What happened here??

I don't get it.

Today I stumbled across A & R Country Kennels and had a look around. They breed designer dogs only. Okay. Not enough to land you on MoT. They aim to sell healthy dogs; no mention of hybrid vigour. Alright. Two-year health warranty for each puppy and not a NuVet link in sight, not bad... Their puppies leave home after 8 weeks, vet-checked and ready to go; even better... Their facilities seem great; looking good...

And then I got punched in the face with the realization that they've got about eight litters on the go simultaneously.

WHAT.

ARE YOU FREAKING INSANE?

Is this a Christmas thing? This is a Christmas thing, right? Well then why on earth are most of their litters so far off the mark from D-Day? And WHY ARE THERE EIGHT LITTERS?

And then more holes are poked in the kennels all around me. Why is there no page where I can look at the sires and bitches? Why isn't your health warranty actually on the site? Why have you only raised "85%" of your "purebed stock"? Why do you call Goldendoodles "Golden-poos"? Are these F1 crosses or what? Why do you have a litter of Goldendoodles ready for adoption when you also claim that you only breed your Golden retriever bitches once a year each for summer litters? Why are you breeding "Eskie-poos" when American Eskimo dogs are already quite healthy, thank you very much, and require dog-savviness? Why do you keep saying your poos are "non-shedding" when this very likely isn't true for every single puppy, especially the Goldens? Why is your spay/neuter recommendation crammed at the bottom of the page like fine print? Why are three of your eight litters Shih-poos? WHY DO YOU HAVE EIGHT LITTERS??

Sigh. They sound like nice people, too. But I have to say it.

STOP BREEDING.

GIVE YOUR DOGS' UTERUSES A REST FOR PETE'S SAKE.

START SPAYING AND DON'T STOP UNTIL YOU ARE PRODUCING TWO LITTERS A YEAR TOPS.

Good grief. It seems appearances can indeed be deceiving.

TGIF

Yesterday I read about a dog whose owner was in a car accident. He dragged the man out through the windshield and kept him awake by licking his face until paramedics arrived.

Today my dog peed in my bed.

I forget why I wanted a dog.

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We can thank Sil for this one. It's been too long since I visited Married to the Sea!

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You'll appreciate this one if you've ever owned a feline. In the spirit of the season: How To Wrap Presents If You've Got a Cat.

TGIF, I'm off to strip my bedsheets.

The logic behind the poo

Yes, I'm still contemplating poodle hybrids. (No, not bodily functions.)

In the comments of this post, it was ascertained that the logic behind breeding poodles to anything that moves goes like this:

- People want a "hypoallergenic" dog

- People want a curly-haired dog

- People want a dog with a cute breed name involving any combination with the words "oodle" and "poo".

To which I say pish and tosh.

There are also those who breed because they don't want the problems that come with purebreeds, therefore they breed for a) hybrid vigour, and b) to avoid inbreeding. But these topics come up a lot on MoT already and no doubt will again, so today let's just have a look at the superficials.

1) Hypoallergenic dogs do not exist. They won't help you with your asthma, nor your allergy to dander or dog saliva or whatever else may float off a dog's body that isn't fur. Or maybe it is the fur. In which case, that's okay. Designer breeding for low shedding dogs is the most admirable objective I can think of. (Breeding for hybrid vigour is not admirable. Breeding for health is admirable. Yes, there is a difference.)

Just bear in mind that low shedders need lots of brushing and grooming. Also that dogs like Labradoodles and Goldendoodles can end up shedding as much as their notoriously sheddy retriever parents, especially as most are F1 crosses.

Plus, you know, there are purebreeds out there for you too. Not just toys, either! I'll promote retired greyhounds again; lovely, calm dogs who shed very little. Also in the medium to large category are Airedale terriers, Kerry Blue terriers, Wheaten terriers, Irish Water Spaniels, and Portuguese Water dogs (the ones with the shaved butts. Terrific!). In the toy group you've got a bunch of small woolly dogs like Shih-tzus and Malteses - eg dogs you don't even need to breed to the poodle in the first place.

2) As for curly dogs, there is a secret behind poodle hybrids that I'll divulge to you now. Lean in close. Are you ready for this? It's big.

They all look the same.

I'm not even kidding. There are only three categories of poodle hybrids and they go like this:

Type A: The Woolly Muppetpoo. This variety of poo is small, fluffy, and all the rage. They seem to come in white or tan more than any other colour, regardless of parent breed. There is an inexplicable amount of Woolly Muppetpoos in my neighbourhood. Representing the Woollies today are the cockapoo, the schnoodle, the Shih-poo, the Maltipoo, the Pekeapoo, the Lhasapoo, and the Yorkiepoo. Goldendoodles also count as Muppetpoos.

Tell me what kind of poo this is. Go on, guess.

Type B: The Irish wolfpoo. So named because they all come out looking like weird Irish wolfhound hybrids. Weimardoodle. Shepadoodle. Dober/poo. Beardiepoo. Labradoodles, usually. Eerie, isn't it? Sometimes it begs the question, where the hell did they get those genes?

And dear old Type C: Miscellaneous, AKA "What the Hell Is That Thing?!" This one can crop up in the most unsuspecting of mixes. This is a Chihuahua/poo that looks like a vaguely sinister seal. And a pug/poodle with some of the most ridiculous ears I've ever seen. Here's a Maltipoo that falls way short of the Muppetpoo look. And I don't even know what happened here (a Lhasapoo, if you couldn't guess).

That's the big secret behind poodle hybrids. The most unique ones end up with What the Hell Syndrome while the rest are shaggy cookie cut-outs.

3) Adorable/silly names. The solution to this one is staring you in the face. I'll tell you another secret. I shouldn't be giving these away for free, but I guess I'm just big-hearted like that. Okay, here it comes:

Lie.

Seriously. Do what I do and make up your dog's breed. Why the hell not, if he's just a companion pet? Unfortunately, Tip is much too distinctive to be mistaken for anything other than a Border collie, but this is part of the reason I can't wait till I have my own Leonberger. That dog is gonna have a new name and profession every week. One day I'll tell people he's a Serengeti tiger-mastiff (African tribesmen bred these dogs in the absence of real tigers to do battle with lions in gladiator-style showdowns). The next day he'll be an Egyptian River dog (fisherman of Ancient Egypt relied on dogs to frighten away the hippos that upended their boats and ate people or whatever hippos do). Next week he'll be a Taiwanese Pirate dog (while the pirates board other vessels, the dogs stay back on the pirate ship to guard their booty). Why not!

Or if your conscience nags at you, just buy a dog that already has a silly name. Get a Sloughi. That's "Sloogy". Hours of fun! Or a Weimaraner: "Why-ma-rah-ner", but most people don't know that. Call it a Way-marooner if you want to.

Or maybe they just like the silliness of the suffix. I mean, really. "Poo" and "doodle"? Make your friends jealous by slapping on something even sillier. Call your dog a "[whatever]oogle". Say that it's a mix between whatever it actually is and the Scottish Broughel (which doesn't actually exist, but there are lots of dogs who could pass for Scottish. They've already got terriers and sheepdogs coming out of there, and once upon a time Scotland had wolves, from which you can derive all sorts of doggy jobs like guarding and hunting). Pretend to know a lot about the Broughel (pronounced like bugle but with an R) and mention how superior it is to poodles because it performs all dog jobs in Scotland on top of companionship. Drug sniffing, police work, shepherding, service to the disabled; the Broughel is the world's up-and-coming canine all-rounder and they're trying to maximize its usefulness by breeding to other dogs and creating a canine race of oogles. Finish your spiel with a smug, "Oogles are the new poo."

And if they ask how do you get one?

Say, "You mate a dog of one breed to a dog of the same breed and then lie for the rest of the offspring's life."

Sigh. Superficialities may be silly, but I would kind of like to start calling Tip a Scottish Bordoogle.

MoT: Going Nordic

I love the Swedish Kennel Club.

Keep watching the papers because when we announce our engagement it will be big and splashy. I'll change my last name to Kennelklubben. We will have many genetically correct babies and grow old together.

I finally got off my ass and watched Pedigree Dogs Exposed, which I thought, personally, made a lot of good points. And it was fun because before now I've been piecing together my information in, well, not narrated and illustrated form, plus my version definitely lacked British accents. Being a generally lazy person, I enjoy being fed information, and foreign accents are always a bonus. They make me pay attention.

And then - woe - they mentioned the Swedish Kennel Club and a little lightbulb clicked and afterward I had to trawl the Internet until I found what I was looking for, and then dug even deeper.

This is what I've found out about the Swedish Kennel Club's policies:

• Inbreeding is frowned upon. In fact, they go so far as to AVOID breeding close relatives. How great is that. Kennel Clubs are usually all talk and no action, but the studies say that, so far, Sweden is actually cutting back on inbred dogs (from a 3.7% inbreeding coefficient in 2002 to 2.7% as of April 2008).
• Open registries! Yes! And it gets better! Since introducing open registries, they have halved the occurrence of hip dysplasia in dogs. This is a Scandinavian revolution, people! The information on any one individual dog, plus his siblings, parents and offspring, are all available for anybody to peruse on the SKC website. It includes stats for each breed on health traits, mental status, breeding animals (age at breeding, litter size, etc), number of registered dogs, and average levels of inbreeding. The GDC, America's open registry, was modeled after Sweden's.
• They've placed limits on the number of offspring any one dog can sire.
• They've started outcrossing programs in order to increase the population of certain breeds and improve health.
• Mental health is valued alongside physical health. In order to breed, working dogs must pass a behavioural assessment. Border collies have to be assessed at herding before their offspring can be SKC-registered. I think I might cry.

Now what is so hard about doing the same thing in North America??

Pass the smorgas. I'm moving to Sweden.

Sorry guys...

I got some really bad news yesterday and have some things to sort out, so I'm not sure when my next post will be. Maybe Monday, maybe later. Bear with me; I'll be back as soon as I can.

The Law of Suppy & Demand

EDIT: I'm closing comments, because I think we're basically going in circles at this point. Everything that needs to be said has been said. Despite posts of late, this isn't actually a "the AKC is stupid" blog. (Even if I rather think it is.) This is more of a "there is a problem in the dog world, and breeding mutts isn't the solution" blog. If you happen to agree, fantastic; stick around. If you don't think there's a problem at all, I'm afraid you need to move along, read some literature or make your own blog, because my opinion isn't about to change and nobody's forcing you to read this stuff. Have a nice day.

'Tis officially the season, my friends, and we know what that means. Apart from the scents of smoke and gingerbread mysteriously lurking everywhere, annoyingly cheery carols warbling out from every store and a rapidly haemorrhaging wallet, that is. It means pet stores are stacking the shelves with cutesy Christmas canines, much like the one pictured. He can't even stretch out. Adorable.

We are only human and sometimes a sad puppy's gaze can have the effect of a high-power tractor beam off the Starship Enterprise. It sucks you in like a black hole with the force of its sweetly bewildered face. And isn't it so much better to think of a woebegone petshop puppy shacking up with you, rather than in the arms of somebody who thinks it would be a good idea to give the pooch to someone else for Christmas?

This law applies at all times but seems especially applicable now: The Law of Supply and Demand. Anti-puppy mill propaganda often uses the argument that buying a pet store dog just makes room for another puppy to take its place back at whatever mill it came from. That's never made a lot of sense to me; it's not like they have room for 300 dogs absolutely, no more than that. What you ARE doing when you buy a pet store dog is saying, "I want this dog, and I want more like it." And the supply (the pet store and puppy mill) will respond with glee. No matter what your intent was. If you're a bleeding heart who has to rescue the one sickly little pup, you're saying you don't care what condition they sell their dogs in. You want it anyway.

If you do your pet-shopping where puppies are sold, firstly you might want to reconsider your choice of pet store. Secondly you must stay strong! And these are the three biggest scams I see running around at large:

1. He's AKC-registered! Woohoo! Now let me tell you where you can put those papers. As we should all know by now, AKC guarantees nothing. They will tell you this themselves on their website. All it means is one parent was a purebred and so was the other parent. The resulting puppy could be a mixed-breed, deformed, unhealthy, nasty in temperament, or all of the above. You could probably sneak your dead rabbit into the AKC for all they care.

2. He's rare! Look at the pretty colours! Let me remind you that the genes for some 'rare' appearances in certain dog breeds also carry ticking time-bombs of disease. Remember the double dapple gene in Dachshunds (which is A-OK by the AKC!). Double dapple comes with blindness and deafness, among other things, like no eyes. Fantastic.

3. But he's so cute and little. Take him home. People seem to be giving puppies away younger and younger. "As soon as they're weaned" is not, in fact, the right age to give a dog away. They've only just started toddling around and socializing when they're weaning age. He needs this learning stage with his mom and siblings in order to be well-adjusted. This article will tell you about it more concisely than I can - it says 7-12 weeks is the best time to bring puppy home. So why are we seeing five-week-old babies up for adoption?

(Alas, I fell for this trap. Three and a half years ago I was woefully much less educated about pet stores than I am now, and in the market for a new guinea pig to be a companion to my suddenly-single increasingly-Elder Pig. When I met her at the pet store, Baby Angry Pig was four weeks old. That's way too young! my common sense screamed. She should have been six weeks at least. That her socialization was going to be all messed up if she ended up with a clueless child was weighing heavily on my mind, but even heavier was the way she fit perfectly in my palm like a fluffy tennis ball, and snuggled there. When I took her home I left her alone for two days; I did everything by the book - but, of course, she grew up into a bullying sociopath who routinely beats me and my dog, so I believe she was a lost cause from the start. Looks like selling too young can even adversely affect a rodent, so imagine what it could do to a dog. But the pet store has no idea that they sold me a tiny Hitler incarnate. They only know that I snatched up a too-young baby pig almost as soon as she was put up for adoption and thereby "demand" more. Damn it.)

Be strong, put your blinders on when you shop for your pets' stocking stuffers, and if you're in the mood to make life difficult for someone else and you do see a puppy for sale, give the store a heaping helping of hell. Ask them all the questions they are so not predisposed to answer. It's a unique way to blow off holiday stress. And think about where you'd rather put this Law into action - good breeders and petshops without pets, anybody?

Salvation in sight?

First off, thanks so much to Terrierman for linking MoT in his blog! MoT is still just a baby blog, and any publicity it can get is appreciated. But hang tight, I'm not done singing your praises yet.

Today I want to talk about open registries, which are - apparently - little-known in the dog world. Stand still so I can condemn you (despite not fully understanding the concept myself until recently). If you already knew about open registries, you move to the front of the class. If you're a breeder and you work with open registries, you get a gold star! Two more and I'll let you pick something out from a box of garage-sale trinkets at the end of the week.

The concept of open vs. closed registries can be difficult to grasp if, like me, a lot of the medical genetical jargon goes over your head and genetic pedigrees reeling off numerous abbreviations and symbols lose you somewhere around the third generation. Just to double-check I had my facts straight, I did some extra research a couple days ago and - hallelujah! - at last, found an article I could understand, that cleared up a couple things for me. And then I reached the bottom of the article and guess who it was by! T-man, have I mentioned lately that you're my hero?

Anyway, I wanted to talk about registries because they tie in nicely with what I've been yammering on about lately; the health problems in purebreds. It goes like this:

Closed registries will tell you what health checks an individual dog passed. Think OFA and CERF: these are closed registries. If the dog was screened for health problems and is sound, it'll show up in the registries. So, obviously, you want to breed a dog that shows up sound.

Open registries don't just tell you what the dog passed. They tell you what the dog failed. They also tell you that, although this dog is free from eye problems, one of his parents has glaucoma, and so does his sister. (GDC is an open registry.)

So you see why open registries are becoming more favoured.

Inbreeding is indeed a raging problem in purebreds. And by using closed registries to select the dogs we breed, we are increasingly tightening the noose already wrapped around the doggy gene pool, slowly making that pool smaller and smaller - and more unhealthy. Switching to open registry flings open the door to a whole new pool, a big, diverse one. Open registry doesn't mean cross-breed and it doesn't mean lower your standards either. It means toss out this useless traditional method and breed healthy - I mean really breed healthy.

I searched long and hard for a pro-closed argument that would explain to me why we're still using this system if open is that much better. Terrierman can explain it much better than I can, but essentially: it comes from an old, outdated idea about genetics that we're still seeing now - that the best genes will out. The idea behind the closed registry goes along with the idea of "survival of the fittest". Problem is, of course, dogs aren't wild animals, and we choose their mates. The lesson here, basically, is that just because something's been done one way for a long time doesn't mean it's all good (hello, America! Letting gays marry won't cause Russia to invade).

So why hasn't it changed?

That's thanks to the AKC - that tall guy in the cape, twirling his moustache, over there. The AKC's closed registry policies are strangling our gene pools to puddles. They make the rules and we follow them so our dogs can go on proving their quality by trotting around the show ring and stacking nicely. Our dogs are WAY TOO UNHEALTHY and the AKC isn't facing up to that. We need an open registry system now.

On a similar note, could cross-breeding be the solution? NO. I'm tired of people pretending that they mix dogs up for the good of dogkind. Yes, F1 hybrids can be healthier than their parents, but they can also inherit the genes for defects from both sides. Mutts can be a disaster in the hands of people who don't know what they're doing.

Crossing and back-crossing, on the other hand... I'm inclined to say this could help the situation, when I think of especially unhealthy dogs that need change NOW. My thoughts always go to the pug and the Shar-pei first, but that may be just because I hate their Ori-pei offspring almost as much as I hate those stupid square blocks in Tetris that only show up exactly when you don't need them. Are we really on to something with mixes like the puggle? Could breeding in proper airways and breeding back to pugs be the breed's salvation? Or can they hang on till the Kennel Club gets its collective ass in gear and starts thinking about the dogs?

(Find out next week, on ...!)

I guess this forum is now open for discussion - I'd love to hear some opinions on this one, especially if you're more involved in registries than I am.