins are ten times more likely to be born with recessive genetic disorders which can include infant mortality, deafness and blindness.

“We know British Pakistanis constitute 1.5 per cent of the population, yet a third of all children born in this country with rare recessive genetic diseases come from this community.”

• Related Links:
  ** Fearing Foreign Blood at the Kennel Club?
  ** Darwin's Little Lesson on Inbreeding
  ** Kennel Club Chairman Concedes It Can Take Action
  ** Inbred Thinking
  ** Eugenics Man and the Kennel Club
  .

The Humane Society did WHAT?

Has Hell frozen over?

You might think so.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Spread this article around!

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

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

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

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

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

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

• Related Article:** Who Speaks for Dogs?
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The Real Numbers are Numbing Enough ....

I don't think anyone has ever accused me of being a defender of inbreeding.

I'm against it, and I am not shy about saying so. In fact, I have been pretty vocal on the subject for a pretty long time.

Having said that, it's important to note that sometimes folks wade into debates a little too quickly. While their heart may be in the right place, their enthusiasm may exceed their attention span.

Such is the case in an article from In These Times, which was forwarded to me this morning. The author (a summer journalism intern) writes on the perils of canine inbreeding, noting that:

In some breeds, dogs have a 75 percent inbreeding coefficient (the indication of how related they are), according to Susan Thorpe-Vargas, a breeder of Samoyeds who holds a Ph.D. in genetics. (A brother and sister have a coefficient of 25 percent.) John Armstrong, a veterinarian with the Canine Diversity Project, reports that certain lines of standard poodles have an inbreeding coefficient of 70 percent.

According to data from the University of Pennsylvania school of veterinary medicine, three-fourths of puppies with a 67 percent or higher coefficient will die within 10 days.

I have to say I paused here. You see I saw a couple of obvious red flags.

The first is that there is NO breed of dogs that has a coefficient of inbreeding of 75%.

None.

The average coefficient of inbreeding (COI) of pedigree dogs is not 70 percent or 60 percent or 50 percent or 40 percent. The average COI is not 30 percent of even 20 percent. It is less than 15 percent. [see Golden Retriever example with sample of over 275,000 dogs].

The second red flag is the notion that a COI of X percent will result in a specific neo-natal mortality of Y percent.

Not true. Things are not that simple.

If a couple of dogs with no negative recessive genes at all (a very rare thing) are bred together, a very high COI can be achieved without a jaw dropping level of neo-natal mortality.

YES, as a general rule, the higher the COI the more likely there are to be both generalized and breed-specific health problems, but there is no specific mathematical health outcome like neo-natal mortality.

Things are not that simple.

The third point is that John Armstrong is dead and has been for a number of years.

This is a small point, I know, but it jumped out at me as "reports" is an active verb and John Armstrong is not doing much of it these days.

Armstrong, of course, did write about the health outcomes that befell a particularly inbred strain of standard poodles, but that example was chosen because it was an extreme example of inbreeding, not because it was an average.

So where did this young reporter get her information?

It appears she gleaned it from a not-too-well written online "genetics tutorial" put out by the University of Pennsylvania School of Veterinary Medicine.

I went to the link supplied, and found no footnotes and no author. By backlinking, I discerned it was an online tutorial to provoke thought (and perhaps discussion) among young veterinary students.

A quick Google, and I found that the beagle colony example given (it was not all dogs as suggested in the In These Times article) applied to only a single heavily inbred beagle colony at the Argonne National Laboratory.

As for the reference to Scott and Fuller, I assume it is to their book, entitled "Genetics and the Social Behavior of Dogs." You can read that book yourself, but it does not quite say what the In These Times author or the University of Pennsylvia veterinary school web site suggests. In fact, the evidence is a bit contrary.

For example Scott and Fuller note that Basenjis are among the most-inbred dogs in the Kennel Club (at the time they had a COI of .25) , but they also note that they also had the lowest neonatal mortality rate of the five breeds listed -- half that of beagles, and even less than half that of shelties, cocker spaniels and fox terriers.

Whoops!

Did Scott and Fuller say hybrid dogs (cross- and mixed-breeds) had lower rates of neonatal mortality than pure bred dogs? Of course!

No one is arguing that hybrids are not generally healthier than pure breeds, or that higher coefficients of inbreeding are not related to defect and disease.

But numbers and data exist for a reason, and the case for Kennel Club change can be made without misusing data or ignoring it.

Of course, error of fact exists from one end of the Internet to the other.

So why have I not rolled over and just let this one go?

Well for one thing, the article is sufficiently shocking in message and sufficiently "science sounding" that it has already popped up several places.

And yet it is wrong.

And it is not just a little wrong. It is very wrong.

And it is not just wrong in fact, it is wrong in message.

You see, if you read this article and believe it, you might think there is no hope for pedigree dogs.

After all, if pedigree dogs have a 75 percent inbreeding coefficient, as this article suggests, then everything about the Kennel Club has to change, and yet we all know that is not going to happen.

But suppose you know that the average coefficient of inbreeding in pedigree dogs is around 10 percent, and that only a "sick minority" of breeders are producing dogs with a COI of more than 20 percent?

What then?

Well then, there is hope!

Then there is no excuse for the Kennel Club not taking action.

After all, if they ban the registration of new puppies that have a coefficient of inbreeding (COI) of more than 10 percent, it will not flip the boat, but only change its course.

They can embrace a common sense policy, and do right by the dogs without engaging in economic suicide.

Perfect!

So let's ask them to do that.

In fact, let's demand it!
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Basenji's: A Classic Tale of Kennel Club Defect

Modern African Basenjis after a hunt.

In correspondence this weekend, a reader wrote to note that not all was darkness in the American Kennel Club.

For example, when Basenji's began to present with jaw-dropping rates of hemolytic anemia in the 1970s, a test for the disease was developed and affected animals were then culled.

Unfortunately, the now smaller gene pool came down with a new disorder, an eye problem called persistent pupillary membrane, which was quickly followed by a kidney disease called Fanconi syndrome, and IPSID (a fatal malabsorption syndrome).

To combat these three diseases, it was decided to open up the U.S. Basenji registry to increase genetic diversity within the breed.

That does sound like a positive thing, doesn't it?

Sadly, however, the tale does not survive scrutiny.

In fact, it underscores the real problem with Kennel Club thinking.

To start with, let's state the obvious: the Kennel Club did not create the Basenji.

This breed has been around since before recorded history, and is a landrace dog used for hunting in the tropical jungles and scrub brush regions of central subSaharan Africa.

Point two is as important as point one: this breed is not about to go extinct in its native lands.

Basenjis are still used as hunting dogs throughout central Africa, and it takes little or no effort to find excellent specimens in nearly every local village.

So exactly where is the dog in trouble, and why?

The short answer is that the Basenji is only in trouble in the western industrialized world, and it is only in trouble because of the kennel club's closed registry system.

The full story is told here in a paper from the July 2007 Bulletin of the Basenji Club of America, but suffice to say that in the U.K. the breed was founded with just 7 dogs, while in the U.S., the breed was founded with just 9 dogs.

A few more dogs were added in to the mix over the years but, as the paper notes:

"[T]he Basenji modern population was derived from 18 original progenitors, with varying degrees of gene representation."

Even this overstates the genetic variability found within the modern Basenji, however.

As the Basenji Club of America notes, much of the founding stock in both the U.K. and the U.S. did not contribute much in terms of get. In addition, due to the popular sire effect, the true male "founder" side of the breed is really no more than four or five dogs. In fact, just three dogs -- Bongo of Blean, Wau of the Congo, and Kindu -- are estimated to represent over 95% of the Y chromosomes in modern AKC dogs!

In response to the collapsing and inbred genetic mess that is the Kennel Club Basenji, the AKC has now decided to open up the registry to dogs imported from Africa provided they can pass a 10-step hurdle.

Of course, no one is asking the most obvious question: Why do we need Kennel Club Basenjis at all?

The answer, of course, is that Kennel Club Basenjis are needed so people can win ribbons showing these dogs, and perhaps make a little cash breeding them as well.

Is there any other reason to ever own a Kennel Club dog?

Of course, some folks are always looking for a "project" or a cause, and the Basenji serves them well in that regard.

If they tell the story right, they can convince themselves and others that they are trying to "save" a rare breed, and never mind that the dog is not rare and does not need "saving"!

And so the push is on, once again, to import a few more dogs from the Congo, Benin and Cameroon.

And what will this achieve in the end? Not much.

Yes, the rate of genetic collapse of the Basenji within the AKC may slow down a bit, but the numbers imported are going to be so low that they will only change the velocity, not the direction, of the curve.

And, of course, the registry is not going to stay open forever, is it?

Once it closes, dominant sire selection will again raise its ugly head, and the gene pool will once again choke down, and inbreeding will continue apace.

In the interim, a few dog dealers will have made a profit selling "outcross" dogs imported from Africa, but not much else will have been achieved.

The good news for the Basenji is that the survival of this breed does not depend on Kennel Club "saviors."

Darwin and the hand of God are still working, as they always have, to save and preserve the Basenji. As Susan Shott has noted:

The owners of African Basenjis do not provide veterinary care for their dogs, and they do not interfere with their dogs' breeding. This insures that African Basenjis are subjected to the rigors of natural selection. Dogs with genetic problems that reduce their fitness early will be much less likely to breed than healthy dogs. For this reason, African Basenjis are less likely than American Basenjis to have serious genetic health problems

Right. But there's more to it than that isn't there? You see, the working African Basenji was not created in a closed registry system, and today's healthy dogs are not maintained in a closed registry system.

Let's not forget that.

And let's not forget that today's unhealthy, non-working American and European Basenjis are a byproduct of a closed registry system that has resulted in nothing but genetic defect cropping up within this breed.

But thanks to God and Africa, we can say: No loss. The Basenji is still alive, well and thriving in its native land.

_ _ _ _

End Note:

Novus sends an email (thanks!) with some data (and links!) which I will summarize:

• Fanconi Syndrome. While the Basenji folks themselves said they though it was just 1 or 2 percent dogs in 1979, a 1990 survey with 624 respondents, heavily skewed to reputable breeders, found 10 percent of of all Basenjis involved in the survey had Fanconi syndrome, and of these dogs, 76 percent were still breeding their dogs.
• Hemolytic Anemia. When testing was started, twenty per cent of all dogs had the recessive gene. A cull of about 18 percent of the dogs seems to have ensued, a phenomenal reduction in a gene pool that was already very narrrow, as noted.
• Hyperthyroidism. As of 2005, there were forty-four (44) basenjis registered with the OFA Thyroid registry, and of these, 15.9% have been diagnosed as having hereditary autoimmune lymphocytic thyroiditis putting the breed very high up for thyroid problems
• Persistant Pupillary Membrane: "PPM is a very common problem in the basenji breed."
• IPSID (ImmunoProliferative Small Intestinal Disease) is also called "basenji enteropathy." Novus reminds me of my dicta: "Avoid any breed with a disease named after it."
• Bottom Line: There's a reason they have (twice!) opened up the registry to African stock
  
  
• Related Links:
  ** Basenjis, Diamonds and Magic Meat
  ** An Ancient Breed of Dog?
  ** When Did Your Breed Show Up at Westminster?
  ** Inbred Thinking
  .

Caroline Kisko Continues to Damage the Brand

Kennel Club spokesperson Caroline Kisko really has to go. She is a proven liar; a small fact I have demonstrated in previous posts. It's hard to do press when you lie about core issues, and it's so easy to prove that you lie. A small problem!

Perhaps as serious as Ms. Kisko's casual relationship with the truth is the fact that she appears to be incompetent at her press job.

Only she could take a silly PeTA bus poster (put up at only two locations) and turn it into newspaper fodder on two continents (see here and here and here).

Now veterinarian and columnist Peter Wedderburn is shaking his head in amazement, noting that PeTA actually has a point, and going so far as to highlight it; Pedigree dogs really are not as healthy as cross-bred dogs!

Thanks Caroline Kisko! No one has done more to show the degree of entrenched inbred thinking going on at the Kennel Club than you have. How could anyone mishandle the press to this extent and still hold a press job? Amazing!

Of course the thing that makes this doubly comic is that it reminds us that the Kennel Club is not only built around eugenics theories, but that Caroline Kisko herself has a BNP member snuggling up next to her in the bedroom.

Perhaps the Kennel Club needs to "do a Costanza" and go in the opposite direction from whatever direction Caroline Kisko is headed, and see if they might achieve some messaging success that way?

Just a thought...

Of course, the real problem may be above Kisko. The buck has to stop with Ronnie Iriving, doesn't it? I have always thought the real litmus test for Kennel Club change is the departure of Caroline Kisko but, perhaps the change needs to start right at the top....


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Are Pet Dogs More Myopic Than Working Dogs?

The "Nearsightedeyes" web site reports on a study of about two hundred dogs by veterinarian Christopher J. Murphy and his colleagues who found that certain breeds of pet dogs were prone to myopia.

..... two-thirds of Rottweiler and half of German shepherds and miniature schnauzers in this study were significantly myopic, by more than 1.5 diopters. The myopic Rottweilers were close to 3 diopters nearsighted on average. Generally, people who have more than about 0.75 diopters of nearsightedness will complain of noticeable impairment and find they need to wear glasses or contact lenses to function in everyday life.

The animals in this study population were all pets. Interestingly, when Murphy and his coworkers looked at a second population of German shepherds – animals kenneled at Guide Dogs for the Blind in San Rafael, California – they found that the guide dogs had average normal vision, with fewer than a third showing even as much as 0.5 diopters of nearsightedness.

The guide dog program did not specifically test dogs’ vision in selecting animals, but they did flunk out any dogs that failed to perform well in training, which suggests that myopia results in a real impairment in getting the job done. The average farsightedness of sporting dog breeds suggests that there has likewise been selection at work in these breeds – that good distance vision has a demonstrable effect on making a good working dog.

The researchers noted a tendency for severe nearsightedness to run in families, which suggests a strongly inherited component. In breeds that are not expected to perform anything more demanding than lying on the carpet, walking on a leash, and finding their supper bowl, there has no doubt been little selection for good vision, which has allowed myopia to sneak into the gene pool.

I would throw up a caution flag here: a pool of 200 dogs is pretty small, and not much can really be known about vision across breeds with a sample size so small.

How many Rottweilers, German Shepherds and Miniature Schnauzers were really in the sample, and how much genetic variation within these breeds did that sample really represent?

Not many and not much is my bet!

That said, an expanded and improved study might be a good project for some budding canine opthamologist to cut his or her teeth on.

A hat tip to Gina Spadafori at Pet Connection for sending the link my way!
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Mostly, the TV Networks Pimp for the AKC

Canine freaks make for quick laughs, easy action, and good television ratings.

The AKC was invited by NBC television's Today Show to put on a spokesperson to talk about the U.S. showing of Pedigree Dogs Exposed on BBC America.

Of course they declined.

And how could they not?

What the American Kennel Club has done to dogs is truly indefensible -- dogs that cannot breathe, that cannot walk, and that are so inbred that breed after breed of dog is now little more than a cancer bomb with legs, liver dysfuncion with fur, hip dysplasia with a tail.

When asked about such things, the American Kennel Club shrinks away like a salted slug, as they did earlier this year when ABC's Nightline television show tried to get them on camera.

The AKC will not talk about dogs in an open forum with veterinarians, working dog men, and genetic experts to call them out on their nonsense.

And why should they?

After all, all of the television networks will come mewing back to them in February when the Westminster dog show is in full swing.


Earlier this year, Matt Lauer gave the AKC a lot of free Westminster publicity.

Consider The Today Show. They gave Pedigree Dogs Exposed about 3 minutes this morning, and had a nice interview with James Serpell from the University of Pennsylvania, but earlier this year this same TV show had all four of their morning anchors up at Westminster trotting around the ring with a quad of strange-looking dogs.

This is how it goes with American TV.

Every year the American Kennel Club gets millions of free advertising dollars from Westminster Dog Show puff-pieces and from televised dog shows which now seem more numerous than ever.

Why? What's going on?

The simple truth is that American television networks are in a "race to the basement" as far as production costs are concerned. With 100 channels and the Internet too, fewer advertising dollars are chasing more and more media outlets.

The result is that television is now crammed with low-cost talking heads, pontificating popinjays, and cocked-up reality shows in which faded stars and wanna-be celebrities contrive personal dramas in order to get, or keep, their name in lights.

You want investigative journalism? Then you better pray that American networks buy more already-produced investigative piece from overseas, because American journalists are no longer in the business of finding or reporting news -- they are in the business of re-writing press releases and sending news crews down to Florida in order to see if they can locate one more Tiger Woods mistress.

So will showing Pedigree Dogs Exposed on American television shudder the keel of the AKC? I would not count on it.

Remember that for the dog show world, breeding dogs solely for looks and not for health or function, is a religion.

My Catholic friends did not become Buddhists because a news show ran a story about a few pedophile priests.

They did not stop taking Communion when it was revealed that archbishops across the country had known of, and hidden, hundreds of pedophile priests for decades.


NBC Today Show host Meredith Vieira gave the AKC a lot of free publicity (2009).

That said, a great deal of evil has died the death of a thousand cuts, and every little bit helps.

Though the old media of television is not likely to force change, the new media of the Internet may yet get the job done.

• Related Video:
  ** BBC - Pedigree Dogs Exposed
  ** ABC News Nightline "Best in Show'


• Related Links:
  ** Let's Do to Horses What We Did to German Shepherds
  ** A Dog Show We Need to See
  ** Dogs and the Asch Experiment
  ** Counterfeit Collies and Transvestite Terriers
  ** Making and Breaking Dogs In the Show Ring
  ** The Kennel Club Freak Show
  .

Dog Disorders Related to Breed Standards

T-Shirt Available - Perfect for Crufts and Westminster.

The George Fleming Prize winner for 2009 has been announced, just in time for tomorrow's 150th Anniversary of the publication of Darwin's Origin of Species. The Fleming prize, which commemorates the founder of The Veterinary Journal, is awarded for the paper of the greatest merit published in the Journal during the previous year.

The winners for 2009 are Lucy Asher, Gillian Diesel, Jennifer F. Summers, Paul D. McGreevy and Lisa M. Collins of the Department of Veterinary Clinical Sciences, Royal Veterinary College, University of London for their article entitled 'Inherited Defects in Pedigree Dogs. Part 1: Disorders Related to Breed Standards' (VJ, August 2009).

A few excerpts from the paper:

The issue of pedigree dog breeding and its consequences for welfare has recently been brought to the attention of the general public. The main sources of inherited defects are (i) deleterious inherited recessive traits expressed as a consequence of closed stud books and inbreeding practices; and (ii) dog breeders aiming to meet the breed standards for multiple aspects of physical conformation.

We carried out a review of inherited defects in the 50 most popular breeds of dog in the UK, according to Kennel Club registrations .... Every one of the 50 most popular pedigree breeds of dog in the UK were found to have at least one aspect of their physical conformation which predisposes them to a heritable defect. Conformation characteristics such as short heads, short legs, excessive facial skin folds, pendulous ears, long backs and curly tails are likely to predispose, or are genetically linked in presenting breeds, to a range of physical problems such as occipital dysplasia, malocclusion of the jaws, hip dysplasia, eye ulceration, chronic otitis, intervertebral disc disease, and spina bifida, respectively.

In many cases, there is an overlap or interaction between conformation and inherited diseases. For example, the spot colouration specified in the breed standards for Dalmatians has a genetic link with deafness. Certain defects were found to cluster by breed type – e.g. the tendency to develop patellar luxation is particularly common in the Terrier and Toy dog breeds, and the potentially fatal condition of gastric torsion is common to the working dog breeds such as Rottweiler, Dogue de Bordeaux, Doberman and Great Dane. . . .

. . . . This report has shown that every one of the 50 most popular pedigree breeds of dog in the UK were found to have at least one aspect of their physical conformation predisposing it to a heritable defect. Conformational features form a large proportion of these problems. From musculoskeletal diseases, such as hip and elbow dysplasia to brachycephalic airway obstruction syndrome, eyelid defects, excessive skin folds and predisposition to gastric dilatation-volvulus in barrel-chested breeds, these defects affect all body systems across a variety of breeds. The association of some of these conditions with official breed standards and the high maintenance implications of some breed features (such as a prolific coat or pendulous ears) makes conformational extremes an important area for consideration when discussing the problems of the purebred dog breeding industry. Also highlighted by this report are the diverse and often severe genetic conditions suffered by dogs of these 50 popular breeds. Inbreeding, population bottlenecks, the use of strictly closed stud-books and breeding towards features genetically linked to deleterious conditions (such as the link between spot size and deafness in Dalmatians) have all contributed to the current situation. . . .

Summary: There are 209 different breeds of pedigree dogs recognised by the UK Kennel Club. In this report, we focused on the top 50 most popular breeds, according to the number of KC registrations in 2007. For these breeds, we found a total of 322 inherited disorders. Of these, 84 were either directly or indirectly associated with conformation.

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From Bassets to Auschwitz in 50 Years

There is nothing quite as amusing as the Kennel Club saying it has had nothing to do with Eugenics.

Really?

Let us look at their own history.

The year is 1897, some 14 years after Sir Francis Galton first coined the term "Eugenics," and just 11 years before Galton founded the British Eugenics Society in 1907.

What's going on at the Kennel Club?

Well, for starters they are firmly closing the registry for all dogs except new breeds just being enrolled for the first time.

In the 1905 publication The Kennel Club: Its History and Record of Its Work, Edward William Jaquet, secretary of the Kennel Club writes about the 1897 debate over what to do about the declining health of Scottish Deerhounds.

And so there it is: The question of health versus purity is raised, and put front and center.

And what is the Kennel Club's answer? Simple: Quash all questions of health in favor of maintaining breed "purity."

And what about health? The Kennel Club had a solution for that: euthanasia of the unfit, and sterilization of all but the most exemplary as decided by appearance alone.

It is important to understand that the Kennel Club's decision to close its registry did not occur in isolation. The core ideas underpinning the eugenics movement were already more than 30 years old, and these values, in turn, had been shaped and reinforced by those who pointed to the "progress" being made by the "scientific" breeding of dogs, pigeons, and livestock for the show ring. One idea fed off another, and rationalized and excused the other.

A time line shows the progress:

• Plato was the first to propose state-sponsored eugencis, suggesting that in his ideal Republic "The best men must have intercourse with the best women as frequently as possible, and the opposite is true of the very inferior." In Plato's scheme, the fittest and best would be determined by a points systems.
• In the late 1770s, Robert Bakewell began to rapidly improve farm stock through sire selection and control, a feat made possible by the rise of the Enclosure System. Bakewell's fame and fortune spread rapidly and soon countless farmers had embraced his animal husbandry techniques
• Stock shows grew up out of a desire of farmers to show off and sell their new and improved "scientifically bred" animals. At some of these early stock shows, dogs were also featured, but more as an afterthought than anything else.
• It was at the new farm stock shows that Erasmus Darwin, Charles Darwin's father, first began to get an inkling of the power of the selection process -- an idea he expounded on in a book entitled Zoonomia.
• Charles Darwin published The Origin of Species in 1859, noting that while un-natural selection worked very quickly to improve farm stock, natural selection did much the same thing in the wild, albeit more slowly.
• The same year that The Origin of Species was published, the first formal dog show was held. John Henry Walsh (aka "Stonehenge") was a judge.
• In 1865, the first modern work on eugenics was written by Francis Galton, Charles Darwin's cousin. In a long essay entitled "Hereditary Talent and Character," Galton said human intelligence was a product of breeding, and suggested that through selective breeding humans could be bred to be be more (or less) intelligent. Galton specifically noted that dogs seemed to have been bred for stupidity and obsequiousness, as man wanted a "slave."
• In his 1869 book Hereditary Genius, Galton expanded on his earlier essay, noting:  "I propose to show in this book that a man's natural abilities are derived by inheritance, under exactly the same limitations as are the form and physical features of the whole organic world. Consequently, as it is easy, notwithstanding those limitations, to obtain by careful selection a permanent breed of dogs or horses gifted with peculiar powers of running, or of doing anything else, so it would be quite practicable to produce a highly-gifted race of men by judicious marriages during several consecutive generations."
• In 1867, John Henry Walsh (aka Stonehenge) and his friends adopted Plato's "point sytem" for grading breeding stock, and used it for grading dogs at shows. When the The Kennel Club was created in 1873, it adopted this points system as its own.
• In 1880, the Kennel Club put into place the first formal rules governing the naming of dogs so as to avoid double registrations and confusion. This was the start of the Kennel Club's registry system.
• In 1897, the Kennel Club formally closed its registry, disallowing cross breeds and outcrosses to other breeds.
• That same year Francis Galton began using Kennel Club breed records to support his genetic theories, noting in his Memoir (chapter XX): "I had thought of experimenting with mice, as cheap to rear and very prolific,and had taken some steps to that end, when I became aware of the large collections of Basset Hounds belonging to the late Sir Everard Millais. He offered me every facility. The Basset Hound records referring to his own and other breeds had been carefully kept, and the Stud Book he lent me contained accounts of nearly 1,000 animals, of which I was able to utilise 817. All were descended from parents of known colours; in 567 of them the colours of all four grandparents were also known. Wherever the printed Stud Book was deficient, Sir Everard Millals supplied the want in MS from the original records. My inquiry was into the heredity of two alternative colours, one containing no black, the other containing it; their technical names were lemon-white and tri-colour (black, lemon, white) respectively. I was assured that no difficulty was felt in determining the category to which each individual belonged. These data were fully discussed in a memoir, published (1897) in the Proceedings of the Royal Society, on what is now termed the "Ancestral Law," namely, that the average contribution of each parent is ¼, of each grandparent, and so on. Or, in other words, that of the two parents taken together is ½, of the four grandparents together ¼, and so on. My data were not as numerous as is desirable, still the results were closely congruous, and seem to be a near approximation to the truth. The conclusions have been much discussed and criticised, and they have been modified by Professor Karl Pearson; but they have not been seriously shaken, so far as I know."

Of course, as new dog breeds came into the fold, individual dog registries were not always closed on Day One. That said, as a general rule they do not seem to have stayed open for very long, with the Kennel Club door generally being slammed shut within a year or two, and often with just two or three dozen dogs listed on the roles.

In 1907, Galton created the Eugenics Education Society and that same year Indiana passed a State Sterilization Law.

That same year the Germans created their own Eugenics Society, the "Internationale Gessellschaft fuer Rassenhygiene."

To give a little flavor to the intellectual debate taking place at this time, it's worth reading this little piece from the September 1914 issue of Atlantic magazine entitled "Eugenics and Common Sense":

There seems no objection to Eugenicists classing themselves with cabbages and dogs and cats, but does the rest of the world accept this for itself? Are you content to be described and treated as a beast, and a beast only? Each reader will answer that for himself no doubt, and I need not elaborate the point. It is the cheerful and veracious foundation of Eugenics.

Let us continue. The Eugenist takes man purely as a plant or as an animal; he wants to breed him just as animals are bred, so let us consider how plants and animals are bred and what the result has been. He says: 'Surely the human product is superior to poultry,'—the very foundation of his whole argument is that it is not; however, let us go on,—'and as we may now predict with precision the characters of the offspring of a particular pair of pedigreed poultry so it may be some time with man.'

Still, let us go on. Let us assume with the Eugenists that we really are no different from cabbages and roses, or horses and dogs,—that every rule which applies to them applies to us, and let us see what the scientific breeding of plants and animals has effected. What has been the result?

Well, the result has been astonishing. The simple little wild Persian rose, for instance, has been improved into the gorgeous blooms of our gardens: the small, rather sour apple has become the Albemarle Pippin; the wild dog has become the great Dane, the mastiff, the bull-dog, the pug; and the barb mixed with the Frisian horse has become the thoroughbred. In size, in beauty, in variety, in qualities useful to mankind, plants and animals have been improved out of recognition.

That is quite true. But what of the other qualities? What, for instance, of health and intelligence? Have these also increased pari passu with the increase in size? Go to a nursery gardener, to a racing stable, to a dog-fancier, and inquire. You will learn this: the extraordinary improvement In size and shape has been gained at the cost of all other qualities. Thoroughbred plants and animals are very tender, they require most assiduous attention, they have to be nursed like babies. They have no stamina, and they have no brains. They are so delicate that unless they are continually protected and doctored they are devoured by disease. A rose-grower's outfit now includes innumerable medicines without which his blooms would be destroyed. If you abandon a garden of any cultivated flowers for a few years, the vigorous and hardy wild plants will choke all your improved stock; nothing will be left save perhaps a few lucky plants which have managed to evolve as it were backwards and regain some of their virility by abandoning their acquired splendor. In free competition the improved plant does not stand the ghost of a chance with its unimproved brothers. The struggle ends inevitably and tragically.

It is exactly the same with improved birds and animals. In open competition for a livelihood thoroughbred stock would be doomed. It has no constitution, it cannot get a living for itself, cannot bear exposure, must be cared for like an invalid. Read for instance the history of the cavalry and mounted infantry horses in the Boer War. The fine-bred stock from England was useless. It died in heaps. It was only horses from places where they are brought up semi-wild, as in the Argentine and Australian runs, that were of any use. Even they did not compare with the Boer ponies.

A further fact, and one still more important to remark, is that all tame is incomparably inferior in intellect to wild stock. There is so little opportunity for people of civilized nations nowadays to observe wild animals that this fact is often overlooked. But the difference is startling. Look at a pack of wild dogs, as I often have. They hunt with a science and precision that tame fox-hounds have no idea of, even when directed by huntsmen and whips. A pack of wild dogs will mark down a stag—they always select stags with big heads if possible—in a piece of forest surrounded by grass. They will post sentries at the exits and the rest of the pack will go to the end and beat the jungle through. When the stag breaks, the sentries at the exit give tongue and warn the rest who immediately run to their call.

There is no one who like myself has kept both wild and domesticated animals as pets who has not noticed that the latter are fools to the former. It is a commonplace of knowledge. Here is a story in illustration, from the life of the elder Dumas.

He had a dog and a fox both chained up near the house. One day he gave a bone to each, putting it just out of reach, to see what would happen. Well, at first, both acted in the same way, they strained at the chain. The fox, however, soon found out the uselessness of this and sat down to consider. Then he got up, turned round so as to add the length of his body to that of the chain, reached the bone with his hind leg, and having scraped it within reach, sat down to eat it. But the dog not only could not think of this himself, but even when he saw the fox do it, he could not imitate it.

The more scientifically bred animals are, the less brain they have. If you want a dog who will be an intelligent and sympathetic companion, which do you choose, the dog bred by 'science' or the dog bred by the natural selection of mutual love, the thoroughbred or the mongrel? All experience says the latter. Therefore, suppose the Eugenists had their way and established a state, what would the inhabitants of that state be like in a few generations? They would be tall, broad, muscular, beautiful, delicate to a degree, useless save for athletic contests or beauty shows, always in the doctor's hands—Eugenic doctor of course,—brainless, incapable of affection, almost wanting in courage, to a great extent sterile; and in the end, if the state did not die of inanition first, some more virile and intelligent race, say the Hottentots or Andamese, would come and eat its inhabitants. The Eugenic Utopia would end in the digestive apparatus of a savage. Sic transit gloria Eugeniae. Nothing could be more certain than that.

And where did it go from here? Well, not to common sense!

Galton died in 1911, but his ideas did not die with him.

The American Eugenics Society was formally started in 1923, and veterinarian and celebrated dog man Leon F. Whitney was put in as its secretary.

As I have noted in a previous post entitled "The Eugenics Man and the Kennel Club", Whitney was a very prolific author of popular dog books, many of which are still available and in print to this day.

Throughout the 1920s and 1930s, Leon Whitney was also a famous popularizer of eugenics thought.

In Whitney's mind -- and in the minds of many of this contemporaries -- eugenics thought and dog breeding were very compatible ideas and comparable pastimes.

In fact, they were self-reinforcing to the point that Whitney and others in the American eugenics movement decided to create a "dog show for people" which they called "Fitter Family" contests.

In these contests, which were held at State Fairs all across the U.S., four generations of families would be paraded out and put into competition with each other to win a prize.

 
"Fitter Family" contest winners in Topeka, Kansas.


In 1931, Leon F. Whitney began writing The Case for Sterilization a book designed to encourage the passage of more state-based sterilization laws in the U.S. and around the world.

The Case for Sterilization was finally published in 1934 and noted, with some approval, that Adloph Hitler had already sterilized one percent of the population of Germany. Whitney saw this as a good start.

In his own book, Whitney advocated the sterlization of 10 million Americans!

One of Hitler's staff wrote Whitney, asking him for an autographed copy of his new book so that the Fuhrer himself might read it.

Whitney, of course, complied immediately, and shortly thereafter he received back a personal letter of thanks from Hitler who, records show, was fascinated by the American and British eugenics movements to the point that in 1935 he modeled some of his own Lebensborn program after their ideas.

In 1935 Alexis Carrell, the French scientist who had won the 1912 Nobel Prize for medicine, published a best-selling book entitled L'Homme, Cet Inconnu (Man, The Unknown) which took Whitney's ideas one step further, advocating a forced eugenics system to be controlled by the state, and facilitated by gas chambers.

"A euthanasia establishment, equipped with a suitable gas, would allow the humanitarian and economic disposal of those who have killed, committed armed robbery, kidnapped children, robbed the poor or seriously betrayed public confidence.... Would the same system not be appropriate for lunatics who have committed criminal acts?"

In the 1936 edition of the same book, Carrel praised the Third Reich's eugenics policies, and noted that more could be achieved if they used gas chambers. Later, when questioned by a magazine interviewer about his theories, Carrel explained in a rather matter-of-fact way:

"Perhaps it would be effective to kill off the worst and keep the best, as we do in the breeding of dogs."

And so there it is -- from Bassets to Auschwitz in 50 years.

Did the Kennel Club invade the Sudetenland? No, of course not.

But did the Kennel Club walk arm in arm and shoulder to shoulder with the eugenics movement right from the beginning? Absolutely. One could not have happened without the other. They are as intertwined as the grape vine and the trellis.

And, of course, the Kennel Club still warmly embraces eugenics theories based on a closed registry system that elevates to prime importance such useless attributes as coat and nose color, while kicking to the curb such vital issues as health and working ability.

Of course, even as the Kennel Club holds tight to "racial purity" breeding, the farm world has moved forward, discovering the benefits of hybridization and outcrosses.

Today, most beef cattle, dairy cattle, chickens, corn, and soy are hybrid animals and plants.

Only in the show ring, where there is no true axis of production, is racial purity still valued.

• Note: The title for this piece is stolen from a line by Andrew Marr in his BBC program entitled "The Making of Modern Britain," in which he notes that the eugenics movement went "from the Basset Hound stud book to Auschwitz in not many bounds."

• Related Links:
  ** Inbred Thinking
  ** Stonehenge: The Root of the Inbreeding Problem
  ** The Eugenics Man and the Kennel Club
  ** No Tolerance for Diversity
  ** Howard Galton's Bloodhounds
  ** Charles Galton Darwin
  ** The Francis Galton Dog Show
  ** Standards and Stonehenge
  ** The Kennel Club Stud Book - 1884
  ** Non-Extinct Terriers & Other Mysteries
  ** Counterfeit Collies and Transvestite Terriers
  ** Rawdon Lee :: The Fox Terrier, 1902
  ** A Pictorial History of Terriers; Their Politics & Their Place
  ** Before the Era of Dog Shows....
  ** Does the Breed Standard Require a Rape Rack?
  ** Handsome Is as Handsome Does
  ** Dogs Made by the Hand of Man
  ** Robert Bakewell's Apartment
  ** The AKC's Long Love Affair With Puppy Mills
  ** Science Remakes the Dog
  .