*RANT* Canine Reproduction Group
I was recently added to a canine reproduction group on Facebook.
My god these people have some major problems with getting their dogs pregnant and keeping their puppies alive.
Honestly it makes me wonder why they struggle so hard to breed and rear dogs which clearly are not healthy or fertile enough to make it on their own.
Select for fertility and vigor, people!
It also makes me grateful that for the most part Nihon Ken seem to be relatively free of problems by comparison.
My god these people have some major problems with getting their dogs pregnant and keeping their puppies alive.
Honestly it makes me wonder why they struggle so hard to breed and rear dogs which clearly are not healthy or fertile enough to make it on their own.
Select for fertility and vigor, people!
It also makes me grateful that for the most part Nihon Ken seem to be relatively free of problems by comparison.
Comments
What really gets me are the repeat offenders...
"I bred my bitch and her puppies were born tiny and they all died mysteriously within five days so I bred her gain and the puppies are tiny and they're all dying."
"I've bred my bitch three times and each time there have been still born partially decomposed puppies."
"The last two times I bred my bitch the puppies sacks broke early and they died before they could exit the birth canal so I bred her again and it happened again."
You know I am going to go out on a limb and say maybe these people should retire their bitches from breeding. They fight so hard to save the puppies they can from these litters -- for what? So those puppies can grow up and be a part of their breeding program and continue to pass on these problems? So those puppies, who survived only by the skin of their teeth, can be placed in some unsuspecting pet home where they may continue to have congenital health problems for the rest of their lives?
Then there are the breeders who not only accept but expect cleft palettes, oversized hearts, moleras, and deafness in their litters. Why are they breeding these dogs?! I would NEVER do a breeding where I thought such issues were a possibility, never mind expecting it as a regular occurrence! "Oh, yeah, that just happens sometimes in my breed." No it doesn't it happens because you are an irresponsible jackass and a terrible advocate for your dogs and people like you are the ones destroying your breed!
Lastly are the ones who force dogs to be bred against nature. They use drugs to bring the bitch into heat, do surgical artificial insemination, and schedule a c-section as par for the course. They ask for help collecting from "shy" males who refuse to be bred. Look, unless your breed is in dire straights, if the dogs won't do it naturally don't force it. Otherwise you'll just end up in the situation that English Bulldogs are in -- they can neither conceive nor give birth on their own. Darwinism says the breed should go extinct and I agree. Sadly it's not the fault of the dogs it the fault of the breeders.
I couldn't belong to a group like that right now. I want happy healthy puppy thoughts.
Although it must be terribly heartbreaking to have to nix a bitch from a program (especially if she was very important to your program or your only bitch), if there are lots of healthy dogs available and the breed has good numbers, I agree, why continue the effort with the sick dog and perpetuate the issue?
It's pretty disturbing to know all that goes on in dog breeding sometimes. I'm also glad for the relative health I expect in my breed, and am very thankful mine are healthy and came from healthy dogs.
I wish people would ask if I want to join a FB group instead of me all sudden getting mass emails from alerts of new posts because I'm on some new shiba group..
"they can neither conceive nor give birth on their own"
One of the main reasons I never want to own a English Bulldogs.
My dad always wanted one, but I didn't like their health issues and fact they need help to give birth is sad..
Luckily he likes boxers which fine with me though they do have health issues too, but most breeds have common health issues.. Luckily she is pretty healthy so far.
I mean sure if the dog is in danger and a c section will save her life sure, but for it to be needed normally as a breed is sad.
I think french bull dogs have that issue and need to be AI? Could be wrong, but thought I saw that mentioned somewhere.
I mean AI is nice if needed like the breed is rare.
I was on the "Canine Reproduction, Fertility, and Neonatal Challenges." Then after the admins parted ways this winter break, these other groups popped up on my radar ...
"Canine Fertility, Reproduction, and Neonatal Issues"
"Canine Health, Breeding, and Puppy Care"
"Canine Breeders"
"Canine Breeders Evaluations"
The last one has a different flavor and so I'll probably linger for a bit. But that's still too many repro groups for me. I haven't quite figured out which group to un-join though.
Sadly, I've noticed a lot of "do as I say not as I do" in these types of groups. Claire's post is a perfect example. People do repeat breedings, armed with a genetic idea of what should happen, but then ask for pity when the pups don't turn out.
I've been watching the same thing happen over dong basic health checks. A certain breeder constantly doesn't do health checks but then tells people that they need to do them because it is the "right thing to do". Then when said person gets called out they claim that they did health checks on their planned breedings. Using simple math, that would mean that they had 4 accidental breedings in 3 years. FFS
With this forum, people try to walk the walk. If you post something it is because you believe in it and try to follow it. It makes reading peoples posts valuable as a source of information.
I fully admit to a little hypocrisy in this. I also learned my lesson! I personally do not think a dog should be bred through AI until it has been proven capable of reproducing naturally. Once you know it's a good breeder it is fine to use AI for convenience. Well when I was in Texas to breed Gojira in June we had a bunch of problems and I became desperate. We'd been planning this for over a year and come all that way and spent a good deal of money on the trip and health tests. I didn't want to go home empty handed. So against my better judgement and personal beliefs we did AI. It turns out it never would have worked even if Gojira hadn't gotten pyrometra. Her hormonal issues were the result of a bad ovary discovered when it was biopsied after her spay. She may never have been able to conceive in the first place. I should have stuck to my personal ethics and I got slapped down for it.
I just don't understand why people preach one thing or join a certain group and the choose to ignore all the rules/tradition/values that these groups value?
Perfect example, LA-Branch would get hammered as an elitest club that wouldn't share their dogs. It was pointed out to the breeder that in order to get an akiho registration number you would need to breed Akiho X Akiho. The person was shopping for a new puppy and it would have been simple to get a pup from Japan with an export pedigree. In turn that would have opened them up to using our club dogs.
They chose to get a dog without an akiho number but was upset that we would not let them stud with us. We were the bad guys for following our rules, whereas that person never once considered honor our rules/values.
I know that is kinda off topic but it kinda seems to go with it as well.
I would go nuts on those kind of forums. It makes me crazy that people keep breeding dogs that shouldn't be bred. I know things happen: I wasn't going to blame my dog's breeder for producing a dog with micro. Recessive genes: both parents had to be carriers, and how could she know that? However, to rebreed known carriers? I have a huge problem with that. And to sell the sire as a stud when he's a known carrier? Inexcusable. (My dog's micro is mild, but it is usually devastating). And his other spine problems are most likely an inheritable autoimmune disorder.
And the examples you mentioned: UGH! So right--it's not that it "just happens" in the breed. It happens more and more because don't stop breeding carriers. Yes, it might "happen" but then you spay/neuter the dogs that are produced these litters, and probably the puppies too, depending on the issue.
I was like, aren't dogs and cattle different kinds of animal??
For breeding carriers, I don't feel there's an absolute rule to not use them. IMO, it depends on the disease. The certainty of the diagnosis, if there are any genetic tests for them, the quality of life, the time of onset, etc.
For instance, I was scouring the web for a quick and dirty COI for Golden Retrievers (always in the top 5 for registrations) and this is their average COI among those submitted at k9data.com.
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334660 Golden Retrievers in database.
Average 10-generation Coefficient of Inbreeding is 9.63%.
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So more related than first cousins but not as related as half-siblings.
And like @Saya said, that's part of the reason I don't think I would ever want some breeds (Bulldogs, Frenchies, etc.) I can see some cases where okay, it makes sense to do AI (geographic ones mostly, or using a sample from a deceased or now-neutered dog). But like others have said... ideally it wouldn't be the first litter, and it certainly wouldn't be because the breeding was tried natural and didn't work.
The COI thing has me wondering now where Lapphunds stand. I know I was told that in Finland they make a strong effort to prevent any kind of inbreeding, but we have far fewer in the US than there are in Finland and just because inbreeding is avoided doesn't necessarily mean the dogs aren't related. I should look that up.
Edit: Finnish Lapphunds apparently average 2.3% in the UK... but I don't know over how many generations, and I have absolutely no clue if that's true here in the US or anywhere else for that matter!
In the dog genome, there are ~20,000 genes. Each of those genes could have various types of alleles caused by ancient or recent mutations. Beneficial, "wild type", neutral, deterious, etc. EVERY animal carry some load of deterious genes.
Under natural selection with low COI, canines that are heterozygous in recessive deterious genes will survive to reproduce. Canines that are heterozygous in dominant deterious genes and homozygous in recessive deterious genes will not survive to reproduce because they cannot compete with their healthier competitors. This causes the dominant deterious genes to disappear within the population and to cause the recessive deterious genes to stay in check.
When a population becomes a closed population with high COI such as the wolves of Isle Royale, the recessive deterious genes come to the forefront. In a closed population, you can run out of healthy competitors to push out the unhealthy and cannot keep the distribution of the recessive deterious gene in check. If a new dominant disease mutation were to spontaneously occur, it would also not be selected against.
This is when natural selection no longer can work to restore a closed population.
Dog breeds are a closed population, and well, modern human selection is a poor substitute for natural selection. So it's doubly important not to get close to the tipping point for the downward spiral for our dog breeds.
But say that in our domestic dog breeds there is a fictitious line that is 100% free of any hidden deterious genes. 25% COI or even 70% COI. Say that you've successfully squashed the dog's natural aversion to inbreeding in order to get that purity. Does that mean there is no more value in calculating COI?
Absolutely not! You need to consider a region of the dog genome that has to have diversity in order to function. It is the infamous MHC region that determines immunity in the dog. Allergies, autoimmune diseases (hypothyroidism), vaccinosis, etc. If the line started off with heterozygous founders, it will last longer than another that had more homozygous founders, but sure enough, it will become more homozygous and it *will* succumb.
Edited in:
Even if the gene-to-disease library existed for the canine genome, would you rather try to figure out every single allele that a dog in your breeding program has, spending hundreds of thousands of dollars, or would you rather use a FREE calculation that can not only predict issues but also guide your way out of it?
That said, I think my original point about COI was unclear and I'm not really sure how to express it properly. COI is the probability that an individual is homozygous by descent from the same ancestor. However, there are plenty of other ways an gene could be homozygous as well. There is nothing innately bad about being homozygous and there are thousands of genes for which all members of a species and even all members of a breed are homozygous. An average COI is interesting piece of data but doesn't paint the whole or even part of the picture; we don't know the probability an individual may be homozygous for other reasons and we don't know which genes they're homozygous for. They're more likely to be homozygous for traits that many different breeders select for, however.
Example: Blue eyes are a recessive. My eyes are blue because both of my parents are carriers. How they came to be carriers is irrelevant; whether they are fraternal twins or bio-engineered experiments grown in a vat either way I had a 25% of having blue eyes. If one of them had blue eyes my chance would be 50%, and if both had blue eyes my chance would be 100%. None of that changes if my parents are related to each other. (They're not by the way.)
"There is nothing innately bad about being homozygous"
Actually, it is very bad about being homozygous for the MHC.
http://www.akcchf.org/research/funded-research/0022.html
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Guess he was tired of seeing all those pictures too. That is however a fairly accurate description of the group.