http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/7569064.stm

I just downloaded a copy of it from alt.binaries.multimedia that was posted
within the last week. Use Binsearch to find it.

I haven't had a chance to watch it yet but it looks interesting--and
depressing.

--
Bob
http://www.kanyak.com

On Fri, 22 Aug 2008 18:24:42 +0300, "Opinicus"
wrote:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/7569064.stm

I just downloaded a copy of it from alt.binaries.multimedia that was posted
within the last week. Use Binsearch to find it.

I haven't had a chance to watch it yet but it looks interesting--and
depressing.

Nothing new there, Bob. Yes, there's some truth to be found in the
"expose" (e.g., "It is when characteristics become exaggerated that
health problems can occur"), but it neglects to mention the many
illnesses, disorders, problems, etc. that plague crossbreeds, too,
painting a one-sided picture.

Plus, inbreeding, in and of itself, doesn't cause anything - it just
amplifies what's already there (that's how we got *breeds* in the
first place - inbreeding). The importance of choosing only *exemplars*
of a breed to be bred, especially founding stock, cannot be
overemphasized.

Responsible breeders work tirelessly to improve the health of their
breeds, but there will always be some breeders who care more for $$$,
for looks, for attention, etc., than for the health of their dogs.

Which is why a responsible breeder's priorities should always be
health (including structure), intelligence (including temperament),
working ability, and then appearance - in that exact order of
importance.

That's my opinion, and I'm sticking to it.

--
Handsome Jack Morrison

Why Obama's Red Mentor Is News.
http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/...r_is_news.html

Obama Played by Chicago Rules.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1219...comment aries

The danger of global warming alarmism.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisf....climatechange

If the editors of the NY Times were high school students, they would flunk.
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archive.../08/021245.php

Want to help prevent America from committing economic suicide? Don't vote for a Democrat.
http://reason.com/news/show/128096.html

The Law of Unintended Consequences.
http://www.oregonlive.com/news/orego...l=7&thispage=1

There Are Old People and Fat People, But Few Old Fat People (the same holds true for dogs).
http://www.fightaging.org/archives/001540.php

Under the leadership of the Democratic Party, the United States continues to be the only country in the
world that is deliberately devastating its own economy by refusing to develop its energy resources.
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archive.../08/021214.php

John "Silky Pony" Edwards, the consummate phony.
http://www.nypost.com/seven/08092008...661.htm?page=0

Where the women are women and the men are too.
http://drhelen.blogspot.com/2008/08/...ings-gone.html

Terri spoke these words of wisdom in
:



I read the article at the link and it is depressing, but more so because
despite years of attempted education, that reporter is still hanging onto
a lot of outdated information and ideas. I wish the only people that were
allowed to report on dogs and breeding were truly informed about it
first.
Totally, I do agree. The English Bulldogs DO need Csections for whelping
puppies.

There are some breeds where breeders accept those pitfalls as a part of the
breed and those breeds deserve all the dissing they can get.

The breeds who are taking action to FIX those problems deserve credit to
the breeders who are testing.

Some of the purebreeds if you select the breeder are actually healthier
than their backyard or puppymill bred counterparts. Or even mixed breeds
for that matter.

"Terri" wrote in message
...
" I read the article at the link and it is depressing, but more so
because
despite years of attempted education, that reporter is still hanging onto
a lot of outdated information and ideas. I wish the only people that were
allowed to report on dogs and breeding were truly informed about it
first.


What outdated ideas and ínformation ?
Alison

"diddy" none wrote in message
.. .
Totally, I do agree. The English Bulldogs DO need Csections for
whelping
puppies.

There are some breeds where breeders accept those pitfalls as a part of
the
breed and those breeds deserve all the dissing they can get.

The breeds who are taking action to FIX those problems deserve credit to
the breeders who are testing.

Some of the purebreeds if you select the breeder are actually healthier
than their backyard or puppymill bred counterparts. Or even mixed breeds
for that matter.

The full programme is here

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00d4ljk/

Small bits here
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-1LyjlX4Mp8

Alison

An example would be this statement:
"It says deliberate mating of dogs which are close relatives is common
practice and the Kennel Club registers dogs bred from mother-to-son and
brother-to-sister matings."

Right there is a huge mistaken parallel the writer has tried to draw
by comparing human and canine genetics as being the same but it's
not the same at all. And there are occasions in dog breeding that
deliberate mating of "close relatives" is desireable to lock
in certain traits or health aspects of a certain line within a breed.

Got to be careful there. I know what you're saying (at least I think I do),
but someone else might not.
The genetics *are* the same, its our knowledge and careful mating that
(hopefully) makes it different.

For the sake of others reading the thread, I'll add some background on
genetics.

Imagine a simple trait might be coded by a single sequence of DNA. In
general, we all have two copies of every gene (a gene being a short hand way
of saying a stretch of DNA that codes for a particular trait). We get one
from Mom, and one from Dad. A dominant trait, requires one copy of a gene to
be expressed, a recessive trait requires two copies of the same gene to be
expressed (I.e. so that you know you have it).

Most harmful alleles (forms of a gene) are recessive, and so we don't see
them unless the offspring is unlucky enough to have two copies of them. If
they were dominant, we (or nature) could select against them very quickly,
and they wouldn't have a chance to stick around in the population (imagine
if every dog who carried the gene for condition x could be readily
identified: Don't breed from them, and you won't get any offspring with that
condition).

Now imagine that in a particular population of dogs, a particular recessive
harmful allele is present in 0.02% of the population. Through random mating,
0.02 x 0.02 % (0.0004%) of dogs (1 in 2500) will express this allele.

Next instead imagine a father x daughter mating. If Dad has the allele
(recall its recessive, so invisible), then the daughter has it half the
time, which means that one out of every eight cases, the allele will be
expressed in the offspring (1/2 of the time dad will contribute it again,
1/2 the time daughter will contribute it, and 1/2 the time daughter has it
in the first place). If we assume random father daughter mating, then 1 in
400 offspring will (at random) express the deleterious allele (which is
obviously higher than 1 in 2500).

Now if we imagine a 'good' recessive gene, that we want to be expressed, we
know Dad has it, and if we know the daughter has it, then there is a 1 in 4
chance that the offspring will also have it, so there are advantages to
Father/Daughter pairing.

All the same holds true for human genetics, but with humans the incestuous
relationships we're talking about aren't 'planned', so no advantages, and
all the disadvantages. (much higher chance of expression of deleterious
recessives being expressed).

Anyways, off to bed now.

Dale

"Dale Atkin" wrote in
news:jdrsk.9742$%b7.8308@edtnps82:

Most harmful alleles (forms of a gene) are recessive, and so we don't
see them unless the offspring is unlucky enough to have two copies of
them. If they were dominant, we (or nature) could select against them
very quickly,

Unless some other aspect of the allele's expression offers a survival
advantage. Sickle-cell anemia in humans and HYPP in Quarter horses are two
examples.

and they wouldn't have a chance to stick around in the
population (imagine if every dog who carried the gene for condition x
could be readily identified: Don't breed from them, and you won't get
any offspring with that condition).

There's a few other things involved. Not every genetically-mediated
disease or defect is apparent at birth, or even through young adulthood.
If your dog is 12 or 13 years old before showings signs of diminished sight
from PRA, for example, or your 7-yr old dog drops dead of cardiomyopathy,
you've likely already bred that animal as many times as you're going to and
the offspring are on the ground (and possibly also reproducing). So it's
not always as simple as "identify the affected animals and remove them from
the breeding population".

Additionally, some defects have become common in some breeds. So common
that removing all identified affected (and carrier, in the case of a simple
recessive trait) animals would severely restrict the available breeding
group, to the point that selection for any other trait would be impossible.
Rather than give up on such a breed entirely, a measured approach using
carriers (or less severely affected) animals to "breed away" from the
defect while still maintaining selection for other traits is more than
possible.


--
Mary & the depleted Ames National Zoo
(Ranger, Duke, Rhia-cat)

----- Original Message -----
From: Terri
Newsgroups: rec.pets.dogs.behavior
Sent: Saturday, August 23, 2008 1:45 AM
Subject: "Pedigree Dogs Exposed"

It's hard to know where to begin

It is isn't it.! The article itself didn't cover the programme in great
depth though.
I saw the programme itself and some points were sensationalised
with references to Hilter's Germany and eugenics and also, while the
point about inbreeding
was valid, when they interviewed the Kennel club chap it looked like it
was coming from a moral view of incest .


Then there's the real icky feeling I got from the statements about the
Cavalier's brain being too big for it's skull.

"The programme shows a prize-winning cavalier King Charles spaniel
suffering from syringomyelia, a condition which occurs when a dog's skull
is too small for its brain."
While it's true a KCS *can* have this
problem, it doesn't equate that all do nor does it draw any distinction
that it's due to poorly bred dogs whose breeders aren't screening for it.
If it's an identified genetic problem it's screenable. Ergo good breeders
aren't contributing to this problem because they're screening for it but
that's not what the statement is leading the reader to believe.

I found this alarming and was shocked by the fact this top show breeder
knew her dog , (a BOB winner)had SM
and was breeding from it (many times) and also that other show breeders
knew of this and possibly
the judge too.
On the CKC club website , it has info about SM
http://www.thecavalierclub.co.uk/start.html

Click the on Cavalier Health button on the right and then on the
Syringomyelia button. There various articles there about it .The only way
to screen for it is for the dog to have a MRI scan.

More about breeding from SM cavs

From the CKC MRI Screening and Breeding Recomendations January 2007

"The following breeding recommendations were derived at the International
Conference held in November 2006 and are made using current information and
in response to breeder requests for guidelines. It has yet to be proven if
this guide is appropriate. The aim of these recommendations is to reduce
the incidence of symptomatic syringomyelia in the breed not to create
litters of puppies guaranteed not to have SM as the chance of producing an
affected dog cannot be predicted without knowing the inheritance. It is
recommended that the offspring of any mating is also MRI screened before
breeding.

As the incidence of syringomyelia is so high in the breed there will be
severe depletion of the gene pool if only clear dogs are used (i.e. other
problems will develop). Therefore until the genetic defect is determined it
is recommended that dogs with syringomyelia be used if they are valuable
in another genetic sense e.g. good heart. The general principle of these
guidelines is that dogs with code A are more desirable to use than B, etc
but that dogs with a higher letter code may still be used in some limited
circumstances. "


"But by far the most discomfort I feel from this statement is that it
smacks of the same type of urban legend started about the Dobe years ago.
As I recall you're fairly young so you may not know about it


Does 52 count as fairly young G
I don't think you can compare this with the Cav SM "scandal"

The information about extent of inbreeding and the limited gene pool in
various breeds came from a study by researchers at the Imperial College in
London
http://www3.imperial.ac.uk/newsandev...2?newsid=42674

http://tinyurl.com/5qa3x2

"Although the problems associated with inbreeding have been known for
many years, prior to the new study it had not been systematically measured.
For this study, researchers from Imperial used mathematical modelling to
analyse how dogs were related to one another within ten different dog
breeds including the Boxer and Rough Collie.
They looked at the parentage of eight generations of dogs, using records
collected from 1970 to the present day by the UK Kennel Club.

The researchers' analysis showed that, for example, Boxer dogs were so
closely related to one another and had such little genetic variation
between them that genetically, 20,000 dogs looked like a population of
about 70. In the Rough Collie breed, 12,000 dogs looked in genetic terms
like a population of about 50.

Such small effective population sizes mean that the chances of a dog
breeding with a close relative, resulting in birth defects and genetically
inherited health problems, are high."

Alison

"Terri" wrote in message
...
So do you remember the Dobe UL or was it mostly
in the USA?

I don't remember it so it could have been mostly ín the USA.
I remember the urban myth about people coming home and findíng their
Dobie or GSD had eaten bits of a burglar. LOL

Alison wrote:

I don't remember it so it could have been mostly ín the USA.
I remember the urban myth about people coming home and findíng their
Dobie or GSD had eaten bits of a burglar.


I remember! It must have been around 1981. I was chatting with others
I worked with. One woman came in with the story of something that
happened to someone her friend knew. She had a scary doberman. When
she came home and found her dog choking, she took him to the
veterinarian. The veterinarian found 3 human fingers in the dog's throat.


I was amazed. I believed her. (I was 22 years old.) I told a few
people. They were amazed. They believed me. Then that week, the
newspaper reported that the story was going around. The reporter called
every veterinarian in the area. None of them said they'd examined the
dog, but they all knew of a colleague somewhere else who had. Yet when
the reporter called the other veterinarian, it hadn't happened to him.


The article went on to introduce me to the term "urban legend" for the
first time. I've run into many more since then, but I've never been
quite so naive as I was for that first one. (First for me.) I always
think of the choking doberman when I run into a story that's so great
that it can't be true.


--Lia