<<Natural selction in action John>>

I have been listening to this debate from the beginning, but I cant help wondering Harriet, how you would react to these hypothetical scenarios.

1st) I am Alpha female in my pack since my Alpha bitch died. In my pack I have a youngster with HD and Arthritis. Now am I right in thinking that natural selection taking its course would be for me too kick this dog out to suffer a long drawn out painful death.

2nd) I take this loving trusting animal and have it PTS. 

Both the above are selective, but surely not natural.

3rd) I look after it, whatever it takes.

I choose 3, as I see it, natural selection.

Harriet, have you ever seen the tail of an undocked working springer spaniel, after cleaning the blood, thorns and everything else from it and then having it have to be completely amputated. When you do, I would be very interested to hear your views.

My apologies to all for hijacking this thread

Kay

Yet again someone taking what I've said out of context, natural selection was used when refering to animals in the wild. I don't know what we should do with all these dogs that are suffering due to having abnormal bodies maybe you should ask the kennel club, it's their fault they are here in the first place, they set the breed standard. Regarding tail docking don't believe I mentioned that at all.

The breed clubs, the members of which own, love, and have studied the history of the breeds, write the breed standards, Harriet, not the KC, by the way.

But the KC approve it, so ultimately it's their resposibility

So would your solution be to write new breed standrds modifying exagerations?  Who should be given this task, who decides what is too much?
bye
Gwen

The dog shows what is too much when it starts to suffer. This question is a bit like how do we fix the ozone isn't it? Maybe it can't be fixed. Maybe if 'man' hadn't stuffed it up in the first place. Ifs & maybes. By trying to correct mistakes it could be made worse. Unfortunately I'm not a genetic scientist or God or Mother nature. If that sounds sarcastic it's not meant to but I'm tired now.

I don't want to appear to be picking on you Harriet, because I'm not. But the same degree of a natural condition like HD (which in an ideal world would not exist in any species) can cause great suffering in one individual, yet another can cope perfectly well with exactly the same deformity. This has been proven by x-rays.

Unless a person has a practical solution for the problems, it is pointless for anyone to complain to people who are trying to solve the problem!

OK maybe I used Hd as a wrong example it was the first ailment that popped into my head. Yes after reading more about it I will concede that HD occurs in a lot of dogs and may have nothing to do with whatever the breed standard is, although I am suspicious of GSD standard and think there is a possibility that the exaggerated slope on their back wouldn't help a dog if had that condition and could make it worse. But there are many many other ailments that dogs suffer due to the way they are bred because the standards on some are too over the top, and whether it's down to the breed standard or just plain bad breeding dogs are suffering. Don't think anyone could deny that.

You obviously have never studied the HD results in GSD's across the world or even in the UK

HD is more common in GSDs from lines that do not hip score. All the GSD breeders I know who breed the so called"Gernanic"type(should be more correctly called the International type"if a label has to be applied at all)Hip score & do not breed from dogs with poor hips

On the other hand the Alsatian/English so called"straight-backed" type breeders I know do not on the whole Hip score at all so the status of these dogs is unknown. There was a court case involving one of the top Alsatian breeders(he calls GSDs Alsatians so there is no slur on his kennels)He sold a puppy to a Working Trials handler sadly the dog had a hip score of 104 & was not able to compete in WT & was PTS at an early age. He lost the court case & had to pay the costs & compensation to the WT handler. The breeder still does NOT score his dogs even though he knows his lines produce bad hips. Not all breeders of this "type" of GSD do not score but the ones that do are in the minority

Which just goes to show that the breed standard you so dislike is not necessarily "produce"bad hips

Incidently in Germany you cannot register puppies from unx-rayed parents & non registered puppies do not sell well. the dogs have to pass a survey & working tests before being bred from if you wish to register the puppies. Tjhe puppies are also all tattooed & cannot be registered unless they are & the Breed Wardens examine all registerable litters & can refuse to allow the litter to be tattooed or registered unless they condition is acceptable. Yes their are backyard breeders as in the UK but their dogs are not registered & therefore usually not bred to the breed standard. The SV(the GSD KC)are very strict on the use of stud dogs & restrict the use of the top dogs.

What a choice, hunting and killing dogs in the wild so we can go about our business safely, kind of defies natural selection ever so slightly, since we would probably be killing the healthiest hunters and leaving the weaker, unhealthier dogs to breed.

Are you saying that my dog with severe HD and arthritis is the fault of the KC then.

Suzieque mentioned tail docking, and I have a vague recollection of your agreement with her post. My apologise if I got that wrong.

What are you on about???? Hunting and killing dogs sorry you've lost me now. I'm very sorry your dog has HD by the way, who knows why this is so it could be down to breeding to a exaggerated standard or it could be down to genes. Like us dogs get all sorts of things go wrong not everything can be blamed on breeding.

Many years ago I bred a litter of puppies, before I bred the litter I had both the mother and father of the litter hip scored. I knew the grandparents and great grand parents of this litter were all hip scored dogs. The mother of the litter had a hip score of 0 - 0 =0 the sire had a hip score of 2-2 = 4 Now hips are scored from 0 to 53 on each hip. None of the scored dogs in the pedigree scored higher than 5 one bitch had a score of 2 -3 =5. So in theory all the puppies should have scored between 5 and 0. One puppy in this litter of 10 pups scored 11 -18 =29. So am I an irresponsible breeder?
This puppy never showed any sign of hip problems, yet would you have had it put down?
Just interested.

It would depend on if it was suffering and how much, I would have it neutered though.