8 P.M (EST) tonight on BBC America.
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The BBCA version is supposed to have some extra footage in it, yeah?
I heard that it might have some American experts in it.
I agree with the thesis of the documentary, but thought its biggest weakness was lack of contrast – that is, it showed the things that are wrong with the show culture without creating an affirmative case for the alternatives. There was no contrast with open registry breeds such as Alaskan Huskies, the working culture of Border Collies, or the performance-oriented Greyhounds. They mentioned working GSDs without ever showing the differences, or interviewing handlers/breeders of working lines.
I’m not nearly as familiar with the British kennel clubs, but the most powerful way to make the case against the AKC is to look at their treatment of the dissenters: the Cavalier King Charles Spaniel Club being denied membership in the AKC due to their strict code of conduct; the rejection of the LUA-Dalmatians; and the Border Wars. Genetics and the heritability of disease tends to go over the heads of most people, but they understand power politics instinctively.
I don’t know if the KC has done what the AKC has done, which is to pirate around to pick up breeds, usually by finding some quislings in the breed club, who then found another club, which becomes the AKC breed club.
I’m seeing some of this with the Lacy dog, where you find that most people in that breed do not want AKC recognition. However, you can find a few who do, and I’m sure the AKC will focus on those people to draw that breed in.
The lacy dog is the state dog of Texas. It’s derived from collie-types, greyhounds, and either Native American dogs, wolves, or coyotes.
I know that they pulled that stunt with the Cavaliers, Jack Russels, Border Collies… and I think the Coonhounds? Are there any others that I haven’t heard about yet?
It will be tried with Azawakh. They are an FSS breed right now and AKC recognizes dogs registered with two clubs: the American Azawakh Association and the Azawakh Club of America. I am a member of AZCA and preservationist breeders do not want full AKC recognition, we feel there is no reason to ever close the stud book, which is what happens when full recognition occurs.
I believe there was also a split with Leonbergers.
Why doesn’t the AKC let the -breed club- decide whether they want an open or closed book? For all the talk of the AKC being ‘just a file cabinet’ it seems to be able to bully clubs a lot.
The AKC likes to have it both ways on just about everything. We’re just a registry. But we’re the main quality control organization of dogs in the country. The Breed Clubs have a lot power, until they break certain shibboleths, then the AKC has power.
It’s the dog’s champion. But it’s just a file cabinet.
Legerdemain. It’s all legerdemain.
More about British show bred German shepherds – what a sorry sight… :(
http://www.dogmagazine.net/archives/1791/pedigree-dogs-exposed-filmmaker-releases-extended-footage-of-german-shepherds/
The AKC DID let the Basenji people open their stud books–perhaps it was allowed because they were breeding in unregistered but still recognizable Basenji-like dogs from Africa, rather than a “different breed”?
It was allowed for a simple reason: the early imported basenjis had no immunity to distemper and many died early on. The gene pool was very small, so after many generations, the AKC did let them go to Africa for new blood. Basenjis in Africa do tend to look like the ones we have here– although their tails are often not as tightly curled.
In fact, the brindle coloration that we have in show basenjis here was actually introduced from those later African imports. Brindle is a common color in these African dogs.
BTW, the main theory on why basenjis don’t bark is that in that part of Africa, leopards are common. Leopards love to eat dogs and jackals. A barking dog tends to attract leopards, so the basenjis were selected by leopard predation to become barkless. I have yet to find a good reason for their unusual estrous cycles, though. However, their estrous cycles are nothing like the Carolina dog. Carolina dogs have three heat cycles in quick succession during their breeding season.
No other dog has this feature.
Actually, the case of the Basenji studbook being opened is an interesting one and one from which other breeds should learn. Basenjis suffer from a form of hereditary anemia, and once a test was developed, carriers were eliminated from the gene pool in such numbers that the disease became very rare. Unfortunately, with the narrowing of the gene pool, another disease, Fanconi’s, which is a kidney disease, became much more common. If the stud book had not been opened, the people who imported the African Basenjis had plans to register them with a European country that had more lax registration rules. The stud book is being opened again, and it would be interesting to see if, because COO Basenji are available, the club goes the way the SPDBS did and have a permanent way to register COO dogs, instead of a limited time for the stud book to be open.
Yes, my present Basenji is one of those Brindles descended from recent African imports. The Basenji once-a-year heat cycle is coordinated so the pups will be born during the rainy season in Central Africa–their time of plenty, like summer in the temperate zones. Of course they opened the stud books because of the very few individuals that started the lines in this country, but I wonder if Basenji-like dogs had not still been available in Africa, would they have let them breed out to a whole separate breed? As unique as Basenjis are, there may have been more balking at that–their “barklessness”, for example–Basenjis crossed with other dogs tend to bark, come in heat twice a year, etc., so you might have lost a lot of the breed’s uniqueness. Thank goodness there were still plenty of “wild” Basenjis left! As for their “barklessness”–Basenjis CAN bark–usually just a single “woof!”, but they just rarely do–mine have only when EXTREMELY excited! They howl, whine, and growl just like other dogs–their growls sound like a Tasmanian Devil feeding frenzy! They also “yodel” when greeting–a particularly appealing sound, I think. But they aren’t noisy often, so I could see the leopard-thing as being a realistic factor for this. I was in Africa briefly in an area where there were leopards, and everyone who kept(or attempted to keep) dogs(most everyone was Muslim, and dogs were considered “unclean”, so few kept dogs, poor, deprived people!)–their greatest problem WAS leopards snatching them–leopards love dog meat so much, they will even enter houses to grab dogs!