“It is fascinating to speculate how dogs and humans might co-evolve further. We cannot say exactly what the domestic dogs of the future will look like because we do not know what future humans will need and therefore value. But pedigree dogs, as they are currently defined, are doomed.”

–Paul McGreevy, comment in The New Scientist (“We must breed happier, healthier dogs,” 8 October 2008)

Contributed by Alina Lilova

In my early teens, I used to worship the world of the dog fancy, which I was familiar with through hobby magazines and occasional direct contact. I could recognise dozens upon dozens of breeds, I would read their entire standards, I thought dog shows were fascinating, and I dreamt of studying “cynology,” or canine science.

How disenchanted I am today. Over the years, I slowly came to realise that canine science rests on shaky biological grounds because it is not dog-centric as its name implies. The individual dog doesn’t matter as much as the frozen ideal of the breed. Selective breeding isn’t used to create happy and well-adjusted family pets, but to improve “breed quality,” i.e. match ever more closely what the dog looked like in a mythical past or will look like in a utopian future, as laid out in the sacred books of the kennel club.  Other concerns exist, but they are secondary.

Obsessively pursuing the Breed Standard like a pack of hounds, breeders risk losing sight of the animal welfare problems that come with their quest. The first problem is inbreeding, or the crossing of related individuals. While many laypeople believe that pedigrees serve to make sure no close relatives are mated, in fact the opposite is often true. The second problem is exaggerated physical traits: dog shows, like those fashion shows with super-skinny models, don’t always have the participant’s welfare in mind. In this article, I’m going to discuss the two issues as well as give my amateur opinion on the historical roots of the problem.

I hope that the attention this problem is getting these days (after Pedigree Dogs Exposed aired on BBC a couple of years ago) will change the way we breed and buy puppies, not just in Great Britain, but over here in Bulgaria and all over the world. The current situation is unacceptable. Dividing littermates into “pet dogs” to be spayed or neutered, or in any case not bred, and “show dogs,” then using traditional dog show results to further limit the gene pool, is a very dubious practice. This is the system for many purebred dogs: they either come from “reputable breeders” who provide well for their dogs but breed strictly to type with the aim of producing champions, or they come from pet shops and markets, which often means they were born in puppy mills where their parents are overbred and kept in filthy conditions, with little human company. Of course, the best solution for the puppy buyer is to adopt a shelter dog. But as long as we have domestic dogs, we’re going to have artificial selection, and I believe it’s worth it to discuss the ways forward.

Inbreeding

Inbreeding is a breeder’s primary tool for ‘fixing’ desired traits. For example, in cocker spaniels spotted-coloured coats are recessive, which means that the puppy must have the right copy of the gene (“allele”) from both mum and dad in order to be a Spot. Under normal conditions, the colour would be quite rare. But if a breeder wants to produce an exclusive line of Spots, the task might be easier if he crosses dogs who are related to each other – say, a spotted female to her solid-black grandfather who is known for passing down the rare allele to some of his descendants. Many breeds and breed lines started from just a handful of dogs and wouldn’t exist if not for inbreeding.

Is inbreeding bad? After all, even in humans, though we speak of an “incest taboo,” the practice is not uncommon in various cultures and historical periods. According to my Human Evolutionary Psychology book, “Inbreeding may… be an acceptable risk under a wide range of circumstances” – for example, if one is faced with the prospect of failing to have any children, or of dissipating the family wealth. Yet, for dogs, are purported beauty and the ideal of the standard an acceptable risk? Especially given that inbreeding is a permanent hallmark of the pedigree dog system?

The dangers of excessive inbreeding are two-fold. When you fix traits that you fancy in a population of dogs, you also risk fixing the deleterious alleles that the parents happen to be carrying. You may eventually weed them out through genetic screening, but often at the cost of tragic mistakes. For instance, you find out that a quarter of the dogs you breed show symptoms of a blood disorder by age five. Being a conscientious breeder, you employ all the available DNA and other medical tests and remove from your programme the dogs and bitches who are likely to pass down the disease. You are lucky because it turns out that the blood disorder gene isn’t linked to the traits you select for in your dogs. Ironically, though, what you have done is shrunk the gene pool even further, and unless you introduce some fresh blood (e.g. from a related breed), you may well uncover other previously hidden diseases… sooner or later. That’s why biologists speak of “inbreeding depression,” which means reduced litter size and reduced longevity of the inbred animals.

Even if you manage to solve all the genetic problems in your breed and have a healthy population of dogs, they will be too identical, just like the inbred cheetahs of East Africa. Cheetahs tend to do quite well when they are not persecuted by humans, but conservationists are still worried. In theory, the lack of genetic variation means that the animals as a whole are more susceptible to parasites and disease-causing viruses and bacteria. For a microbe, it’s easier to evolve the means to outsmart a genetically identical host population than a more diverse one. With pedigree dogs, that should be of concern when they are mixed with other dogs of the same kind, e.g. in breeding kennels or at specialty shows.

Lack of diversity in the region of the MHC genes (major histocompatibility complex) is thought to be particularly bad.* MHC proteins on the surface of cells work like a password for our immune system, so it recognises the cells as our own and not as something foreign. Natural selection favours very high MHC diversity so that our “passwords” are harder to crack, and our bodies less prone to invasion. Think of a bunch of humans or a bunch of dogs as your set of credit cards: wouldn’t you use a unique password for each card? It’s hardly a surprise, then, that mammals – including us – can actually smell differences in MHC, and it’s one of the reasons why they tend to avoid mating with close relatives. I wonder if that couldn’t explain what a fellow dog lover told me about her male Dachshund, who absolutely disliked female Dachshunds but was attracted by ladies of other breeds!

*However, an article published last year by Radwan et al. points out that some of the species that have lost their MHC diversity are doing OK, though they might be rare examples. The article also says that it’s hard to separate the ill effects of losing MHC diversity from the effects of inbreeding in general.

Exaggerated Traits

What traits are relevant to welfare? First, some behavioural traits. In today’s world, dogs must make good pets. Ideally, even working lines such as guard dogs should make decent pets because otherwise it would be hard to find homes for retired or “surplus” dogs. Traits such as fear, aggressiveness and obedience are important. Specific traits such as a dog’s requirement for exercise or play can vary between breeds – but few people nowadays really need vicious dogs, and few dogs benefit from a low threshold of aggression. Secondly, there are harmful morphological features which, unlike the genetic diseases resulting from inbreeding, have been deliberately selected for in some of today’s purebred animals. A very serious effort should be made to weed them out by changing club rules and breed standards and by educating owners, breeders and show judges to put welfare considerations ahead of aesthetic ones.

That should be easy if people knew the consequences for health and wellbeing that such traits entail… and if they could put themselves in the dog’s place. All of us know what a cold or allergy feels like, when you can’t draw enough air when you breathe – well, that is daily reality for many Pekingese and pug dogs with “charmingly” flat faces! Walk past one of those animals, and it’s likely you might be able to hear his or her breathing… Now, if you have long hair, comb it so it falls over your face and you can’t see, and you’ll know what it feels like to be a komondor. Sure, you can get accustomed to it and probably won’t go bumping into things, but if somebody forced you to wear your hair like that, how would you feel about them? Among the many other issues are walking difficulties and hip dysplasia in German shepherds as a consequence of their specific body frame, kidney problems and deafness in Dalmatians – both of which seem to be genetically tied to the Dalmatian colour – and syringomyelia (which can be an agonisingly painful condition) in Cavalier King Charles spaniels due to inadequate skull size.

The 19^th Century

The problem is also linked to the current idea of the Nation and the sources of national pride. It is not by coincidence that the rise of the nation-state occurred at about the same time as the rise of the dog fancy. (The first recorded dog show in history took place in London in 1850 and was a small event described as a “Great Exhibition of the Pugs of All Nations.”) Some people need to keep “national breeds” unique just like they need to keep nations unique – even closely related ones. For example, the standard of the Bulgarian Karakachan dog lists as a disqualifying fault a dog’s resemblance to other Mollossian flock guardians of the Balkans such as the Sharplaninets. Never mind, of course, that the climate and the mountains of these countries are similar, that livestock keepers share the same traditions and face the same predators, and that state boundaries on the peninsula have always changed.

Flipping through Muriel Bremner’s Wolfhound Guide to the Irish Wolfhound, I am fascinated by the myriad testimonies – in the text, the photos, the illustrations – to how similar the cult of a national breed can be to the cult of cultural creations as diverse as folk tales, costumes or regional dialects. The historic moment can’t be mistaken, nor can the socio-psychological needs of the people who took the ‘majestic giant’ out of his dusty drawer and turned him into a living and breathing legend. How much is he a real animal, and how much is he Hyperbole?

On page 3, there’s a reproduction of an old drawing which clearly depicts two generic greyhounds. Yet lo and behold, the caption reads, “The female figure of Hibernia, accompanied by a brace of Irish Wolfhounds.” Yeah, right. It only takes one to flip twenty pages further and spot the difference between the “brace of Irish Wolfhounds” and today’s dogs. Modern Irish wolfhounds are shaggier, larger and more imposing because breed fanciers are much more concerned with the dogs’ visual appeal than with adapting them to some utilitarian function.

The history of the breed is directly compared to the history of the Irish people: “… like his adopted people, though tested and tried by the terrors of time, he survived.” What long centuries of hardship couldn’t erase, though, the 19^th century supposedly could. Just like the traditional songs of the peasantry, the dogs were thought to be degenerating and in danger of imminent extinction. Only the urgent action of passionate collectors could restore their ancient glory. The Irish wolfhound had his own version of the Brothers Grimm in the face of a certain Captain Graham. Graham sought out the last remaining “authentic” specimens and tried to restore the breed’s “original” look.

Ironically, the latest research on pedigree dog breeding gives us reason to believe that what may really threaten purebred dogs with extinction is just that preoccupation with authenticity and looks that became so fashionable 150 years ago… I personally find it hard to believe that the doggies before that were degenerating. Maybe the wolfhound type had really undergone a decrease in size following the extinction of the wolf in Ireland/the potato famine/etc. But that evolution was therefore natural, not a tragedy to be lamented and reversed. The fast growth rate of giant dogs is bad for their musculoskeletal health and longevity anyway.

In the 21^st century, we’re still living with the ideals of perfected 19^th-century things which are supposed to reflect our very ancient heritage. Many of our breeds are no more than a frozen photograph from the 1800s that has been Photoshopped for top-level appeal. Once we realise that, maybe we’ll be able to let go of outdated attitudes and allow our dogs to move on.

The Way Forward?

To some extent, many breed clubs are actively involved in improving the welfare of their favourite dogs. For example, they work with rescues, they try not to breed animals with some inherited diseases, and they do temperament assessments. A few factors are, however, a barrier to success, and these include the desire to “produce” (this ugly word is often part of the professional jargon) champions in the show ring, as well as the reluctance to outcross, to modify breed standards or to merge some of the existing breeds. On the contrary, sometimes whole lines are excluded from breeding and branded as “not genuine” because one dog several generations back passed down a tail that’s curved instead of straight.

Some diversity of dog breeds is essential because people have different tastes and lifestyles, and still keep dogs in rather different environments (e.g. urban vs. rural). However, the entire focus of selective breeding must shift towards the well-being of the animals. Animal welfare must be a top priority; physical appearance (and working performance) comes second.

The breeding pool can be kept large enough if more individual owners breed their pets – but fewer times per pet. Kennel club and breed club rules must change to discourage the excessive breeding to type that’s central to their philosophy today. Breed standards must be relaxed for the traits irrelevant to welfare. We can still have many recognisable dog breeds – just not as many. Periodic outcrossing with other breeds must be practiced as needed. It can do wonders to eliminate genetic diseases, and not necessarily at such a great cost to looks (when you mate the hybrids back to your original breed, you can restore the desired look quite rapidly).

It’s complicated, yet simple. To make the dogs and the dog-buying public happier, we don’t need miraculous advances in genetics or veterinary medicine. All we need is a shift in attitudes.

Bibliography:

Barrett, L., Dunbar, R. and Lycett, J. Human Evolutionary Psychology. Princeton University Press, Princeton, 2002 (ch. 9).

Bremner, M. The Wolfhound Guide to the Irish Wolfhound. Wolfhound Press, Dublin, 1998.

Galis, F., van der Sluijs, I., Van Dooren, T. J.M., Metz, J. A.J., Nussbaumer, M. “Do large dogs die young?” Interim Report IR-06-072. International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, 2006.

McGreevy, P.D. and Nicholas, F. W. “Some practical solutions to welfare problems in dog breeding.” Animal Welfare 1999, 8: 329-241.

Radwan, J., Biedrzycka, A. and Babik, W. “Does reduced MHC diversity decrease viability of vertebrate populations?” Biological Conservation, 2009. doi:10.1016/j.biocon.2009.07.026

Ricklefs, R. The Economy of Nature. W. H. Freeman and Company, New York, 2001 (ch. 16).

Sayer, A. The Complete Dog. Prion, London, 1988.

Thiesse, A.-M. La Création des identités nationales. Éditions du Seuil, Paris, 2001.

Further Reading:

“Independent Inquiry into Dog Breeding” by Patrick Bateson of the University of Cambridge. The inquiry was commissioned by two opposing parties in the matter: the Kennel Club and the Dogs Trust, after the airing of a BBC documentary called Pedigree Dogs Exposed provoked an unprecedented public reaction. The full report was published in 2010 and can be downloaded from www.dogbreedinginquiry.com.

Tags: dog breeding, dog welfare, inbreeding, pedigree dogs

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