Was having a conversation with a friend about natural bobs, and she'd heard that they can only be bred to long tailed dogs (so NB x T) as NB x NB causes spinal issues/neuro defects.

I know of a breed this is true in, but I wondered if this was true for all bob tailed breeds, things like corgis, boxers or aussies etc?

Ta

I have Swedish Vallhunds. Personally I would never do a bob to bob mating but, with such a small gene pool in this country and because no records were kept on actual tail length at birth ( full, half, quarter) before the docking ban, it can be quite difficult to know what tail status is behind your dogs.

I have purposely kept dogs with tails to use at stud but they carry the tail-less gene. In my boy's last litter of 5, out of a docked bitch, there were 4 natural stumps and 1 tailed. In other peoples litters I have seen every tail length possible, from nothing (invert) to half a tail etc. It really is pot luck now.

My dilemma is do I mate a natural stump bitch to a dog with half a tail or could that cause problems?

i have read on a site in the US that is researching ASD and they have found that pembroke corgis NBT put together do not have a problem. If I can find the site again I will let you know it is worth a read. I didn't realise other breeds like aussies have all differenct length of tails.

We won't risk it here.  We do have a male that has been used with natural short tails that I bred and thought he'd been born with a total full tail, we now know that he must have been born one vertebrae short of a full tail.  None of the pups that were born to the short tailed girls had any problems but we will not mate a bob to bob. 

Must admit I also wonder about mating a bob with 3/4 tail.  I've enquired with Spain and although it is not something that they do as a rule they say that they've not had any problems doing bob to bob, but wouldn't risk it.

My girl was mated to a short tailed boy and had two pups Poppy has a bobtail and her brother had a slightly longer tail.

Don't know about other breeds, but I would never recommend mating 2 NBT Aussies together. C A Sharp recommended against it at her recent seminar and for me, she is the expert on the Aussie breed.

There are a lot of people who come via the puppy waiting list who only want a NBT, for breeding later on :-(
Then again, puppies are being kept by some breeders or sold as 'show and breeding quality' that are definitely not !!

Gabrielle

Ooh lots of things I didn't know on here. Didn't even realise SWD were a breed with bob tails :O

We have all tail lengths in Polish Lowlands and I asked this very question today as I have a short tailed girl not bobbed but less than half length and am considering using a NBT male, the answer was that many breeders in Poland are breeding short tails together with no problems to date.

Just to add to Biffsmum's post - so far as vallhunds are concerned,

where stump/stump matings have been done - the litter size tends to be smaller than average - possibly indicating a higher level of reabsorbtion.  Though there have been on reported spinal problems with live birthed pups the issue arises as to whether the natural deformation of the spine could potentially result in conditions such a spinabifida or may affect the nerves of the bladder/anus causing which could result in incontinence.

I personally would never put an invert (where the last vertebrae is missing completely) to anything other than a complete full tail, a stump I would be happy to put to a half or full tail, but never stump/stump, stump/invert or invert/invert.

Kate

>where stump/stump matings have been done - the litter size tends to be smaller than average - possibly indicating a higher level of reabsorbtion.  Though there have been on reported spinal problems with live birthed pups the issue arises as to whether the natural deformation of the spine could potentially result in conditions such a spinabifida or may affect the nerves of the bladder/anus causing which could result in incontinence.  I personally would never put an invert (where the last vertebrae is missing completely) to anything other than a complete full tail, a stump I would be happy to put to a half or full tail, but never stump/stump, stump/invert or invert/invert.

That sounds very similar to what happens with Manx cats. Breeders of naturally bobtailed dogs could do worse than to read up on the genetics of the Manx cat and the effects of Manx-Manx breeding.

Have a look at Dr Bruce Cattanachs site he breeds Bobtail Boxers and he is also a Dr. of genetics google Steynmere Boxers and scroll down to the Bobtail section hope this helps.

In my breed there has been bobtails bred together resulting with pups with spinabifida type deformaties, so we don't do it. 

I have read all of Bruce Cattanachs articles because we were a docked breed with bobtails produced so carrying the gene, he does talk about the smaller litters surmising a lethal effect of the bobtail gene in the Homo form so for me that's good enough just don't do it.

If you want to bred NBT together then there should be a DNA test to see if they carry spinabifida problem and that should be checked before do it. No body in there right mind should cause more problems in a bred than there already is.