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[kcwong]

I saw this documentary, "Pedigree Dogs Exposed" on my local TV channel last night.

It broke my heart. I cried after I saw that poor cavalier crying in agony, wriggling uncontrollably on the floor. Selective breeding made its skull too small for its brain (size-10 foot shoved inside a size-6 shoe), leading to brain/nerve damage.

The documentary exposed a trend in some show breeders that used extreme inbreeding (mother-and-son, bother-and-sister) to "fix" desirable traits, traits that are set as a breed's standards by the Kennel Club UK, traits that only concerns with very exaggerated features and not the dogs' health.

To those irresponsible, ignorant (and refuse to change) or totally-in-denial show dog breeders: You are going to hell and hell hounds are going feast on your flesh and bone in the same fashion as Prometheus' punishment.

Kudos to BBC and all organizations cutting their ties with Crufts. Kennel Club must try harder to reverse the damage it has done/encouraged breeders to do for all these years.

You can watch the show here on MySpace. It's about an hour in length.

[Heron TSG]

Holy crap. I hope they're tied to a cliff and their regenerating livers are eaten every day by vultures while being repeatedly lit on fire. Seriously, they made a dog's SKULL too small!

[Siquo]

If it weren't for selective breeding, they'd still all look like wolves.

Milk-cows nowadays need to be milked every day, or they will fill up so hard that it starts to hurt, and will eventually die, due to excess of milk. Sheep can hardly survive in the wild if they're not (shorn/sheared?) once in a while.

Selective breeding has up- and downsides. Doing it for purely esthetic reasons is less ethical, of course, but their are always alternatives.

[woose1]

5(1EN(e!!!!
(50.-.-`/)

[Heron TSG]

Wolves are cool, too. They have properly sized heads.

[woose1]

Seriously though, that stuff with the bonsai kittens is messed up shit.

[Aqizzar]

What amazes me is that this stuff is no big secret.  Anyone who's ever looked into getting a dog knows that purebreeds have medical issues, and learns all the horror stories about whatever breed they're interested in.  Dalmatians are dumb as hell, Labradors lose their hips with a little age, Bulldogs can't hold their own heads up, many small breeds have horrible teeth, and virtually all purebreeds are hard to train or socialize because they're schizophrenic.  It just goes on and on and few people seem to think that there's anything even unusual about this.

Yeah, give me a proper mutt any day.

[woose1]

Unfortunately I got the best and worst of both worlds. A golden retriever mixed with a lab, and a purebred Chinese-crested chihuahua. One has health problems, and one is 16 years old and still kicking.

[kcwong]

Quoting from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pedigree_Dogs_Exposed:

A Cavelier that won a Best-in-Show was revealed by Carter to have the condition. (One and a half months after the programme aired, Carter was removed from the Cavelier Club Committee for this "breach of confidentiality".) Despite veterinarian advice not to breed from the dog, the dog went on to sire 26 litters, adding to the 8 litters sired before the diagnosis. Dr. Claire Rusbridge expressed her incredulity: "If you took a stick and you beat a dog to create this pain that you could get from Syringomyelia, you'd be prosecuted, but there's nothing to stop you from breeding a dog that can be painful."

It shows you how monstrous some show breeders can be. They treat dogs as their properties and cash cows, not friends or living beings.

Appearance doesn't matter. Breed doesn't matter. Dogs are humans' best friends. Give them love, and they will love you back, a thousand fold.

Dogs don't deserve being treated like that. It's criminal to treat them like that.

[Strife26]

Selective breeding is pretty bad like that.
Bastards.
Cats aren't quite as bad, but it's getting up there. My precious Maine Coons are usually okay, apart from the odd bastard who wants his/her cats to be overlarge  (which is REALLY big when you consider that coons are already the biggest domestic breed of cats).

And Woose, the symbol speak is as annoying as hell.

[Heron TSG]

I have a Schnoodle (schnauzer/poodle) that's almost at legal drinking age. (21, for you foreign people who may think I'm talking about 18)

[Siquo]

I have a Schnoodle (schnauzer/poodle) that's almost at legal drinking age. (21, for you foreign people who may think I'm talking about 18)

16

Well, if it's dog-specific we're talking about, all dogs may die a horrible death as far as I'm concerned.

[Captain Hat]

I've got a basset hound/beagle mix that we got from the animal shelter about three years ago. It's really odd, because he's got the very long body and poor hips of a basset hound, but the hyperactivity of a beagle.

[Rysith]

Selective breeding is pretty bad like that.

Selective breeding is good (in most cases). Inbreeding (and the potentially-harmful traits that would die out otherwise) is bad. There is a difference.

See the post above about how without selective breeding all dogs would still look like wolves (which is fine, but the transition to non-wolf is fine too). It's only when you decide that certain features define a breed, and then breed very close relatives to try to emphasize those features, that you start having lots of problems.

[Kagus]

My dog was a German Shepherd, a breed that has been rather horribly deformed for showing (those hips are just not natural).  The pup we picked up, however, was bred as a working dog, not a show dog.  Y'know, one of those that eventually becomes a seeing eye-dog or coke addict drug sniffer.  Bred for endurance, trainability, and general usefulness.

Frankly, I think that dog looked a hell of a lot better than the show shepherds.


Also, while people are discussing dogs that look like wolves, I feel I should post a link to the Tamaskan Dog.  So, with selective breeding, you get dogs that look like wolves.