Coi - Letter From Dogs Today

[nina]

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This is a simple question and not meant to offend so please dont jump on me...
How do you know for sure the health of the dogs you have bred as surely although it may be possible to keep track of the litters from your bitches what about your stud dogs as these litters are sold by a 3rd party.

If as in the case of immune problems they do not become apparent until the dog is middle aged it is perhaps unlikely a pet owner will refer back to the breeder unless they have kept a close relationship

As for not being aware of these issues i have posted that i have a dog with poliarthritis!!!!!  Not bred by me so could this dogs ancestors be in your line?

No-one has asked me but he came from somewhere!!!!!

Other owners also said on the previous thread they had dogs with immune problems,   I have asked them as it concerns me when and if i decide to breed, HAVE YOU?

No-one has said its rife but beleive me its there all right

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Well i can only speak as to what i know personally & i have obviously missed your post totally where ever it was :blink: I do apologise.

I have spoken to several people this afternoon, long standing in the breed & apart from one who had heard a rumour the others like me seem to be at a loss as to know any dogs in the breed who have had this?

I'm certainly not saying it doesnt exist or that other health faults have not raised their head from time to time but the bottom line is any breeder can only do their best.

If they know for sure that a dog has had/produced a certain health issue then they can think wisely & eradicate that dog/line from their breeding programme. Any responsible breeder can only do their best at all times to work with the knowledge they have.

In answer to your other question regarding if your stud dog is used & then the pups are then bred on from & you are not kept in the loop as to their well being, well you can only work on what you know & to be honest no breeder would ever breed if they thought that pups sired & bred on from by their stud dogs were producing health faults but not knowing, they have to do as i say the best they can.

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hi, my post was on the previous genetics thread, which was long so can understand if you missed it, i would certainly hope no one would knowingly breed from unhealthy stock ,my point was that people are contantly saying THEYRE LINES ARE HEALTHY so are fine to continue breeding in the same way but as you have just said you cannot KNOW they are healthy you can only do your best with the knowledge you have.

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I agree & i think that when people say their lines are healthy they do so with hand on heart because as i have stated you can only vouch for what you know to be a fact. My way of thinking anyway

 

[jayp]

This is a simple question and not meant to offend so please dont jump on me...
How do you know for sure the health of the dogs you have bred as surely although it may be possible to keep track of the litters from your bitches what about your stud dogs as these litters are sold by a 3rd party.

If as in the case of immune problems they do not become apparent until the dog is middle aged it is perhaps unlikely a pet owner will refer back to the breeder unless they have kept a close relationship

As for not being aware of these issues i have posted that i have a dog with poliarthritis!!!!!  Not bred by me so could this dogs ancestors be in your line?

No-one has asked me but he came from somewhere!!!!!

Other owners also said on the previous thread they had dogs with immune problems,   I have asked them as it concerns me when and if i decide to breed, HAVE YOU?

No-one has said its rife but beleive me its there all right

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​

Well i can only speak as to what i know personally & i have obviously missed your post totally where ever it was :blink: I do apologise.

I have spoken to several people this afternoon, long standing in the breed & apart from one who had heard a rumour the others like me seem to be at a loss as to know any dogs in the breed who have had this?

I'm certainly not saying it doesnt exist or that other health faults have not raised their head from time to time but the bottom line is any breeder can only do their best.

If they know for sure that a dog has had/produced a certain health issue then they can think wisely & eradicate that dog/line from their breeding programme. Any responsible breeder can only do their best at all times to work with the knowledge they have.

In answer to your other question regarding if your stud dog is used & then the pups are then bred on from & you are not kept in the loop as to their well being, well you can only work on what you know & to be honest no breeder would ever breed if they thought that pups sired & bred on from by their stud dogs were producing health faults but not knowing, they have to do as i say the best they can.

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hi, my post was on the previous genetics thread, which was long so can understand if you missed it, i would certainly hope no one would knowingly breed from unhealthy stock ,my point was that people are contantly saying THEYRE LINES ARE HEALTHY so are fine to continue breeding in the same way but as you have just said you cannot KNOW they are healthy you can only do your best with the knowledge you have.

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I agree & i think that when people say their lines are healthy they do so with hand on heart because as i have stated you can only vouch for what you know to be a fact. My way of thinking anyway

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Thats ALL that this thread is about, trying to asertain the genetic health of our breed WITH a UNITED FRONT.

 

[Eceni]

I have just caught up with these threads for various reasons but would like to ask a few simple questions & make a few comments now.Eceni, if I remember correctly, your original thread started because you were thinking of purchasing a Whippet, am I correct and have you decided on one now following the many various posts?

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I haven't decided. My elderly lurcher, who was beginning to look as if life was a burden when I started this quest, has passed her 14th birthday, got the sun on her back and some longer walks when we're not both being rained/hailed on and is bouncing around like a puppy.

So there's breathing space... I do look at some of the pups being shown on the various lists/websites and they are stunning, but I'm in this for the long haul and I want to be as sure as I can that I'm investing in health - so I'll wait and see and keep my ear to the ground and listen to the people who speak sense.

m

 

[Natalia]

I don't think that an extremely low COI over 20 generations is possible in purebred Whippets when you are talking about the showbred gene pool. 

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But possibly worth knowing what they are in any case?

and worth also knowing which distinct lines exist. There *are* people doing that - just that I don't know enough to find them?

Natalia is your source for all of this - or an equivalent....

m

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If people are keeping a distinct line, then they are doing that by inbreeding and linebreeding back onto their own foundational stock.

There is simply no other way to accomplish this when you are talking about that number of generations.

I'd love to hear from Natalia. For me to breed my show stock to a West Coast racebred line would certainly about as outcrossed as one can get. But their stock is not particularly outcrossed, for the most part. Most of the best racers go back multiple times to the same imports.

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Personally I prefer to calculate COI in 10 generations, or at least 8. In my opinion 4 or 5 is just not enough, as with a popular breed you can easily have low COI calculated in 5 generations, at the level of for example 10%, and 30 or 40% in 10 or more generations, if dogs from the pedigree have a common background.

The result calculated on 5 generations gives some orietnation. If you get something close to 0%, you probably will have no more than 5% in 10 generations (higher number is possible, but very uncomon). But if you get something close to 10%, it can change to 40% in 10 generations, or to let's say, 13% only, depending on the construction of the pedigree. That's why I think 5 generations is not enough.

On the other hand, 15 or 20 generations are not very useful, as it is very dificult and time consuming to complete the data (15 generations is more than 65 000 dogs in the pedigree), and the final result probably will not be so much different than what you will get from 10 generations.

10% is considered to be a safe level for most dogs. It is also the average number recomended for rare breeds. In popular ones, like whippets, it should be lower, of course. Average level means of course, that some dogs and litters have higher COI and it is normal.

The thing that increases COI very quickly is repeating a whole pack of dogs in the pedigree. Distant, or even quite close linebreeding to only one outstanding animal, if the rest of pedigree doesn't repeat, makes it possible to keep COI at relatively low numbers (at 5% or so), and to keep predictable results. Moreover, a very high COI is a guarantee of even litters and predictable results.

Of course COI is just a number, and as any other simple indicator of a complex problem, it doesn't tell everything. Two dogs with similar COI levels can have completely different pedigrees. The other simple indicator one can want to think of are the number of unique names in the pedigree (the more, the better, in terms of geneteic diversity).

 

[seaspot_run]

I don't think that an extremely low COI over 20 generations is possible in purebred Whippets when you are talking about the showbred gene pool. 

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But possibly worth knowing what they are in any case?

and worth also knowing which distinct lines exist. There *are* people doing that - just that I don't know enough to find them?

Natalia is your source for all of this - or an equivalent....

m

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If people are keeping a distinct line, then they are doing that by inbreeding and linebreeding back onto their own foundational stock.

There is simply no other way to accomplish this when you are talking about that number of generations.

I'd love to hear from Natalia. For me to breed my show stock to a West Coast racebred line would certainly about as outcrossed as one can get. But their stock is not particularly outcrossed, for the most part. Most of the best racers go back multiple times to the same imports.

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Personally I prefer to calculate COI in 10 generations, or at least 8. In my opinion 4 or 5 is just not enough, as with a popular breed you can easily have low COI calculated in 5 generations, at the level of for example 10%, and 30 or 40% in 10 or more generations, if dogs from the pedigree have a common background.

The result calculated on 5 generations gives some orietnation. If you get something close to 0%, you probably will have no more than 5% in 10 generations (higher number is possible, but very uncomon). But if you get something close to 10%, it can change to 40% in 10 generations, or to let's say, 13% only, depending on the construction of the pedigree. That's why I think 5 generations is not enough.

On the other hand, 15 or 20 generations are not very useful, as it is very dificult and time consuming to complete the data (15 generations is more than 65 000 dogs in the pedigree), and the final result probably will not be so much different than what you will get from 10 generations.

10% is considered to be a safe level for most dogs. It is also the average number recomended for rare breeds. In popular ones, like whippets, it should be lower, of course. Average level means of course, that some dogs and litters have higher COI and it is normal.

The thing that increases COI very quickly is repeating a whole pack of dogs in the pedigree. Distant, or even quite close linebreeding to only one outstanding animal, if the rest of pedigree doesn't repeat, makes it possible to keep COI at relatively low numbers (at 5% or so), and to keep predictable results. Moreover, a very high COI is a guarantee of even litters and predictable results.

Of course COI is just a number, and as any other simple indicator of a complex problem, it doesn't tell everything. Two dogs with similar COI levels can have completely different pedigrees. The other simple indicator one can want to think of are the number of unique names in the pedigree (the more, the better, in terms of geneteic diversity).

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Natalia, that is how I understood it. I feel that it is important to consider how inbred your dogs are, and to make outcrosses if you can find them if your COI creeps up too high, for some of the reasons you've already given.

But 20 generations was too many to be useful to a show breeder who can't open up their pedigrees to unregistered stock. There are genetic variations that creep in even in related stock as there is still a level of mutation going on no matter what, and crossing over, and all those other things that breeders can't even begin to see based on the phenotypes they get.

It is my philosophy that linebreeding or an occasional inbreeding is ok, as it is nice to know what problems exist in your basic matrilineal gene pool especially, but any really tight breeding should be followed by a much more outcrossed one, so as not to get inbreeding depression. This is a philosophy that many of the good stock breeders followed for decades, even before many of the things that we are talking about today had really surfaced. We are having more problems in the US because we aren't bringing in as many imports and using them as we were. But US breeders are pretty relaxed about this kind of discussion, and this is one reason why when someone DOES bring over a suitable import who has the ability to produce competitive children, many breeders are very keen to use him, because we know we can't just keep breeding the same lines together over and over and need the periodic influx of outside blood.

In other words, you can only go back to the same well so many times before you start bringing up mud from the bottom. This is true even of the BEST lines.

Here, at least. I think that you can only go about two or three tightly-bred generations and just about any bloodline will start kicking out some unhealthy dogs or dogs with weird issues even if they aren't longevity or health-related.

Here, we call that "breeding yourself into the ground". It's not so much that breeders don't care about the health risks of repeated closebreeding or inbreeding, but more that they become so very kennel- and style-blind that they don't think anyone else has any good dogs to breed to.

 

[Seraphina]

Here, we call that "breeding yourself into the ground". It's not so much that breeders don't care about the health risks of repeated closebreeding or inbreeding, but more that they become so very kennel- and style-blind that they don't think anyone else has any good dogs to breed to.

Well said Karen.

Weakening of the immune system due to inbreeding is not something that happens overnight, it is a slow downward spiral, but once the effects became very obvious it is too late.

As others said, most of dogs end up in pet home. And pet dogs may have problems that get never properly diagnosed, and if they do the breeder may never be told. I know of a dog with Addison's who was for almost a year treated by vet for pulled muscle!!! Some dogs may just be constantly little bit off-colour without being properly examined, some may die prematurely without the real cause being known.

If somebody would be able to provide rational explanation why certain close breeding is better than other, I would happily change my mind. I am skeptic and do not take anything at face value, I question everything I am told. But give me a well explained reason and I will accept it if it stands up to scrutiny.

If everybody breeds grand fathers to their grand daughters then there are lots of dogs from such mating, and more of them there are, more of them are likely to be shown and there is a better chance that more of them will be successful. So it becomes self perpetuating myth. The same goes for inbred dogs, majority of dogs in the ring are inbred, so majority of successful dogs are inbred. That does not mean that to be a good dog it has to be inbred. If you breed bitch with of certain type to a dog with the same type you get, most likely, pups of the same type, regardless whether the parents are related or not.

 

[parnew]

I have a program with 10,600 pedigrees in it,mainly all English, this goes back to the first pure whippets bred, the more gens you go back the tighter the COI becomes, so most whippets have been bred around 60 gens could someone give an example of a 10 gen then a 60 gen just to show the diff ? so are people saying the COI in the first 10 gens is what we should place or breeding around ?

 

[Seraphina]

OK, the way I do it is:

step 1

that at first I consider the 4-5 generations. I would be perfectly happy if the stud dog I am considering has one common ancestor with my bitch, provided it is dog/bitch I like a lot. Say this one dog would be somewhere back in both pedigrees, or even in more recent generation in one and 5th in the other.

step 2

I consider the whole 6 generation pedigree, in the same way, and of course tolerate more repeated names

step 3

the 7 generation pedigree

and so forth.

The most important to me are the first 4-5 generations, because these dogs have the most impact, in type, quality and the way they were bred (inbred), but the impact also depends on their background, and how it relates to to the other ancestors. So if I look at just nicely lightly linebred pedigree for 5 generations, but from there back in the next 3-5 generation pedigree, most of the lines go one way or other to just one Super Stud Dog, there is a problem for me.

The CoI gives you number which is a good guideline, good start.

 

[patsy]

, and don't forget this

OK, the way I do it is:step 1

that at first I consider the 4-5 generations.  I would be perfectly happy if the stud dog I am considering  has one common ancestor with my bitch, provided it is dog/bitch I like a lot.  Say this one dog would be somewhere  back in both pedigrees, or even in more recent generation in one and 5th in the other. 

step 2

I consider the whole 6 generation pedigree, in the same way, and of course tolerate more repeated names

step 3

the 7 generation pedigree

and so forth.

  The most important to me are the first 4-5 generations, because these dogs have the most impact, in type, quality and the way they were bred (inbred),  but the impact also depends on their background, and how it relates to to the other ancestors.  So if I look at just nicely lightly linebred pedigree for 5 generations, but from there back in the next 3-5 generation pedigree, most of the lines go one way or other to just one Super Stud Dog, there is a problem for me. 

The CoI gives you number which is a good guideline, good start.

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I for one am getting old and tired, I don't want to be involved, the majority of top whippet breeders do not post, I wish they would, but maybe they are the sensible ones. Compared to many breeds I think that the majority of breeders have done a very good job and can be very proud.A lot of problems that we have heard of in the breed have not come from careful line breeding, they have been out cross matings. I for one will listen to my heart for the odd litter that we will produce.

Good luck to the breeders of the future, you can all decide your way forward, yes health is important no one has said that it is not, things are far easier to sort in line bred dogs doing out crosses the thing you will certainly loose will be type.This part of the board is headed whippet showing.

 

[Avalonia]

I for one am getting old and tired, I don't want to be involved, the majority of top whippet breeders do not post, I wish they would, but maybe they are the sensible ones. Compared to many breeds I think that the majority of breeders have done a very good job and can be very proud.A lot of problems that we have heard of in the breed have not come from careful line breeding, they have been out cross matings. I for one will listen to my heart for the odd litter that we will produce.

Good luck to the breeders of the future, you can all decide your way forward, yes health is important no one has said that it is not, things are far easier to sort in line bred dogs doing out crosses  the thing you will certainly loose will be type.This part of the board is headed whippet showing.

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We have owned whippets for 25 years and bred them for nearly 20. In that time we have bred 40 litters of whippets, all careful linebreedings, and without ANY of the problems some of you folks seem to be obsessing about/searching for/using ratio assessments in what I consider to be a dubious effort to link a and b and get c to justify the way you breed your litters versus the way others breed theirs. It would be interesting to know exactly how many litters others have bred that they can make categorical statements such as I have read on this thread.

The reality is, if the end product is, whatever way people breed, evidence that in all but the most isolated of cases people are breeding whole litters over multiple generations of healthy strong dogs -- that is what really matters. We, like many longtime whippet breeders, keep a record of every dog we ever bred and sold, with the names, addresses, phone numbers, email addresses etc. of the owners. We maintain a database of this information and reports and photos from the owners over the years, or decade and a half most of these dogs live before old age overtakes them. Many of our the people in our database come back to us when a dog reaches 13 or 14 or 15 to arrange for a new dog to come in to their lives. The new pup often gives the old guy a new lease on life for a while.

Surely much of this current discussion is what I would label advanced navel gazing and trying to find a pig in a hole that may not exist and try to assess blame or regretably, taking a few cheap shots at others brreeding programs, if the opportunity apparently arises or can be contrived to arise, to be able to 'justify' it.

The whippet is a numerically strong breed, and a numerically sound and healthy breed. Our vet told me he the beauty of this breed is the fact you see them when they are puppies and you see them for their vaccinations over the course of their lifetime, but you rarely see them for anything else other than a running injury before they are in advanced old age and losing that battle simply because time is running out. This is a tremendous observation when you compare it with the breeds out there that have cancer death genes and where the average age at death is as little as 6.4 years as it is in the USA with the Bernese Mountain Dog. Yes, we should be observant and vigilant and steer away from those lines that we know have faults. I for one know there is a line with serious heart disease in the USA that is a ticking time bomb because of the popularity of that line and trust me it is on my radar and should be on everyones.

This is why the phenomenon of using one Mr. Popular Show Dog or his immediate descendants, also Mr. Popular Show Dogs, at stud to the extent people do when there is evidence to suggest a significant problem in a line, is much more a source of concern to me than is relationships of dogs that are wisely linebred using long existing lines known to be well bred and known not to carry problems. I do not think it should be a source of pride for anyone that a single dog has covered more than 100 bitches in its lifetime.

Since every whippet in my whippet pedigree program of more than 28,000 dogs can be traced back to two unregistered dogs, Charlie and Lizzie, and their grandson Zuber, the first English champion, folks all our dogs are so incredibly inter-related that the use of these coefficients is almost voodoo science. Talk about going back through scores of generations in this breed -- I seem to remember someone talking about 60 generations earlier in this post -- is simply not possible: I can take any dog we own back a maximum of 25 generations to reach ground zero and that is a dog born in January 2008.

I am with Patsy on this one. We have simply steered clear of this 'debate' for all these reasons. This will be my first, and last post, on this topic. It is time to talk about dog showing -- which is why I turn to this forum in the first place -- please!

Lanny Morry

 

[Seraphina]

I am with Patsy on this one.  We have simply steered clear of this 'debate' for all these reasons.  This will be my first, and last post, on this topic.  It is time to talk about dog showing -- which is why I turn to this forum in the first place -- please!
Lanny Morry

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Anybody who does not want to continue in this discussion is most welcome to stay away from this thread. But surely it is up to each of the other people if they want to talk about it or not.

 

[anniewhippet]

I for one am getting old and tired, I don't want to be involved, the majority of top whippet breeders do not post, I wish they would, but maybe they are the sensible ones. Compared to many breeds I think that the majority of breeders have done a very good job and can be very proud.A lot of problems that we have heard of in the breed have not come from careful line breeding, they have been out cross matings. I for one will listen to my heart for the odd litter that we will produce.

Good luck to the breeders of the future, you can all decide your way forward, yes health is important no one has said that it is not, things are far easier to sort in line bred dogs doing out crosses  the thing you will certainly loose will be type.This part of the board is headed whippet showing.

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We have owned whippets for 25 years and bred them for nearly 20. In that time we have bred 40 litters of whippets, all careful linebreedings, and without ANY of the problems some of you folks seem to be obsessing about/searching for/using ratio assessments in what I consider to be a dubious effort to link a and b and get c to justify the way you breed your litters versus the way others breed theirs. It would be interesting to know exactly how many litters others have bred that they can make categorical statements such as I have read on this thread.

The reality is, if the end product is, whatever way people breed, evidence that in all but the most isolated of cases people are breeding whole litters over multiple generations of healthy strong dogs -- that is what really matters. We, like many longtime whippet breeders, keep a record of every dog we ever bred and sold, with the names, addresses, phone numbers, email addresses etc. of the owners. We maintain a database of this information and reports and photos from the owners over the years, or decade and a half most of these dogs live before old age overtakes them. Many of our the people in our database come back to us when a dog reaches 13 or 14 or 15 to arrange for a new dog to come in to their lives. The new pup often gives the old guy a new lease on life for a while.

Surely much of this current discussion is what I would label advanced navel gazing and trying to find a pig in a hole that may not exist and try to assess blame or regretably, taking a few cheap shots at others brreeding programs, if the opportunity apparently arises or can be contrived to arise, to be able to 'justify' it.

The whippet is a numerically strong breed, and a numerically sound and healthy breed. Our vet told me he the beauty of this breed is the fact you see them when they are puppies and you see them for their vaccinations over the course of their lifetime, but you rarely see them for anything else other than a running injury before they are in advanced old age and losing that battle simply because time is running out. This is a tremendous observation when you compare it with the breeds out there that have cancer death genes and where the average age at death is as little as 6.4 years as it is in the USA with the Bernese Mountain Dog. Yes, we should be observant and vigilant and steer away from those lines that we know have faults. I for one know there is a line with serious heart disease in the USA that is a ticking time bomb because of the popularity of that line and trust me it is on my radar and should be on everyones.

This is why the phenomenon of using one Mr. Popular Show Dog or his immediate descendants, also Mr. Popular Show Dogs, at stud to the extent people do when there is evidence to suggest a significant problem in a line, is much more a source of concern to me than is relationships of dogs that are wisely linebred using long existing lines known to be well bred and known not to carry problems. I do not think it should be a source of pride for anyone that a single dog has covered more than 100 bitches in its lifetime.

Since every whippet in my whippet pedigree program of more than 28,000 dogs can be traced back to two unregistered dogs, Charlie and Lizzie, and their grandson Zuber, the first English champion, folks all our dogs are so incredibly inter-related that the use of these coefficients is almost voodoo science. Talk about going back through scores of generations in this breed -- I seem to remember someone talking about 60 generations earlier in this post -- is simply not possible: I can take any dog we own back a maximum of 25 generations to reach ground zero and that is a dog born in January 2008.

I am with Patsy on this one. We have simply steered clear of this 'debate' for all these reasons. This will be my first, and last post, on this topic. It is time to talk about dog showing -- which is why I turn to this forum in the first place -- please!

Lanny Morry

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A well 'rounded' post Lanny with some very significant points :thumbsup:

 

[seaspot_run]

Lanny's points for the most part are well-taken and I agree with many of them, and I do not worship slavishly at the altar of COI, but there ARE health problems in showbred Whippets, and the subject of how best to go about breeding competitive show Whippets who are also healthy and have healthy pet-quality siblings is extremely pertinent to a discussion board about show Whippets.

It is possible to disagree with what is being said in such a way as to not denigrate those who are interested in further exploring and debating the subject. Neither Eceni, nor Natalia, nor Seraphina, nor I or JayP or any of the others who have raised questions invented the concepts of COI's or inbreeding depression. I certainly consider myself a serious breeder AND a sensible one--we got our first Whippets in 1979 and my mother and I account for WELL over 60 US champions, plus those in Canada and overseas, and a number of ROM and ROMX top producers. I also have a graduate degree in a biological science and this is very interesting material to me and I enjoy reading the opinions of others on it. Whether I agree with what is said or not, I don't think this discussion has no place on a board dedicated to Whippet Showing.

That is all.

Karen Lee

 

[jayp]

Thank you Karen, reading the sensible, thought provoking posts of experienced breeders make it worth logging on to this forum. Open minded discussion can never be detrimental, its called progress :cheers: :cheers: Jan

 

[Eceni]

For those who are interested in this debate (and I'm assuming those who aren't have left the thread long ago)

this was in Sunday's Telegraph (and no, I'm not a Telegraph reader, but it still seems useful and interesting and I didn't see it in the Observer or I'd post their link)

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtm...11/eadog111.xml

m

 

[dessie]

For those who are interested in this debate (and I'm assuming those who aren't have left the thread long ago)
this was in Sunday's Telegraph (and no, I'm not a Telegraph reader, but it still seems useful and interesting and I didn't see it in the Observer or I'd post their link)

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtm...11/eadog111.xml

m

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Hmm .......... I am interested in the health of our lovely breed and others but this article is typical of what you see in newspapers. What's the old adage? Believe none of what you hear and half of what you read?? I don't know about the other breeds but I certainly know that the Cocker Spaniel bit is grossly exaggerated and the breed is working very hard to eradicate the problems they do have with testing that is available.

I also seem to remember that this was the Vet who didn't want to treat a staghound because it had been injured during a hunt. How stupidly PC was that.

She seems to have more of a political agenda than true concern for what is happening to pedigree dogs, IMO. Just glad she's not my Vet!!!

 

[Eceni]

Hmm .......... I am interested in the health of our lovely breed and others but this article is typical of what you see in newspapers.  What's the old adage?  Believe none of what you hear and half of what you read??  I don't know about the other breeds but I certainly know that the Cocker Spaniel bit is grossly exaggerated and the breed is working very hard to eradicate the problems they do have with testing that is available.
I also seem to remember that this was the Vet who didn't want to treat a staghound because it had been injured during a hunt.  How stupidly PC was that.

She seems to have more of a political agenda than true concern for what is happening to pedigree dogs, IMO.  Just glad she's not my Vet!!!

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I think that, given she's presenting her piece at the BVA, that she's being used as a political mouthpiece because she's a TV vet and so has a huge presence. If one of the rest of us said it, nobody would report it at all - not that I don't think she believes it, but the key bit is what the European council is pushing for, which is not the opinion of one individual, but many from many countries:

The Pets Parliament has been established to secure ratification of the European Convention for the Protection of Pet Animals, which has already been signed by more than 20 countries.

 

The convention highlights a list of breed characteristics that need to be modified for the dogs' best interests and also bans breeding if the two animals share a grandparent.

 

[posh totty]

that would be most difficult to do as many of our whippets are related , and would imo send shivers down many breeders spines , would that then drive those dead set on breeding to go to inferior non related dogs and thus then again bring in a mountain of problems in itself , just my opinion :thumbsup:

 

[dessie]

I also think the KC would have something to say about it! 'We' (the UK) are an island in more ways than one with regard to dog showing/breeding because of the Kennel Club who seem to have no interest whatsoever in what the rest of the world and especially the FCI are doing!! I certainly shan't be losing any sleep worrying what the 'Pets Parliament' might say we can or can't do.

 

[seaspot_run]

For those who are interested in this debate (and I'm assuming those who aren't have left the thread long ago)
this was in Sunday's Telegraph (and no, I'm not a Telegraph reader, but it still seems useful and interesting and I didn't see it in the Observer or I'd post their link)

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtm...11/eadog111.xml

m

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This is a typical "hit piece" which comes straight from the wheelhouse of the extreme animal rights groups.

These people have an agenda, and it is to eventually outlaw the private ownership of animals by persons for any reason. Going after the breeders first, for their alleged "cruelty", is the thin edge of a very blunt force instrument.

We have such groups over here. They are trying to make certain that nobody is allowed to breed ANY two dogs together, let alone close relatives. This is just the beginning.

There are plenty of reasons to re-evaluate our breeding practices, but the livestock industry alone shows that strains can be propagated for many generations without going "extinct". Also, isolated populations manage to survive just fine with a high degree of interrelatedness (although nature's "culling" is pretty brutal, far more brutal than what we dog owners are willing to do). Instead of educating the public about the realities of genetics and breeding, and how to identify a responsible and caring breeder for that lifetime commitment, they choose to scare them to death.

This just shows that the bigger problem goes WAY beyond what someone said or did not say on a message board clique dedicated to a single breed. The problem is the way ALL breeders are able to be portrayed to the public, and more important, the lawmakers. It is vital that we demonstrate through word, action, and deed, that we are serious about keeping our dogs healthy and provide the public with the healthiest puppies possible, lest our produce end up being used to support articles such as this one.

Here in the US, we have a concerted effort in many communities to ban all ownership of unaltered dogs. It is being successful, and it is spreading. Already, in some communities, TOP breeder/exhibitors without a blot on their reputation have seen their dogs confiscated by the authorities, simply because they are not spayed or neutered. It's going to take good actions, and a lot of money and advertising to counteract the propaganda that is being put out there by PETA and HSUSA.

Animal welfare and humane societies are a wonderful thing, and in light of the number of people who are cruel and callous in their treatment of animals, they are greatly needed. But other organizations who are borderline terroristic operate under the same warm and fuzzy umbrella, and get a lot of money from people who give because they are animal lovers.

Only in the modern era would a sick puppy become a political football.