I remember having an argument (as school children often do) about whether Spuds was dog or a pig!
I love the name for this breed in Afrikaans: “varkhond.”
Yes. They call them “pig dogs.”
When I was in my late teens, this was one breed I was really into.
I read everything I could find about them.
I still have a very dog-eared book on bull terriers, which has all the breed lore and history in it.
Too bad the process of turning James Hinks’s bull and terrier strain into a dog that looks like a pig required a lot of inbreeding.
All dog breed are the result of breeding “in and in” as Robert Bakewell called his process.
NB: I am not saying that modern breeders are inbreeding these dogs. I’m saying that the process that created them over the past century and half or so has left them with a depauperate gene pool.
I’m not making this stuff up. There is a well-known study of COI’s in purebred dogs, and this breed was most inbred.
Too bad that study seems to have disappeared from the internet.
Here’s an article that discusses the study:
http://www.beipublications.com/articles/pdf/founder_effect.pdf
How can you not have inbreeding when the eligibility list is closed to outsiders?
Of course, and this problem is made worse by using just a few studs to produce a large proportion of the offspring.
Inbreeding is not inherently evil. It’s a technique. It’s acceptable in animal breeding.
But when you have no way of adding new blood, it’s just a matter of time until things fall apart.
dogs can not pole vault, i resemble people trying
to make their dogs act like humans
The study that said that bull terriers were the most inbred also said that JRT’s were the least.
I do, too.
Especially cartoon versions of humans.
Spuds’ real name was Evie, Ch Honeytree Evil Eye. We are good friends with her breeders and the people who owned her sire, and knew her owners very well. She was every bit as laid back in real life as she was in the commercials. That is why the whole thing took off like it did. It originally started out only as a college poster. She was bred to my stud dog twice, but never produced any puppies.
It is difficult to outcross BTs. We have a litter of puppies at the moment that are about as outcrossed as we can get. The mother is linebred on one of my bitches, she was bred to a dog from New Zealand/Australian pedigrees. Eventually they all pretty much go back to the same dogs but in this case it is very very far back into the pedigree. A lot of us breeders insist on only using dogs who have been cleared by health testing and dogs that have been BAER tested and have bilateral hearing. At this point we have no DNA testing to eliminate defects. However, the gene that causes lens luxation in the mini bull has been found and reputable breeders will be able to eradicate it.
I’ll just say that many people misunderstand what I write about inbreeding in bull terriers.
I don’t believe it is the fault of modern breeders. It is something that happened as the breed developed.
And I have seen the photos of the early colored BT’s that were brought into the programs. They didn’t have the features we’d associate with the best show dogs of this breed. They had staffie features. If one were to do outcrossing even to the other bull and terrier breeds, it would be next to impossible to get the dogs back to their correct shape.
The study also included mini bulls, and they weren’t as depauperate genetically as the standard ones.
Breeding dogs is a lot like economics. Everything has disadvantages as well as advantages. Harry Truman once commented that he wanted to meet a one handed economist. When he was asked why, he said that every economist he met would say “on the other hand” after giving him advice.
That’s the way dog breeding is. It’s all about trade-offs and trying to balance all the costs and benefits.
It’s not quite a science. It’s an art.
I’m reading the Alby Mangels biography just now, and in it there is an incident where his very functional, non-show type Bull Terrier Sam disappears and breeds with an Aborigine’s dog. Later, Alby goes by and sees the pups and a photo of one is in his book, and this very crossbred animal has VERY Bull Terrier characteristics, including that classic Roman nose! So outcrossing while preserving Bull Terrier characteristics would certainly be possible, if one were interested in producing healthy, functional animals that were still identifiable as Bull Terriers, if not strictly show-type animals. Then perhaps with a more genetically diverse line, the show people would dip into that on occaision to improve the diversity of their own lines, with little loss of true Bull Terrier characteristics. Ditto for all other show dog lines. And I know I’m pecking this out in vain, but we all have to dream, don’t we?