Jock Richardson sought virtual immortality by breeding from Wiston Cap so many times.
In an insightful post at the Border Wars blog, Christopher Landauer discusses an important aspect of the dog culture. It does not matter what the aspect of the dog culture it is, but this aspect seems to be the main force that drives people into doing things that are a bit risky for the long-term viability of whatever strain is being produced:
Each hobbyist seeks immortality through the dogs he or she produces, and each hobbyist would like a little notoriety within the designated community.
These two forces are quite destructive. Take the culture of trial border collies, which celebrates Wiston Cap, even if over-using him as a stud had definite health and genetic diversity consequences:
Jock Richardson didn’t have a crisis of conscience after he cashed the 10th check for studding out Wiston Cap and he didn’t quit after the 100th check. He cashed over 388 such checks and Wiston Cap sired over 1,900 registered puppies. I assume that the only thing that stopped Wiston Cap from impregnating as many bitches as possible year round until his death was probably a venereal disease that made him sterile. At some point nature says ENOUGH long before human-kind figures this out. His progeny stopped abruptly several years before his death.
Wiston Cap wasn’t in the dark ages, he lived in the 1970s and his owner died only 10 years ago. Would we praise a repeat performance today or would we condemn it?
No one owns “the breed” and altruism doesn’t exist, so individual ego, self aggrandizement, and desire for immortality through fame trumps the greater good. People whose greatest accomplishment in life is in their dogs do exist and asking them to take their last bow before they have to be dragged kicking and screaming, or in most cases whimpering, from the spotlight, is unseemly. We don’t criticize these people, we put their dogs on our logos and name awards after them. We give them glowing obituaries and make sure that any mention of the breed includes at least one or two homages to their dog. Everyone seems to know that Wiston Cap carried the gene for a red coat color, but no one seems to know that he also carried CEA.
The culture at large rewards this sort of thinking. In the AKC, top producing studs are lauded, as if a few studs producing as many offspring as possible is somehow good for the population genetics of these breeds.
The problem with dogs is deep within the systems in which these culture exist. They reward competitive values over good sense, and people live in a fantasy world in which the best way to win is to breed from the dogs who do win. It is almost Lysenkoist to believe that one can breed show dogs or working dogs by breeding from an elite set of studs. Different genes interact with those of different dams, and those things that make those studs so special may not be expressed when bred with a particular dam.
And never mind the parts of the dog that are not inherited but have to be learned through careful training or developed through good nutrition and conditioning.
But even having a good Darwinian understanding of dogs doesn’t stop this very destructive part of the culture.
Dog culture simply is not collaborative enough to encourage the preservation of genetic diversity, and within every culture, there are always people who have nothing to do but pull out daggers against someone who does something they don’t like.
I’m sure they are in every part of society, but in dogs, it seems that it’s those people who wind up having the power, the ones who use bromides and harassment to keep things going their way, and the ones who stand in the way of reform.
Not all people in dogs are like this, and even within the leadership of various clubs, there are people who understand these problems and want to correct them.
To correct them, however, would cause a great shift in what people do in dogs. Landauer explains what this change in breeding ethics would have to look like:
It requires a breeding ethic in which you don’t only select just one offspring from a parent to carry on the legacy. This isn’t hard for males, but few females have more than one significant offspring. Popular sires have no problem creating multiple distributed copies of themselves in the gene pool, but it’s a rare female who has 10 registered children who all have sustained lines.
We don’t have to breed 10 puppies from each litter though, as long as we have breed a diversity of puppies in the past. If a sire and dam both came from litters where just a few of their brothers and sisters were bred, the genetic diversity from the grandparent dogs will be preserved in those cousin lines and the need to preserve those genes in this litter is greatly diminished.
This is why preserving genetic diversity is a community endeavor. No single breeder can accomplish this. No line of dogs can be a universal outcross. No one litter can by itself can capture enough of the genome.
But in most so many strains, breeders select only a handful of puppies as breeders. A few even sell the majority of their stock already spayed and neutered.
This, of course, allows the individual breeder to have a lot more power over his or her strain. It is good for virtual immortality.
It is terrible for genetic diversity, and if we actually wanted to work toward more genetically diverse dogs, breeders would do much more to encourage their puppy buyers to get into this.
And to allow those buyers a bit of freedom to be experimental with their breeding choice.
But that means that the breeder of the original dogs have to let go a bit, and that means less of a chance at virtual immortality within the designated dog culture.
Of course, one could get virtual immortality by encouraging people to increase genetic diversity within a chosen breed and help the long-term viability of the breed and of the species at large.
However, those virtues simply aren’t rewarded within the dog cultures.
But it’s high time they were.
If people actually understood the looming crisis with MHC/DLA genes in domestic dogs, I don’t see how anyone could think that the current way of doing things is fine.
But then again, I’m an outsider.
Within the fancy and the trial cultures, denialism is the most important thing. Various biologists and geneticists who become part of these clubs seem to forget much of what they learned in school or what they say must be done to save various endangered species.
No one seems to understand that contrived genetic bottlenecks are no better than natural ones.
The former are superior because they are the ticket to fame and immortality within a cultural construct, and the latter are bad because they will kill endangered species.
But they are both bad.
It’s just that the former get reinforced within the human culture that we think they are good.
To solve these problems, we are either going to have to change the culture or start our own competing culture. The public seems to be receptive to changing things. People are skeptical about the various cultures already. We just have to provide something else– something more collaborative and science-based.
Excellent words of Wisdom Scotty.
Great article!!
Are dog shows really entered by people who want to improve the future of the breed, or by people who want to say “My dog is better than yours”?
“And his progeny will be better than yours for ages to come.” – how’s that for snob appeal?
Good article, but not a problem which I think education can solve. It’s not lack of education, but as the article implies, different goals.
I guess, some people are in it for the dogs, but the rest of the people are in it for snob appeal.
Yep, HDP, when I saw the picture above of the guy in overalls, the first thing I thought was “huge snob”.
Scotty, your new kennel may have difficulty placing dogs with crappy pedigrees (but low COIs!) in working homes, and then encouraging their new owners to breed them with other dogs that noone else wants to breed from.
I will take one, though. And I promise to only breed her to dogs with zero field trial points.
Then when these dogs get something like one of those mutant devil cancers, it will be these selfish assholes we’ll blame for it all.
I have no use for these kinds of arguments.
They are dangerous.
Ask one of these rednecks about DLA/MHC genes.
They don’t know what kind of risky business they are engaged in.
Trials are not work. Trials are trials.
They are the working equivalent of dog shows, and in the final analysis, using them to breed an elite is no better for population genetics than dog shows..
The only way these people are getting away with such tight breedings in most working dogs is they breed outside and let the bitches whelp in dog houses. Wolves and coyotes whelp in den that are protected from the elements. A pup born in a dog house is more at the mercy of natural selection than a wolf or a coyote pup typically is.
That’s how they get away with it.
It does nothing for MHC/DLA genes though, and when you have a problem with those, it’s usually too late to fix it.
And it usually happens when people are bragging about how long-lived their dogs are.
Golden retrievers, I suspect, have real problems with MHC/DLA and it wasn’t long ago that people were bragging about how long-lived they are. Now they have an alarming cancer rate.
Of course, that is never going to be accepted much in officialdom.
But look at what the MHC does and look at what problems goldens have: allergies, cancer, and skin issues. All of which result from some aspect of immune system not working properly.
Bill,
Compare the picture of the guy at home with what he looks like at a trial wearing a 3 piece suit. “Putting on the dog” is right.
I think the actual history in this case proves the point. These guys probably had few if any other occasions to wear those suits to, and few if any other venues to get their names remembered.
Their egos are absolutely intertwined with the dogs.
As for having difficulty placing dogs in “actual working homes” I call B.S. First, because actual working homes are more interested in performance they can see than performance on a paper or some dog that did something in a ring or at a trial.
REAL working farms and ranches are the places you’re likely to find unregistered dogs whose pedigree cred is really about first hand knowledge of seeing a parent working at the ranch down the road.
Second, working homes are not the only game in town. They are disappearing for most breeds left and right likely to never return, and they are not numerous enough to support a healthy breed on their own.
Third, for almost all working breeds the demands of work are less than the esoteric and overly specific demands of a trial or a show. People who actually use their dogs to do the work rarely make the same stupid breeding decisions as people caught up in a platonic ideal or in the overly distilled dance steps of a trial.
I am not sure that I understand.
If he is selling trial dog puppies, of course, he has trouble placing them with real working ranches, because the ranches know the difference between work and trails, right?
Were some ranchers not able to understand, because this dog was Winston Cap himself, and trail sheepdogs before that were less inbred, and maybe better as ranch working dogs than what they are now?
“breed them with other dogs that noone else wants to breed from”
This is nonsense. Puppy buyers want happy and healthy animals. It’s only the jock sniffing wannabe breeders who fetishize a single sire or two.
More people want “a dog like I had before,” or “a dog like that one down the street” than “a dog just like that supposed awesome winning stud that I’ve never ever seen or really know anything about.”
And as for your last point, the goal is not to breed to mediocrity, it’s to expand the list of traits we take into account.
Mark Derr has some really good critiques of the gun dog trialling system in Dog’s Best Friend. He makes almost exactly the same arguments you are making about sheepdog trials.
Mark Derr’s book very clearly defends the cur and the feist, which at the time of that book had not been standardized and “improved” into anything. They were meant to be good working dogs and able to think. And were able to do a variety of tasks.
Once a club makes standards and shows for curs, they are not curs anymore, they are show dogs.
They are curs in name only.
Lots of breeds arenow ‘working dogs’ in name only.
For example: the American Cocker Spaniel – how many of them hunt woodcock? How many of them spaniel (flush and fetch) any birds?
Do were have woodcock here?
Bill, I give you points for funny, but have you ever seen some of those dolled up show people at their homes when they are cleaning their dog cages? No a pretty sight. Doesn’t smell good either.
And people who dress like slobs can be snobby about other things than clothes. Like their dogs fighting ability or owning the local show winning dogs, or something a distant ancestor did, or their college scores, or how good they can throw a ball, or how they are in bed, or how much beer they can drink without passing out, or who can piss the longest distance (last 2 points probably related), or ………. well, people can get snobby about all sorts of things.
A big point is to be happy with what you are without focusing on what other people are or are not.
It’s reasonably okay to be proud that your dog does well at some game, but when a person starts insulting other people whose dogs don’t play that game, then it is very snobby.
Like: people who say that dogs who aren’t shown, or who don’t do well at dog shows, should be neutered/spayed.
Like:they think that their game is the only game there is, and using dogs to play games is more important than what a dog does in ‘real life’ like being a pet or herding sheep on a ranch.
Just because the hat and dress coat don’t fit very well doesn’t mean he wasn’t REALLY trying to put on airs a little bit.
I bet we could do a good socio-economic analysis of gun dog and sheep dog trials.
Gun dogs were the purview of the elite. Collies were the commoner’s dog. But it seems to me the collie trials are almost trying to imitate the gun dog trial’s pomp and circumstance.
Of course, American gun dog trials aren’t pomp and circumstance at all.
Anyone can go hunting with a dog, it takes money to buy enough land for a sheep ranch, so why try to impress with hunter clothes when you can dress like a rancher?
Especially if you live where there are ranchers, and you might be mistaken for being on of them?
Myself, I want to start a fad that develops into a long term fashion, where people wear pajamas. Yeah, I’d like that!
P.J.s are so comforable! And they are cute too. And soft, I like soft and fuzzy. And some of the summer pajamas are slinky and silky – I like that too.
And why not? Habit. People are in the habit of wearing work clothes when they go outside. It’s just a habit.
If you work construction, it makes sense to wear work clothes to work, but why wear work clothes to go to the store or visit your parents? (not like they haven’t seen you in pajamas before, is it?)
And lots of people work jobs that they could wear pajamas to. The cashiers at the store, they could wear pagamas to work. Teachers, other than P.E. teachers, could wear pajamas to work.
We could all wear pagamas in public. I love the idea. I wouldn’t wear the same pajamas that I sleep in outside, I’d wear fresh unwrinkled ones.
There might be laws against wearing pajamas in public. Laws can be something that does NOT make sense.
Like, girls can wear short shorts, and a skimpy halter top in public, but not pajamas that cover more, because pajamas have a little label that says “pajamas”.
Put a different label that says “street clothes”, or “casual wear” and they’d be regular clothes, wouldn’t they? It’s a matter of words and labels more than a different styles isn’t it?
Maybe if the idea got going, we could have a law firm to start letting their employees to wear pajamas to work? If the labels were removed it would be hard to know what is legally a pajama and what is legally casual wear.
That would be a good episode for Bill Shatner’s show Boston Legal. Why can’t we wear P.J.s to work, P.J.s in public? (Becuse your boss might fire you, and you might get arrested at a store.)
In women’s clothing, occasionally, it is only a matter of color. The street clothes have plain colors and the pajamas have little animals on them.
Do you know what the famous explorer Ivan Sanderson wore when he explored the jungles?
Bright pink silk pajamas from a tailor in Hong Kong. He said they were comforable, light weight, kept the mosquitos off, and the bright color was a warning sign that he wasn’t a deer type prey animal – he was the sort of animal that wasn’t trying to hide, and a new color of beast as well (seen any pink elephants lately?).
Hunting is leisure activity, a sign of being able to take time off to pursue a sport.
Farmers and ranchers don’t buy farms, they take out huge mortgages and toil endlessly to try and get by.
The hunting class lends the money to the farming class.
In Scotland and England, it is kind of interesting how the dynamic happened.
https://retrieverman.wordpress.com/2009/11/15/the-dark-side-of-guisachan/
In the case of many large shooting estates, like Guisachan, farmers were driven off their land to make room for shooting.
We know the names of virtually ever retriever, setter, or spaniel kept at Guisachan. We don’t know the name of the collies of the displaced crofters, many of whom were forced to move to Canada to make a living.
The Highland Clearances were the Scottish version of the Enclosure.
Chris, you are probally right, but from the point of view from the average joe & jane standing in line at the check-out counter, I don’t think that most Americans (at least those from hunting areas) view hunters as rich. They know too many broke relatives who hunt, and people who hunt to get free meat.
Maybe people who live in ranching areas view ranchers as debt ridden over-worked poor people, but I think that the average city apartment dweller views anyone with lots of land as rich –
after all, the apartment dweller might not have been able to get the bank to loan them money for a house (certainly not for a huge ranch), or if they had a house, they might have lost it due to changes in their income, –
so, debt-ridden, and scraping by, or not, the rancher seems richer – they have their own house, their own xxxxxxxx-giant ‘backyard’, and they also have the leisure aura of not working for anyone else (even if they actually have a 40 hour job and work the ranch after driving home).
Ranching has its own status, if not wealth. I think most city women who do not come from hunting families view hunting as a stupid hobby (or worse). It does NOT have status with them, at all.
Ask a divorced woman if she would like to go on a blind date with your divorced aquaintance Steve who is a hunter, or his brother Tom who is a rancher, and see which one she wants to date.
If you actually try this, shrug your shoulders if she asks what else Steve does, and just say “He usually just talks about all the hunting he does.
If she asks about Tom, just say that usually all he talks about is his ranch. Tell her that the brothers have an agreement that neither will date a woman the other has dated, so she can only date one.
Make them both about the same age and looks. Or go to some dating place, and enter twice and see if great hunting skills or a big ranch with a big morgage is the most desired!
Chris, I don’t expect you to actually test it out, but I think if you run the scenario through your head, you will find that much as change since the story of Cain and Able (where the hunter’s offering was favored).
Jock was never a snob he was a hard working farm shepherd who worked for my father
It doesn’t change the facts that border collie trials have ruined their gene pools with rather severe popular sire issues.
Jock was playing the popular sire game. He was not a man of means. This was his way of making a mark.
We now know that these methods of breeding from an elite, no matter what the reason, is are detrimental to dogs. Border collies are not immune because they are “worked.”
So because of trials we now have a diverse group of dogs that can be used from all over the world its worse than before? It used to be that you would use a dog from the next valley because that was all you had seen working.
No because if you look at pedigrees, they all derive from exactly the same ancestors. Trials are not better than shows in this respect. In golden retrievers, trial type dogs are almost all derived from older American strains or a very narrow gene pool of working dogs in the UK. They are found throughout the world, and they vary in appearance, but they are all related. Popular sire effect is a major problem in border collies in particular, especially those bred for trials. It matters not where they come from. They all descend from the same ancestors. Geographical diversity should not be confused with genetic diversity.
If the link below is another of your pieces I’ll pass on it thanks. When i mentioned from the next valley i meant cousin to cousin mating. So by your thoughts, using dogs from all over the world that share the same ancestors many generations back is worse than the old ways of putting cousin to cousin because they didn’t know what other dogs with different genetics from further afield were like?
To be honest I do think there is a valid point somewhere in what you are saying but I don’t think its sire/breed line specific, more to do with looking for perfect dogs in a genetic sense by the use of DNA tests for things that aren’t relevant to a working dog.
What dog breeds are suffering from is the founder-effect.
My own breed used to have over two dozens founders. However since someone catalogued the pedigrees of every Swedish Vallhund alive, there are only two or three surviving lines from the founding days. So while the dogs appear to be unrelated in modern pedigrees, when one does a deep-analysis, the total pedigree looks something more like the Hapsburg Dynasty.
If you visit the Border Wars blog, you will see a series of post demonstrating how few ancestors survive in today’s dogs.
The dog from America may not be related to the one in Australia within a 3-generation pedigree, but they share the same ancestors in a 8-generation or 10-generation pedigree and henceforth.
And because of the failure to preserve those ancestral lines which are now extinct, the Swedish Vallhund breed is starting to suffering from auto-immune disorders.
This is the post that is most pertinent to your question:
https://retrieverman.net/2010/10/08/intellectual-honesty-on-the-effects-of-trials-and-shows/
while I think you make some valid points, I don’t think you have right to make assumption about a man you do not know or one who is alive and able to defend himself.
I attack Julius Caesar and Robert E. Lee all the time.
So why is this any dfferent?
You’ve missed the point of the article, Michele. This is not a condemnation of one man, it is questioning the entire culture of dog breeding. Richardson and the several hundred other people who ever bred his dog and then over bred their dogs is simply an apt example of a harmful behavior we see in countless other breeds.
It is not the man’s talent or character that is suspect, but his behavior regarding how often he studded out his dog.
I think the majority of you have missed the point, which is not surprising considering most of you have no understanding of working dogs. The man in the article had the best sheepdog in the land. It was an everyday work dog and proved this by winning the most pristigious competition there is for sheepdogs. Therefore everybody wanted to use this as a stud dog. Why would the man refuse them? To achieve what he did the dog must have been fantastic, and the working sheepdog of today is very much improved by his usage. I dont think money or ego comes into it. If someone has decided that the dog is compatable with their bitch that is their choice. If any of you had owned a dog half as good as Wiston Cap then I’m sure you would let it be used to inrich the breed.
I don’t think you understood why I wrote this post, as do most trial apologists.
Trials have the same deleterious effect on gene pools that dog shows have. They are all about breeding from an elite.
You know that people bred working dogs long before they thought about competing with them?
I hope you know that that in places like the Australian Outback and most of interior US there are working stockdogs that never are trialed, and they are far more useful than trial winners for the reason that they aren’t trained to win prizes. They are trained to do work, which requires a dog that is capable of taking commands and thinking on its own. Most stock dog and retriever trials are about regimenting dogs so they all get the same objective test.
But when we start selecting from an elite of dogs that respond well to high regimentation training, you wind up with a gene pool that is genetically deapauperate as any show dog– and border collies from trial lines are not some highly outbred population. They aren’t. People say they are, but when you actually look at the pedigrees they aren’t at all.