Pointing Finger

And Pointing In the Mirror 

For a long time… far too long, the status quo was “don’t ask don’t tell”. If you had a dog with a problem presumed to be hereditary, the common policy was to quietly allow it to disappear. It was out of the gene pool so what was the big deal? The owners felt that laying low and being discreet, allowing the dog to disappear from the public eye and the gene pool, was the best course of action.

However, the breeding that produced this dog was NOT removed from the gene pool, only the defective offspring. And while this breeding may be the result of either a recessive gene, meaning the faulty gene came from both sides, or a dominant gene, meaning the faulty gene may have come from only one side, the fact remains that this dog came from parents probably carrying the genes for that defect. While I am not suggesting that the parents be removed from the gene pool, I am suggesting that the production information should be shared with other breeders to help us all make more informed breeding choices. I do believe that any dog used more than a few times for breeding is going to produce defects so this absolutely means we cannot eliminate all dogs who have produced a problem. But we can work towards making the breed healthier by being upfront about issues we have encountered, even the more trivial things like a missing tooth in a pet puppy or minor CERFable eye issues in our dogs such as distichia.

In the past, the status quo was to pull the dogs with more serious defects from the gene pool quietly and discreetly. It was considered inappropriate to point fingers at possible carriers. After all, it is quite possible it came from only one parent, meaning it could implicate a completely clear parent. And people seemed to believe that the best course of action was just to eliminate the known effecteds, and not consider the parents that produced the effected get.

Well, now we know better. Now we know that these genes usually don’t spontaneously mutate (although it is possible in some disorders) and we can’t just blame a congenital birth defect (although again, this is possible) when we see a known genetic defect crop up. So in the best interest of the breed, we need to share the things we have encountered and what the pedigree is in those instances. While it may be painful to admit our dogs have produced a problem, we need to explore the possible genetic implications and make them public knowledge for all of us to decipher and postulate the probabilities of them occurring in planned breedings. By doing so, we equip conscientious breeders with the best tools to make informed decisions.