I am often amazed at what people think they are doing with dogs.
No one has demonstrated to me what is essentially an article of faith or at least a current mantra of the AKC-apologist set:
That breeding to a breed standard means that the dog is healthy.
And from what I’ve seen in the actual scientific literature, it’s actually something that is probably not true.
At least not always true:
Now, if you’re breeding a vizsla to its breed standard, you’re really not producing any exaggerations that might cause the dog to be unhealthy.
But the same logic that produces the athletic and svelte vizsla– that is healthy because it is bred to a written standard– simply cannot apply to a dog like a pug.
A vizsla is a gundog. It was developed in Hungary as an HPR, and it actually prospered quite well during the communist years as it was the Hungarian equivalent of the German forester’s drahthaar.
Vizslas, like many continental gundog breeds, were only recently allowed to be sold to people who were not hunters. Thus, through most of the history of this breed, it was always a performance dog that was bred to a performance standard that also was as much about the dog’s behavior and aptitude as its conformation.
You cannot say that about pugs.
Or a lot of other breeds.
What use does a pug have?
Well, it’s a pet dog. A pet dog doesn’t have to bred to any sort of performance standard like a vizsla would be.
And this is precisely where things start to go off the rails.
In the case of a vizsla, a written standard has to have some basis in the real world.
In the case of the pug, it can be as convoluted as the human imagination will take it.
And that’s the big problem with saying that breeding to a breed standard makes a dog healthy.
To breed a dog with as many health problems as pugs have that call all be traced to its various exaggerations in morphology is perhaps the most stupid thing we’ve ever done to dogs.
It’s also unusually counterproductive.
The claim is that modern show dog breeders are selecting for the healthiest dogs ever, but this claim doesn’t even pass the giggle test when you start looking at dogs like pugs.
There are lots of claims that pugs have ancient Chinese origins, and although I will admit they do have some ancestry from dogs imported from China, most of their development actually happened in the West, first in the Dutch Republic and then in the UK.
And it’s in those countries that breed took on its current form.
In the early nineteenth centur, this is what an English pug looked like:
It’s still a brachycephalic dog. And yes, it has cropped ears.
But it still has a relatively normal dog body.
And in 200 years of “breed improvement,” we’ve produced a dog like the modern pug, which has too many health problems to elucidate in a single blog post. Almost every single one of these problems can be traced to its phenotype, which has been the result of human ignorance mixing in with human caprice and vanity.
The story of the pug is the story of everything that is wrong with dogs in the West.
It’s a tragedy masquerading as virtue.
Breeding to the standard has done nothing good for the pug.
And these people ought to be ashamed of themselves.
But they aren’t.
They twist it all around to blaming it on puppy mills and the mass production industry.
But that’s nothing more than an obfuscation.
If the public were fully informed of the problems that come from breeding a dog with a muzzle like a pug’s, I don’t think the breed would have one tenth of the popularity it now has.
At the very least, there would be demands to change the standard or maybe bring in new blood to make a more healthily conformed dogs.
Of course, the bastards lambaste the puggles, which are not terrible idea. However, the entire puggle concept has been based upon a puppy mill economic model, so at least right now, it’s a bit doomed to failure.
But that doesn’t mean the concept is wrong. It just means that puggle and pug cross-breeding for health would have to take more human approach.
Because that’s one thing the modern pug fancy doesn’t have going for it– they really don’t care about how much suffering they cause the dogs.
They delude themselves into thinking that if they just win ribbons, they are being ethical
Instead, they are breeding dogs that have obvious problems. These problems are obvious to anyone but a pug breeder, of course.
They’ve bought into the cult.
And there is no reasoning with them.
No, they delude themselves into believing that because some Pug’s appear able to compensate for their bollocks anatomy and live active lives, that the rest of us are talking shite, and that it’s ok to carry on breeding anatomical wrecks.
That’s it exactly.
It`s worse than that. When pet owners buy a pug and comment on the snorting and breathing problems, they are told by the breeders that it is “really cute” and “a feature of the breed”. And they believe it! The pug is the most popular toydog in the UK, so the message is absolutely not getting through. I don`t think it ever will. I honestly think there is more hope for the Peke than the Pug.
Elizabeth
“They delude themselves into thinking that if they just win ribbons, they are being ethical”
This line right here sums the dog fancy up nicely. Great post.
Absolutely Pugly!
Just from curiosity, I found the pug breed standard in 19th edition of the AKC’s “Complete Dog Book” (1998). It describes the pug’s head as “large, massive, round” but all that ir says about the muzzle is “short, blunt, square, but not upfaced”. Nowhere does it describe a flat face as in the Pekingese or bulldog.
So it would seem that the problem lies not so much in the words of the breed standard, but in people’s interpretation (or misinterpretation?). Unfortunately, it is all too common, that people cannot grasp that an ideal may lie in moderation rather than in exaggeration or excess. It is so much easier to recognize “more” rather than “just right”.
Parallel with the demand for cockerpoos and labradoodles, the trend we are seeing away from small health compromised purebreds such as pugs and cavaliers and other inbred types and towards potentially healthier, better constructed and interesting little one-offs is to be welcomed imo. If a lot of the dedicated exhibitors hate it – good!
This is a quote from one of the FB dog breeding groups I am on. It concerns a bad bite in an Australian Labradoodle. (Note that Australian Labradoodles are NOT first crosses, they are well on their way to being an established breed. That is neither here nor there but I thought the point should be made.)
“Well it’s hard to say because your dealing with mutts. There is no breed standard as to what is normal. Could be a growth phase but if most of the litter has the same issue it is genetic and comes from maybe poor stock. Most people who breed mutts don’t health and genetic test because there is no standard as to what is normal in the breed.”
Aaaaaand therein lies the entire problem with the dog fancy and the sainted Holy Standard. There IS a standard for ‘normal, average’ dog conformation. There IS a standard for a ‘normal, average’ bite in a dog: scissors bite in front, teeth in the jaw line up so that chewing is normal, no occlusions. There IS a standard for ‘normal’ health. (I will not get started on ‘testing’ for a cross-breeding. Let’s just say that it’s exactly the same as ‘testing’ for a purebred breeding and leave it at that.)
COMMON SENSE and UNDERSTANDING OF FUNCTION no longer have a place in dogs, because the standard is TRUTH and if it’s not in the standard it’s not ‘normal’, and if it’s not in the standard obviously no one can simply figure out what works ‘normally’ for themselves.
I have been told more than once that you cannot breed crosses ‘responsibly’ because there is no standard. Evidently the understanding of biomechanics and function that comes from observation cannot be applied.
I’d like to show these idiots the Saluki standard, which is extremely vague and actually REQUIRES some knowledge of function to interpret:
“General Appearance
The whole appearance of this breed should give an impression of grace and symmetry and of great speed and endurance coupled with strength and activity to enable it to kill gazelle or other quarry over deep sand or rocky mountains.”
http://www.akc.org/breeds/saluki/breed_standard.cfm
Unless you have watched dogs run, dogs of different types with different conformation, as objectively as possible knowing the PURPOSE of the dog, you will be lost. It is no wonder that the show Afghan is in the state that it’s in.
Then I like to show people this article, which throws the entire concept of standards into doubt:
“I WANT YOU TO LEAVE HERE with this idea: things you cannot see are more important than things you can. There are many things about Salukis that a judge can’t see and can’t feel, and functionally, those things are more important than the visible and palpable ones.”
http://saluqi.home.netcom.com/belkin.htm
I have dogs which appear to be ‘normal’ conformationally, but actually function at a much lower level than others. This should be obvious to any idiot. But what you have in the dog fancy, going back to the original quote from the…undoubtedly ‘responsible’…breeder on the FB group, is no real knowledge of what is ‘normal’ and what ‘function’ actually is. In dogs like a Pug, or a Peke, you have the normalization of ‘abnormal’ and the lack of reasonable understanding of the ‘function’ of a ‘normal’ dog.
Pug is what Mark Derr would call a “Biological Toy”.
The flat face makes some people see these dogs as looking more human and that is what makes them appealing to them so what is making the breed unhealthy and short lived is what these people like…a bit of a conundrum. Too bad the dog has to suffer in order to delight man. I think that happens a lot with the human/canine relationship… A fine way to deal with a best friend…
that little pug in the painting looks rather like my buddy, except for the ears ofcourse. there is a line of pugs in Germany that have been bred to have a longer muzzle and they are lovely, would happily have one of them. I think what are dismissively called pet quality pekes are much better too ,id go for one of them but I would go no where near a show type one.
The most depressing part is how universally friendly they are to people. I always want to tell them, ‘No, look, we’re the entire reason for every single one of your health problems with the possible exception of alopecia. And you have ALL OF THEM. You should really hate us all.’
Would you please cite some sources where you read or heard that the AKC (or its apologists) claims that breeding to the breed standard means that the dog is healthy?
Breed standards are maintained by each breed’s “parent” club. So, for Irish Water Spaniels, the breed standard is maintained by the Irish Water Spaniel Club of America. In its breed standard, it does not say that an IWS meeting the standard is healthy. The standard describes the “ideal adult Irish Water Spaniel in hard working condition.” (http://www.iwsca.org/breedstandard.htm)
All of that said, people who show their dogs primarily in conformation will do what is required to win, and judges will make the oddest decisions, even though they are supposedly educated and tested for the standards of those breeds and groups they are qualified to judge. Even so, I have not seen an IWS win that would be physically incapable of doing the work of retrieving gamebirds from land and water.
Full disclosure — I show my Irish Water Spaniels in all kinds of performance events, including conformation, but also in obedience, rally obedience, hunting tests, flyball, and dock diving. An unsound dog would not meet my criteria for what I want to be able to do with my dog.
https://retrieverman.net/2014/04/23/happy-healthy-dogs/
That’s one (very rare and very cancer-ridden) breed. (Recent study suggests that this is the most cancer-ridden of all retrievers).
What about pugs? Or pekes? Or bulldogs?
This is what happens:
You have dogs with fairly decent standards– most of them either continental or very rare British gun dogs (curly-coated retrievers, vizslas)– and it’s the same logic that says this is a nicely conformed gun dog as the one that says it’s a nicely conformed peke. It’s just a piece of paper in the end. It’s scripture. Scripture is written by people and interpreted by people, and people can be ignorant and they can be devious.
The problem with IWS is more about gene loss in the closed registry system, not terrible conformation.
So yes, in this case, the hobby is also unproductive.
It produces a gun dog that is useful, but one that isn’t gonna live very long.
In Ireland, where they rural duck shooters don’t give a fig about closed registries, IWS are crossed with Labradors and land spaniels. David Hancock writes about a Labrador/”whiptail” cross in his Gundog book.
But the problem is that unlike Ireland, this isn’t a well-established rural breed here, so you might be able to get away with cross more common breeds without getting the fatwas, you do one outcross with an American IWS and you’re history with the breed.
That’s not preserving the breed.
Of course, you can’t preserve a biologically entity. You can conserve it, but that’s a concept way outside the purview of the modern dog fancy.
“Your hobby is stupid. . . “. OK, is it more or less “stupid” than batting a little white ball around acres of manicured lawn? Or watching 22 large men bashing each other about for possession of an oddly shaped “pigskin”? Angling for fish only to release them? Or. . . There are many other popular activities that could be classed as “stupid”, no doubt.
Humans do lots of nonessential activities, for many reasons, among them social connections, satisfaction in developing a skill (it does take some skill in order to properly present a show dog), and more. Yes, some segments of the purebred dog world are guilty of all the sins you’ve mentioned, and even more; but also there are others who try their best to do all that’s right in breeding and maintaining the dogs. They just don’t ever get the attention that the easy targets do.
I’m not trying to change anyone’s opinions, just perhaps give a little broader perspective. There are people in the game who recognize the problems, and try to do something about them, believe it or not.
I find those things that are called “sports” on the level of unbelievably, mind-numbing boring that I can’t even name a team beyond the Piksburg Stillers (which is the closest one!).
The thing is:
To do what’s right with dogs, you really have to go against the deeply entrenched values and traditions.
http://pedigreedogsexposed.blogspot.com/2014/05/breeding-not-bitching-for-future.html