shortstep

So do you want ANKC to close the stud book to UK imports that go back to their new apendix registered dogs? These dogs will not have pedigess listed even if they have them (I think). So would be just any dog by a purebred kennel club standards I would think. For example a WKC dog could be imported to the UK and now registered into the KC, 3 generations later his great grand pups could find their way back to OZ, so would you want to block these dogs from being in the ANKC due to the apendix working dog in the pedigree? What will you do if the ANKC did like the KC did and just announce with out warning, they are doing the same open stud book policy here !!!

Yes we would not want to bring that cross bred back into the kennel club now would we. LOL So yes this is true if you want to leave the kennel club you are free not to inbred, point well made and well taken...LOL My case rests LOL No I dont think so - as a working dog breeder you are able to mate your working dogs with other working dogs which are not registered and still remain a member - you just cant register your puppies. Oh yes that is very good, as it keep the money for membership coming in and the well bred working bred pups out. That is just the image ANKC should be promoting right now. LOL

Yes we would not want to bring that cross bred back into the kennel club now would we. LOL So yes this is true if you want to leave the kennel club you are free not to inbred, point well made and well taken...LOL My case rests LOL

LOL well I think you have about as good as idea of what recessives are hidding in your dogs as I do in my dogs, Zip as in Zero. But we both know they are there hidding, or atleast I hope you know that. This is a common argument that inbreeding helps to control disease. To me it is far better to have resessive genes not concentrated so that we never or very seldom see them. Verses concentrating them to the point they show up and now we have to deal with. Often by more inbreding in attempts to get rid of them. All the while concentrating some other recessive we did not know was there. It is a dog chasing it's tail game if you ask me. (which I am sure you did not LOL)

Bbut under the current system you can not outcross, not even what I woudl call no brainer outcrosses. For example you can not breed a WKC Kelpie to an ANKC Kelpie. Even something like this which should be so simple is not allowed. This sort of ridgity is what leads to I response from the other end of the extreme, like the UK KC now registered dogs with no pedigree at all. I do not think these topics are a waist of time or a distraction.

Cherry eye I thought was caused by a brachy skull, too shallow of eye sockets, excesse skin, I do not think I have ever hear it is a simple recessive disorder. Skin Allergies is not known but thinking is auto immune in nature and likely complex, so not a known simple recessive. Doggy knees, I have that and it is not simple recessive it is an injury. HD and ED are complex and nor simple recessive. Maybe this will help. Both are beter read on the link. http://www.astraean.com/borderwars/2010/11/inbred-mistakes-ii.html It’s a common misconception among the public at large that ‘inbreeding’ is responsible for every woe known to pure bred dogs. This is a rather weak straw-man that uses the some-all fallacy to suggest that if we can name a woe in purebred dogs that isn’t caused or exacerbated by inbreeding that we can discount or ignore all the problems that are. This neither proves nor disproves anything. And backing up a bit and for Steve too http://www.astraean.com/borderwars/2010/11/inbred-mistakes-i.html Line-breeding is still inbreeding, but we give it a different term to show that we’re not just concentrating genetic material randomly (as you would if you bred brother to sister). You’re doing it to try to re-create the aspects you like of a single dog or group of dogs in the pedigree. While the first part of this statement is true, close breeding isn’t necessarily random, certainly not more random than line-breeding more distant relatives. Selection vs. randomness is a different quality that can be applied to a brother x sister, father x daughter, or more distant pairings. Randomness would imply that we are not selecting, but breeders almost always select. As I wrote about before, inbreeding by itself doesn’t change the frequency of alleles across the offspring, it simply creates more AA and aa individuals versus Aa individuals. It concentrates and separates, but by itself it does not exclude. Breeders using selection do the exclusion; the concentration of alleles makes each individual selection more potent in removing diversity. And no breeders inbreed and then use all the offspring equally, as this would defeat the goals behind the inbreeding. This would be similar to a brewer distilling a 50% alcohol-water solution into 75% alcohol and then adding the removed water back in. The process of distillation doesn’t destroy water or alcohol, it simply gives us two solutions that become more concentrated alcohol and more pure water. It is the selection of the alcohol and the removal of the water that removes total “diversity.” Breeding brother to sister is not more random than a great-grand father to great-grand daughter, it’s just more likely to double up a greater percentage of alleles. If we are selecting for the same apparent trait in both cases, say chocolate coat color, the brother x sister pairing will not result in more random results on that trait and all other traits that the two parents share. In fact, we are more likely to see more “randomness” in the non-selected traits in the distant mating than in the close mating because a brother and sister are already expected to share 50% of the same alleles. I think what Joanna is trying to say is that closer breedings are more likely to double up on genes that the breeder has no desire one way or the other to be doubled up. This is true, and this is why a more distant breeding between dogs that still share the desired traits is safer. In fact, this is what I advocate. If you want to maintain good bone and a long shiny straight coat in your dogs, find an unrelated dog that has both good bone and a long shiny straight coat. This should not be that difficult, and the benefits to keeping the other 99.9% of the genes that we don’t want doubled up on unnecessarily free to be heterozygous is a major benefit. You can keep pushing COI further and further back, but at some point it becomes less useful because you start hitting the founding dogs of the breed and that can artificially inflate the COI (because those are behind every single dog in that breed). So ten generations is considered pretty standard. This is not true. Adding more information to a COI calculation is NEVER less useful or less accurate. The truth is the exact opposite: looking at only a few generations can give you the mistaken impression that you are not inbreeding. Taking a COI calculation back to the founders and beyond will never “artificially inflate” the COI. The opposite is true. Once we reach a founding dog (i.e. a dog that we know nothing about its parents) we have created ARTIFICIAL DIVERSITY. The COI calculation assumes that all founding dogs are 100% unique and 100% heterozygous. We know this isn’t true, it’s never true, but it’s an assumption we have to make. If you only have 8 generations of ancestors, and you take a COI(10) or a COI(100) the answer will be the same. There’s no inflation, no distortion, and no creeping artificiality. The Coefficient of Inbreeding calculation has an exact definition and that definition in no way becomes less accurate the further back you go. COI is both the probability that two alleles in an individual are identical by descent and also the proportional decrease in heterozygosity under inbreeding. The more we know about the ancestors the more accurate and representative the COI calculation is. Failing to go back as far as you can ARTIFICIALLY DEFLATES the COI calculation. A dog can not be found to be less inbred by finding out more about its ancestors. It can only be found to be more inbred. All the dogs in the Nth generation of a COI(N) are assumed to be unrelated and heterozygous. No additional information can make that any less extreme. The reason that a COI6,7, or 10 is more “standard” practice in the breeding culture is not accuracy but convenience. The amount of information and the difficulty of calculation doubles each generation requring the use of expensive software and burdensome data acquisition and entry. It has taken me over 4 years to compile the near-complete pedigrees on my dogs and even then I am stuck at a few dead ends in now-closed registries. It has taken literally thousands of hours of phone calls, letters, faxes, and e-mails and inquiries into online databases and to other breeders to compile copies of pedigrees and information from stud books. If we count the single dog as the 0 generation, the parents as the first generation, etc., then a 10 generation pedigree will have 2047 potential dogs on it. While one page can hold a 5 generation pedigree with 62 ancestors on it, you’ll need to collect 33 such pedigrees to fill out a 10 generation history. The worst error, however, comes in the comments to Joanna’s post where a breeder named Todd Chrisman says this: While I agree with you generally, your take on COI is off. Outcrossing decreases “genetic diversity” by melting all of the strains and family types of a breed into one pot. The problem is you gloss over the negative recessive traits and those traits come back to haunt your breed, you have no repository of “clean” genetics to turn to. This is bunk. As I noted before, inbreeding or outcrossing by themselves do not increase nor decrease genetic diversity. They only change the degree to which the existing alleles are segregated into like alleles. If we blindly inbred dogs over several generations with no selection other than relatedness, we’d find that the numerous puppies would be highly inbred but that we would have the same representation of alleles as the original founders. This of this like a deck of cards where every two cards represents and individual. A mostly heterozygous gene pool is a randomly shuffled deck. A mostly inbred and homozygous gene pool would be a deck that is fresh out of the package with almost all the red cards next to red cards and almost all the black cards next to black cards. In both cases, there are 50% red cards and 50% black cards, but under inbreeding we have many many more pairs of cards that match color. Instead of being well mixed and heterozygous, we would find most alleles paired up and homozygous in the highly inbred lot. For example, if the two founding dogs were Aa x Aa, we’d eventually find that all the puppies would be AA or aa. All those puppies would not be clones, however, as their other genes would be homozygous but not paired equally. If the parents are Aa Bb x Aa Bb, the offspring would eventually be: AA bb, AA BB, aa BB, aabb. So all the offspring are homozygous, but we still have 50% As, 50% as, 50% Bs and 50% bs. In practice, breeders breed very few puppies from each litter and continue to inbreed upon them. This throws out genetic diversity as fast as you can. To maintain genetic diversity, one needs to not only breed unrelated dogs, but you also need to use multiple puppies from any give pairing instead of just a few. Any given puppy is only able to preserve half the genes from each parent. The more heterozygous the parents, the harder it is to preserve their complete genome. The bogus “melting” concept Todd presents has no support in biology. It is just the opposite. A heterozygous dog is able to preserve twice the data than a homozygous one as I have demonstrated in a previous post. So too is the idea that inbreeding can maintain a repository of “clean” genetics that can be used to save the breed is as well unsupported by any physical means or observationally. Normal genetic drift, let alone consistent and breed wide selection on a few criteria lead to the rapid change in the frequency of gene variants; in other words, the concentration and loss of genetic diversity. In general, alleles drift to loss or fixation [appearing in none of the breed or in all of it], and this happens significantly faster in smaller populations. A frequency of 100% does not mean that genetic drift leads to homozygosity, rather that at least one of the possible two alleles will be the one in question. This is why, for instance, flat coats and goldens are no longer produced in the same litter, why there are no Dalmatians without spots (or a uric-acid stone problem), and why fluffy corgis are on the way to extinction. The popular sire effect and the selection of only a few sires to produce the vast majority of puppies in breeds has made the notion of truly distinct lines a fantasy. If there is an inbred pool of “healthy” dogs, it is to be found in another breed, and even then the rules of blood purity have prevented the Dalmatian backcross project from being accepted. And the idea that an outcross needs to be inbred itself is also unsupported and dangerous. One never need turn to this mythical healthy inbred population if breeders would simply outcross and bring in even a little bit of new blood. The maximum benefit will not come in removing disease through inbreeding (this has never been successful), but in managing disease so that it is rare. It is not a problem that disease exists in dogs, it is a problem that it is so prevalent. Playing the lotto is not stupid because you have a chance at winning a fortune, it is stupid because you have a really really really lousy chance at winning and a very very very good chance at losing your investment. Negative recessive traits don’t come back to haunt outcrossed breeds. They remain rare and unexpressed. They are harmlessly carried, affecting very few individuals, until normal genetic drift removes them. They only haunt inbred breeds where they are doubled up on and are carried by genetic drift to 100% frequency instead of 0% frequency. This is why sickle cell anemia and Tay-Sachs disease are very rare in the greater human genome but highly concentrated within certain ethnic gene ponds. Todd Chrismann’s analysis is idiocy.

Now I have to admit I am just repeating what I have read many many times and again find with a quick internet search below ....so if this is wrong and you site some where that says that? http://www.dogsincanada.com/canine-reproduction-1-pre-breeding-assessment How disease is inherited Most inherited diseases in dogs are recessive traits they occur sporadically when a puppy acquires two disease-causing genes, one from each of its parents. A multi-published writer, Jeff Grognet, D.V.M., runs a veterinary practice in Qualicum Beach, B.C., along with his wife, Louise Janes, D.V.M.

Well all dogs in the kennel club are inbred. And every breeding of kennel club dogs is doing inbreeding. By definition pedigree dogs are inbred animals. However if they made a law that limited the amount of inbreeding to what is considered safe in humans, I would support that across all breeds. I think that would be a good step in the right direction and would prefer that the ANKC made the change without the RSPCA having to make it a big pulbic welfare issue and a law. Why would you want to advocate in breeding to be limited to what is considered safe in humans - and who will judge what is safe in humans? We dont have anywhere near the information for breeding in humans we do for breeding in dogs. I have 6 generations of one breed in my yard and I can tell you everything you could ask about them and their health and potential issues which may show up - how many humans have that sort of health info for their human relatives ? We practice selective breeding and we have at our fingertiops pedigree knowledge and genetic testing and scoring which we can use to make our decisions - we are talking about selectively breeding purebred dogs not randomly breeding humans! The problem with purebred dogs is that some breeders have been slecting primarily for the way the dog looks - the show ring and you can skirt around it all you like but that has nothing to do with in breeding and everything to do with slection. If you take away the ability for us to in breed all you will get is less predictibility on what diseases might show up and less chance of testing - if you still have such emphasis on how the dog looks and rates in a show ring. I do not think so, I think you can have a breed and with some frequecy outcrossing and not loose your breed. But look if people are happy to take it to the wire withthe governments and the animal welfare groups then go for it. I think you will loose and I think the UK kennel club making all these changes is a direct reaction to the notion that this topic is no longer a dicsussion, it is now a matter of changing or not having kennel clubs at all. I also think that even if the kennel clubs are shut down, even if they ban many of the more extreme breeds, that there is still time then to reorganize and try some different ways to breed dogs. I really do have to leave now for a Dr appointment. Yes of course but that needs to be done with knowledge and science as much as any other breeding does and advocating for in breeding to be made a crimminal offence isnt the answer to finding what will and wont work with any other breeding program. We need to educate breeders to select differently with science not just to run with people who want to choose a supposed cause and bleat about it with out the research to back it up. I never said I wanted to make inbreeding a crime, but I think it may come to that if the kennel clubs can not find some way to regulate the amount of inbreeding then the governments may well step in and do it. The kennel clubs never needed to find a way of regulating it as it was already proven it rarely happened. By the Kennel club bringing in a supposed method of controlling it they said we know it happens, that our members do it and that it is always a bad thing and opened the door for it to be made a crimminal offence. My inside info is that this is definitely on the agenda within a 5 year plan - among other things and everything you see happeneing via TV and other media is pushing exactly that way by design. The kennel club and people who want to simply fall in line and believe that in breeding is a problem and a curse of terrible suffering at the hands of purebred rottenly cruel breeders! From the minute it started - Don B, Paul McG , PDE and every where we turn we are told in breeding is the culprit - but selection is - and you name a group and they have all bought it. And in the mean time yelling about in breeding makes even purebred breeders agree with them without question and that gets them off the hook because the real problem is what they select for not how closely related the dogs they are breeding are. The only thing which may remotely come close in an argument for in breeding is in breeding depression but that over simplifies the whole issue too and none of this is educating anyone - all its doing is ensuring what we have and what we should be doing to get it right will be squashed. Well guess what - purebred breeders line breed , and shock and horror we also sometimes in breed and if you take that away you take away purebred dogs. Wake up Australia. In breeding in purebred dogs is not the cause of the problem inbreeding for certain traits is the problem - selection - not in breeding and it's time we saw the difference. I think you are silly to give any credit to DB and the like, he is just making a buck of the situation. I really see the former John Armstrong, Jeffery Bragg, and these sort of folks as the ones who have pushed this topic over the past 20 + years, and none of them were against purebred dogs at all. Line breeding and inbreeding are the same thing as far as science is concerned, just the level or degree (% rate) at which you are removeing genes. I think you will loose any argument that inbreeding (and that does mot mean just close inbreeding), does not spread recessive disease in dogs and some will also argue it is reducing vigor or as they call it inbreed depression. I think we will hear more about this in the next few years as the new DNA tests that can focuse in on this area and as more of these genes functions are known or at least we have some hints. Immunity, allergies, other autoimmune disorders and diseases, this sort of thing. I see lots of new information on genetics on the way and really we should be very excieted about it.

yes it is very complex!!! the testing system is not fail safe either. Some have said in the past that they believe it is polygenic as well. When you have a theory going and you think you may be starting to understand it, there is always something that pops up that discounts it. Short step cross bred dogs get these things as much as any other. A cross Chi will have as much chance of get PL as much as any purebred Chi and at least the purebred chi breeders know what to look for and try to breed away form it in case it is a genetic issue.If YOU take the focus off the genetics and the belief that its is a genetic disorder you get to see other expert opinion who believe its caused by several other things impacting other than genetics- or at least that the genetic issue is a minor component. This is no argumant for outcrossing or making in breeding illegal. To me this is a slight of hand argument. Using your example of Chi and PL. We do not know what causes PL, but I think we safe is saying is not simple recessive and is a complex disease. So proving a disease that is not a recessive shows up in a chi cross has nothing to do with inbreeding and recessive diseases. No one has or at least not me, said that inbreeding is the cause of all dog diseases. But it does have a major roll in spreading recessive diseases very sucessfully though a breed in a closed stud book. And this has happened, over and over gain, and it is only when the disease reaches a high enough level of carriers that we know what has happened. Since most dog diseases are recessives, it makes sense to tread very lightly with inbreeding.

Well all dogs in the kennel club are inbred. And every breeding of kennel club dogs is doing inbreeding. By definition pedigree dogs are inbred animals. However if they made a law that limited the amount of inbreeding to what is considered safe in humans, I would support that across all breeds. I think that would be a good step in the right direction and would prefer that the ANKC made the change without the RSPCA having to make it a big pulbic welfare issue and a law. Why would you want to advocate in breeding to be limited to what is considered safe in humans - and who will judge what is safe in humans? We dont have anywhere near the information for breeding in humans we do for breeding in dogs. I have 6 generations of one breed in my yard and I can tell you everything you could ask about them and their health and potential issues which may show up - how many humans have that sort of health info for their human relatives ? We practice selective breeding and we have at our fingertiops pedigree knowledge and genetic testing and scoring which we can use to make our decisions - we are talking about selectively breeding purebred dogs not randomly breeding humans! The problem with purebred dogs is that some breeders have been slecting primarily for the way the dog looks - the show ring and you can skirt around it all you like but that has nothing to do with in breeding and everything to do with slection. If you take away the ability for us to in breed all you will get is less predictibility on what diseases might show up and less chance of testing - if you still have such emphasis on how the dog looks and rates in a show ring. I do not think so, I think you can have a breed and with some frequecy outcrossing and not loose your breed. But look if people are happy to take it to the wire withthe governments and the animal welfare groups then go for it. I think you will loose and I think the UK kennel club making all these changes is a direct reaction to the notion that this topic is no longer a dicsussion, it is now a matter of changing or not having kennel clubs at all. I also think that even if the kennel clubs are shut down, even if they ban many of the more extreme breeds, that there is still time then to reorganize and try some different ways to breed dogs. I really do have to leave now for a Dr appointment. Yes of course but that needs to be done with knowledge and science as much as any other breeding does and advocating for in breeding to be made a crimminal offence isnt the answer to finding what will and wont work with any other breeding program. We need to educate breeders to select differently with science not just to run with people who want to choose a supposed cause and bleat about it with out the research to back it up. I never said I wanted to make inbreeding a crime, but I think it may come to that if the kennel clubs can not find some way to regulate the amount of inbreeding then the governments may well step in and do it.

Agree and that is what EBV pedigrees will be all about. I am all for that and wish we had that now, for both ourselves and the buyers. I do nothink OZ breeders are any different to most kennel club breeders around the world, with the exception of some of the european countries, who have a lot more rules controlling what can be breed.

I agree, the breed clubs (more than the kennel clubs) do not have much to bragg about in this situation. Has it really been 38 years, that really is a long time. I do not think the AKC will stand in the way of the Dal parent club vote results, they were the ones putting pressure on the Dal parent club to get this situation fixed. It was really a bad press for the AKC. Espcially after the UK kennel club accepted them and all the crufts media attention on the LUA dog entered.

I do not think anyone denies that, I certainly do not. I believe ANKC breeders care greatly and want to breed healthy dogs. However being committed to health and good at applying test to diseases, is not the same as addressing the underlying issue of why so many diseases have become so common in our breeds that is necessary to develope all these tests in the first place. Again, it is closing the barn door after the horse is long gone. If the above breed had not been bred to fix the wrinkle gene across the population and then inbreed every generation on that defective gene, it would not have the fever disease in the first place. But if it had been in bred to set something good? The problem its what you select for when you in breed. Inbreeding never adds genes, it only removes genes. If you want to add a 'good ' gene that is not already in the breed, you cannot do that by inbreeding, you canonly do that by outcrossing. You can however breed out that 'good' gene accidently and without knowing it, only to find out when things go pare shaped. There are many breeders that do not intentionally inbreed, but breed like to like traits (and not closely related dogs to find those traits) and they find this just as effective for their needs. However the ones I know of are working breeders not show breeders. But it might be worth a look see for any who are looking for other options. I really do have to go.

Even if you do a full DNA, we have no idea what most of the genes do, so all you would know is you accidently threw out a 3000 genes in one breeding and that you have no idea what any of them did excpet that gene for coat colour you were working on. We kid ourselves.

Exactly as we now know that inbreeding has a detrimental effect on threatened species. Our results have important conservation implications. First, ignoring inbreeding depression will substantially underestimate extinction risk. http://www.ecologyan...ml#relationship Inbreeding is a big risk for threatened animals. Thank goodness domestic dogs as a species are not threatened!! And thank goodness dog 'breeds' are not separate species. We can open our stud books (a model only in our minds) and cross bred to another breed of dog to reduce COI, remove or control a genetic disease, to modify an extreme trait or to remove defect traits which are wide spread in a breed and many other uses, in any of our breeds. Tthere is no reason to skirt the dangerous world of inbred threatened species with our dog breeds. If we allowed it, there is no problem keeping genetic diversity in any 'breed 'of dogs. But we do no allow it and currently there are more than few dog 'breeds' that are considered threatened. We just have to use this current science and cast aside the ideas and science of 100-150 years ago. We have moved on and now we need to bring our dog breeding practices up to date. I don't disagree with this in principle; however, as wheaten terrier people found, crossbreeding to another breed is not a magic bullet to remove or control genetic disease. A controlled outcross is not the answer for every disease in every breed, but it certainly could be the answer for many of the diseases in many breeds. That is the real point and not that it may not work for some disease. What I find really frustrating is even in the case of the Dalmatian, where the work has been done and successfully, most breeder would rather breed dogs with disease than use a dog with a cross some 10-13 or more generations ago and prevent the disease in their dogs. It boggles the mind. Personally I think any breeder who refuses to bring the healthy genes into their Dals should be banned. I guess it will take the RSPCA to make it a welfare issue and get a government law made first. It may take a new generation of dog breeders to effect some of the needed changes. I just hope that breeding for 'breeds' is not totally banned by then and that most breeds are not already lost or are too far gone before we start to see the needed changes happen. Yes shortstep but advocating for a more diversified management plan for some breeds isnt quite the same as advocating for a ban on in breeding until its considered safe in humans across the board. Whats more sometimes in breeding may even be the answer to eliminating a problem rather than just bloody spreading it further and wider. I never said that, I said I think 1st and 2nd degree inbreeding should be banned, same as is law for humans. I think we need to show a real intention to slow down deliberate inbreeding. That is not same as banning all inbreeding, as we know all of are inbreeding in closed stud books, but we can reduce the level of inbreeding. I would be fine in doing a very close inbreeding project for particular reason if that was the best way, but only under direction a panel of experts. Just my opinion.

Every breeding is affectiing millions of matching genes, every time you inbreed you potnetially throw out one side of any of those matches. No one has a clue what you are throwing out when you inbreed. Nor do you know what all the genes you are fixing in the breed do, only the ones you can see or the next disease that shows up in the breed. Surely you know this. A dog is much more than the few traits you can see.

Well all dogs in the kennel club are inbred. And every breeding of kennel club dogs is doing inbreeding. By definition pedigree dogs are inbred animals. However if they made a law that limited the amount of inbreeding to what is considered safe in humans, I would support that across all breeds. I think that would be a good step in the right direction and would prefer that the ANKC made the change without the RSPCA having to make it a big pulbic welfare issue and a law. Why would you want to advocate in breeding to be limited to what is considered safe in humans - and who will judge what is safe in humans? We dont have anywhere near the information for breeding in humans we do for breeding in dogs. I have 6 generations of one breed in my yard and I can tell you everything you could ask about them and their health and potential issues which may show up - how many humans have that sort of health info for their human relatives ? We practice selective breeding and we have at our fingertiops pedigree knowledge and genetic testing and scoring which we can use to make our decisions - we are talking about selectively breeding purebred dogs not randomly breeding humans! The problem with purebred dogs is that some breeders have been slecting primarily for the way the dog looks - the show ring and you can skirt around it all you like but that has nothing to do with in breeding and everything to do with slection. If you take away the ability for us to in breed all you will get is less predictibility on what diseases might show up and less chance of testing - if you still have such emphasis on how the dog looks and rates in a show ring. I do not think so, I think you can have a breed and with some frequecy outcrossing and not loose your breed. But look if people are happy to take it to the wire withthe governments and the animal welfare groups then go for it. I think you will loose and I think the UK kennel club making all these changes is a direct reaction to the notion that this topic is no longer a dicsussion, it is now a matter of changing or not having kennel clubs at all. I also think that even if the kennel clubs are shut down, even if they ban many of the more extreme breeds, that there is still time then to reorganize and try some different ways to breed dogs. I really do have to leave now for a Dr appointment.

Its an estimation of how many genes have been lost, so that should make it easy to tell me what genes are left and what they are doing and which genes are now lost and what they did? And when we know this for all those millions of genes being tossed about in and out, then we can inbreed safely (until there is another mutation).

Can you tell me which genes you are throwing out when you inbreed?

Ok can you tell me the COI on your dogs? This is a mathmatical (and goodness knows how) calculation that tells you how inbred your dogs is. Just a quick look at Mate Select shows me that Smooth chi in the Uk on avearge are almost 7% inbreed and long coat 5% and that number is based going back to the begining of Chi in the Uk stud book (have no idea how far that goes back but I am guessing pretty far). There is no breed in any stud book that is not inbreed (unless it is a new breed). The current definition of purebred means inbreed.

ok lets start with just oeen topic as you have about 6 going on in the post above. In order to breed out Patella Suluxation, you first have to know the mode of inheritence and personally it is not a disease in my breed so I know litle about it. I had several poodles as a child that had it and I got my daughter an American Eskimo and it had it. I am going to guess it is a complex disease. Complex diseases are thought to have direct and indirect factors that lead to expression of the disease. Direct factors are defective genes that cause the disease or perhaps part of the disease. Indirect factors would be risk factors, these are not defective genes but are instead traits that somehow interact with the defective genes to increase the risk. For example in some diseases males are more likely to be affected, as in OCD, this is attributed to the fact that male dogs grow faster and have different hormones in play than females and this imparts a greater risk for the the disease to appear in males. So complexs diseases are an interplay of direct genes and indirect genes. The reason I asked ifs all the toy breeds get PS is because that was just a casual observation I thought I might have noticed. So if that is so then you might be able to conclude that dwarf gene/s has either a direct or indirect effect on the complex disease PS. Does that make sense? Even if this was true which I am not saying it is, there could be be many other direct and indirect genes at play. So saying that a complex disease that hasd direct and indirect factors does not breed true like a simple recessive disease does, only proves that it is mot a simple recessive. That does not prove that inbreeding has nothing to do with this disease. Recessives and Complex disease are both inherited and both get spread through a breed by inbreeding, but they are different types of diseases with different genetic make ups and differnt mdes of inheritence. Another words a complex disease is not a recessive disease. But both are inherited and any time you inbreed you increase the risk of increasing the genes for both recessive and complex diseases in a closed stud book. Hense why some breeds have such high rates of HD or ED, we know these are not simple recessive diseases, they are complex diseases, but they are still atleast in part inherited.

okay, i want to back up a little. the above quote is that something you cut and pasted or are you stating this? i need something else cleared up, when you and others are discussing "inbreeding" what i term as inbreeding is close breedings, mother to son etc etc. I think what others are terming Inbreeding could mean they are referring to the interbreeding of pedigree dogs of a certain breed. Sometimes certain breeds have no choice but to inbreed as there are very few examples around. First that quote above is not something I said, it was part of a artical I posted about Dwarf dogs written by someone else, you had asked me why I used the word dwarf. Second, every breed in the ANKC in inbred and every breeder in the ANKC is inbreeding. I just posted this, and I rather liked it LOL, so please it as it might clear up our confusion about what is meant by inbreding. Ok here it is again What they (the ANKC) have banned is called 1st degree in breeding. I would also like to see 2nd degree which extends it out a bit further, half sister/brother or cousins and so forth. These sorts of rules are to prevent the most concentrated forms of inbreeding. (the offspring will loose more genes the closer the inbreeding is) Then there is the other (perhaps we can call it non intentional) inbreeding and that is caused by the system. Which is a closed stub book system. All dogs in the stud book, usually starting from a few founder dogs, are then all bred to each other and then all related to each other (given a bit of time). So every breeding is then inbreeding back on those dogs or their decendents. This can also be compounded (made worse) if there are lots of close intentional inbreeding (as in 1st or 2nd degee as above)happening in the closed stub book too. Another term you may hear is Popular sire syndrom. This is when a certain dog is used alot and his offspring are then also chosen to use. This popular sire dog can become quickly represented in every dog in the stud book. It may be back several generations and go unobserved to the breeder at the time. Then very time we breed (any dog in the closed stud book) were are breeding back on this same dog, each generation gaining the totaly number of times he is in the pedigree. Some popular sire dogs can appear 20, 50 or even hunderds of times in every dog in the stud book today. We can now see how if this dog carried a recessive gene for a disease, that that gene is now likely spread through the whole population of the breed. This is why you will hear for calls on limiting the number of litters a sire can produce. It is an attempt to slow down inbreeding and slow down the spread of recessive genes. (BTW all dogs, every single one will have unknown recessive genes.) There is only one direction dog breeds can go in a closed stud book and that is more and more inbred. The best one can do in a closed stud book is try to slow it down. Another method to slow down inbreeding is by looking for breeding combinations that are the least related. This is what the new 'Breed Mate' in the UK Kennel Club is all about and I expect we will have one here soon too. This program will tell you what the average inbreeding is for your breed and what the inbreeding level is for your dog. You can then put in your dog and choose other dogs in the program and work out what the inbreeding on these two dogs would give to their pups. This allows not only for the breeder to do their homework on inbreeding prior to breeding the litter, but it also allows the buyer to look into the inbreeding level in the pup prior to buying it. This may be followed with a directive such as, you can not breed a litter with a higher than the breed average COI or the litter has to be equal to the lowest parents COI. The only real answer to address the prevention of increasing COI is to open the stud book, which is also what the Kennel club in the UK has done. I have to say, I found this some of the most shocking news I had heard in a long time. I am not saying I like exactly what they have done, but done it they have. What they have done is to allow any dog, that looks like the breed and passes any mandated health tests, to enter the stud book as an apendix. After 3 generations all of it's offspring will be fully registered. The dogs does not need to have a pedigree or known background. So a cross bred could enter this way, as long as it looks like the breed. They will also allow working judges to look at working breed dogs so as to not disallow working dogs of the breed which usually look rather different from the show ring type. The only reason to do this is to stop the sprial of ever increasing rates of inbreeding inherent in all closed stud book systems. I do not know what folks think is happening, but when I see The Kennel Club, the first and founding kennel club in the world (and I think they still set the standard of pratice for the world) makes changes like this, then we need to reading, learning and talking about it. It is big news and change is happening, like it or not.

I can tell you right now that the genetic lottery is no more certain in an outcross. Mate two dogs of different lines and recessive genes can still deliver a whammy. Well sceince and maths tell us you are wrong. The more you inbreed, the more genes you remove or you can say instead the more likely you are to have 2 matching genes meet up. That is why purebred dog breeders do it, you see the results every day in physical traits reliably found in the breeds, for example the breed poodle have been inbred on a curly coat gene. This same process also applies to and means you are also more likely to have to 2 recessives for a disease meet up (the breed poodle have been (unknowingly) inbred on a PRA gene, and when 2 dogs that have one copy of the PRA genes meet up you can get a poodle puppy with 2 PRA genes and has the disease). It is not theory it is math applied to the science of DNA.

What they (the ANKC) have banned is called 1st degree in breeding. I would also like to see 2nd degree which extends it out a bit further, half sister/brother or cousins and so forth. These sorts of rules are to prevent the most concentrated forms of inbreeding. (the offspring will loose more genes the closer the inbreeding is) Then there is the other (perhaps we can call it non intentional) inbreeding and that is caused by the system. Which is a closed stub book system. All dogs in the stud book, usually starting from a few founder dogs, are then all bred to each other and then all related to each other (given a bit of time). So every breeding is then inbreeding back on those dogs or their decendents. This can also be compounded (made worse) if there are lots of close intentional inbreeding (as in 1st or 2nd degee as above)happening in the closed stub book too. Another term you may hear is Popular sire syndrom. This is when a certain dog is used alot and his offspring are then also chosen to use. This popular sire dog can become quickly represented in every dog in the stud book. It may be back several generations and go unobserved to the breeder at the time. Then very time we breed (any dog in the closed stud book) were are breeding back on this same dog, each generation gaining the totaly number of times he is in the pedigree. Some popular sire dogs can appear 20, 50 or even hunderds of times in every dog in the stud book today. We can now see how if this dog carried a recessive gene for a disease, that that gene is now likely spread through the whole population of the breed. This is why you will hear for calls on limiting the number of litters a sire can produce. It is an attempt to slow down inbreeding and slow down the spread of recessive genes. (BTW all dogs, every single one will have unknown recessive genes.) There is only one direction dog breeds can go in a closed stud book and that is more and more inbred. The best one can do in a closed stud book is try to slow it down. Another method to slow down inbreeding is by looking for breeding combinations that are the least related. This is what the new 'Breed Mate' in the UK Kennel Club is all about and I expect we will have one here soon too. This program will tell you what the average inbreeding is for your breed and what the inbreeding level is for your dog. You can then put in your dog and choose other dogs in the program and work out what the inbreeding on these two dogs would give to their pups. This allows not only for the breeder to do their homework on inbreeding prior to breeding the litter, but it also allows the buyer to look into the inbreeding level in the pup prior to buying it. This may be followed with a directive such as, you can not breed a litter with a higher than the breed average COI or the litter has to be equal to the lowest parents COI. The only real answer to address the prevention of increasing COI is to open the stud book, which is also what the Kennel club in the UK has done. I have to say, I found this some of the most shocking news I had heard in a long time. I am not saying I like exactly what they have done, but done it they have. What they have done is to allow any dog, that looks like the breed and passes any mandated health tests, to enter the stud book as an apendix. After 3 generations all of it's offspring will be fully registered. The dogs does not need to have a pedigree or known background. So a cross bred could enter this way, as long as it looks like the breed. They will also allow working judges to look at working breed dogs so as to not disallow working dogs of the breed which usually look rather different from the show ring type. The only reason to do this is to stop the sprial of ever increasing rates of inbreeding inherent in all closed stud book systems. I do not know what folks think is happening, but when I see The Kennel Club, the first and founding kennel club in the world (and I think they still set the standard of pratice for the world) makes changes like this, then we need to reading, learning and talking about it. It is big news and change is happening, like it or not.

Why is it that some cavalier breeders get so defensive when anyone asks questions about syringomyelia? I would think it's because the report referred to in the OP was on the study of syringomyelia in CAVALIER KING CHARLES SPANIELS. Had the study been conducted on syringo in toy poodles, yorkies or poms then perhaps shortstep would have mentioned those breeds. The same reason they attack who ever asks those questions, because they either do not know the answers or are afraid of the answer or both. So we can now conclude from the repsonses, there is no information, no study, done by others or the Cav Club of Australia, that says says what the rate of this disease is in Australia, (other than the one I menetioned at 50% affected). In short no one knows what the rate is in Australia. I would then say that until proven otherwise, that the prudent thing to do is to act as if it could be as high as in this topic's new report and to act accordingly. The recommendations for this disease includes doing MRI's on all parents prior to breeding. Now if that makes me a real trouble maker, then what does it make those who want to attack that idea? Breeds and breeders are not acting in isolation in ANKC, we are all being held responsiable. We (ANKC breeders, owners or the public in general) all have a right to ask questions about what breeders are doing to address problems or ask why they are not doing something. In case you have not noticed the whole world is asking these questions and and frankly the answers in some cases need a lot more work. I want breeders in this country to follow the directive on this disease and test the dogs before they breed them. If you think that is wrong, then prove it.