• Home
  • About
  • Contact
  • Patreon
  • Premium Membership
  • Services

Natural History

by Scottie Westfall

Feeds:
Posts
Comments
« The problem with the PDE movement
Orphans of the Disused House »

Towards a nuanced understanding of inbreeding and dogs

August 1, 2019 by SWestfall3

 

beowulf

Humans have an aversion to inbreeding. We find the idea of two humans from the same family marrying and having children quite disgusting.

We also know that wild dogs have strong inbreeding avoidance behavior. Wolves and African wild dogs generally avoid mating with blood relatives. Most domestic dogs will mate with their relatives without reservation, and inbreeding has been a tool that dog breeders have used for centuries to establish type and promote homogeneity in their strains.

I have been a critic of inbreeding domestic dogs, but I now realize that I was cherry-picking the science a bit and playing up to human aversion to inbreeding to give a fully nuance and accurate understanding of what inbreeding can do to domestic dogs.

Inbreeding does tend to reduce MHC haplotype diversity over time, which can make dogs more susceptible to various maladies.  It also can increase the chance of deleterious recessive alleles from being inherited homozygously.  All of these are potential risks from inbreeding.

However, I would be remiss to say that inbreeding has not always been a horrible.  Indeed, certain breeds have been founded through a rigorous inbreeding and selection process that surely cannot be thought of as entirely disastrous to the strain.

A few years ago, I came across a book called Working Sheep Dogs: A Practical Guide to Breeding, Training and Handling by Tully Williams. In the text, Williams refers to Kyle Onstott’s work on dog breeding in which Onstott mention an experiment at the Wistar Institute involving rats. A “Miss King,” writes Onstott, bred rat siblings for twenty generations with a strong selection for vigor and stamina, and after twenty generations, she produced a strain of rats that were longer-lived, larger, and generally healthier than the average laboratory rat.

Onstott was a dog breeder and novelist, and his book on dog breeding was considered revolutionary when it was published in 1962. It is called The New Art of Breeding Better Dogs, and I have been trying to get my hands on a copy.  However, I was able to glean from the names mentioned in Williams’s quote of Onstott that the “Miss King” of the Wistar Institute is Helen Dean King.  Dr. (not “Miss”) King was one of the early researcher on the question of inbreeding, and one of leading lights of the Wistar Institute’s rat breeding experiments.

I was able to find her study in which she was able to create the super rats strain through inbreeding, and yes, she was able to do so through rigorous selection for vigor.

In dogs, it is difficult to find a similar experiment, but then I realized one was quite literally staring me in the face.

Most are unaware that German shepherd dogs are all quite closely related to each other. Yes, they appear to have a lot genetic diversity, because we have all these quite different working and show-bred forms, but they all derive from a very similar inbreeding experiment to the one that Dr. King performed at the Wistar Institute.

Max von Stephanitz based the breed upon a Thuringian sheepdog named Horand von Grafrath, which he then bred to Bavarian and Swabian/Württemberg sheepdogs. He then tightly bred upon the progeny. Indeed, the entire breed is based off of three grandsons of Horand. They were Beowulf, Pilot, and Heinz von Starkenburg. They were bred mostly to other descendants of Horand, and there was strong selection for temperament and vitality in the population. It is in these foundations of the breed that wolf may have been added, but the breed still derives from these three grandsons of a single dog.

We can have lots of debates about this in the comments, but the German shepherd dog as an entire breed is fairly healthy for a large breed dog.  In that inbred population, the deleterious allele that leads to a degenerative myelopathy was part of the founders, and the breed itself does have that issue.  Some eye issues were also part of the founding population.

However, if inbreeding were always such a terrible thing, every dog in the breed would be a genetic basket case. Regardless of what one might think about show dogs, the working police and military dogs derive from this exact same inbred population, and it would be folly to say these dogs lacked vigor or were universally unhealthy and unsound creatures. Indeed, it can be argued that the most useful dog ever bred was the German shepherd dog. It has that much utility in a variety of situations.

Now,  I am not saying that inbreeding problems don’t exist. I am saying that we need a nuanced understanding of what inbreeding can do to dog populations, and it is not universally a horrible thing.

Inbreeding and rigorous selection can be a good thing for a strain.  Of course, I know there are breeds that do need some genetic rescue. The Doberman pinscher was founded in much the same way as the German shepherd, using a much more diverse group of domestic dogs in the foundation strain. However, the breed suffers so much from inherited DCM that it an outcross program could very well be justified.

But those of us who advocate rationalism and science in understanding and caring for dogs must keep an open mind. We must look at all the objective science and avoid appeals to human prejudice.

That’s what I’ve tried to do here. I am correcting some of my earlier errors, and I hope this helps lead to a more nuanced view of the subject.

Share this:

  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • Reddit
  • Print
  • Tumblr
  • Pinterest
  • LinkedIn
  • Email

Like this:

Like Loading...

Posted in animal welfare, dog breeding, Uncategorized | Tagged German shepherd dog, inbreeding | 4 Comments

4 Responses

  1. on August 3, 2019 at 12:02 pm kittenz

    If it hadn’t been for inbreeding, there would be no dog breeds. Or cat breeds or livestock breeds, etc. It’s really that simple.

    That being said, the risks as well as rewards of tight inbreeding are well-known. MvS himself stressed that the occasional “rude dog” (unrelated,unregistered, and/or random-bred working dog) be brought into breeding programs. Most of those early “rude” additions were bitches & therefore had much less impact on the breed as a whole than would a stud, but his insistence of bringing unrelated but high-quality animals into the breed as time passed was a good idea that should never have been abandoned.


  2. on August 7, 2019 at 6:18 am nightseid

    At other times, I think it’s not always the dog breeders’ fault as much as it’s some dog owners’ fault for not taking care of their dogs properly. Actually even in Europe, especially in Austria, Poland, France and Italy (maybe Germany to some extent) there’s not only a substantial percentage of mixed breed dogs but also that sometimes mixed breed dogs outnumber purebreds there (it also helps that stray dogs are still a feature of European countrysides).


    • on August 7, 2019 at 8:10 pm Juniper

      “sometimes mixed breed dogs outnumber purebreds there”

      I was under the impression that mixed breed dogs outnumber purebred dogs all over the world, including the US.


      • on August 8, 2019 at 5:33 pm nightseid

        That’s true, mixed breed dogs do outnumber purebreds.



Comments are closed.

  • Like on Facebook

    The Retriever, Dog, and Wildlife Blog

    Promote Your Page Too
  • Blog Stats

    • 9,552,002 hits
  • Retrieverman’s Twitter

    • retrievermanii.blogspot.com/2021/01/the-la… https://t.co/su6REHh0jV 2 days ago
    • @Fiorella_im Seder = Democrats' George Costanza. The Jerk Store called. They don't want him returned. 2 days ago
    • one person unfollowed me // automatically checked by fllwrs.com 2 days ago
    • @Fiorella_im @MagnusPanvidya @theconvocouch How many liberals and TYT-type Youtuberati are you going to piss off tonight? 3 days ago
    • one person unfollowed me // automatically checked by fllwrs.com 5 days ago
  • Google rank

    Check Google Page Rank
  • Archives

    • October 2020
    • September 2020
    • August 2020
    • July 2020
    • June 2020
    • May 2020
    • April 2020
    • February 2020
    • January 2020
    • December 2019
    • November 2019
    • October 2019
    • September 2019
    • August 2019
    • July 2019
    • June 2019
    • May 2019
    • April 2019
    • March 2019
    • February 2019
    • January 2019
    • December 2018
    • November 2018
    • October 2018
    • September 2018
    • August 2018
    • July 2018
    • June 2018
    • May 2018
    • April 2018
    • March 2018
    • February 2018
    • January 2018
    • December 2017
    • November 2017
    • October 2017
    • September 2017
    • August 2017
    • July 2017
    • June 2017
    • May 2017
    • April 2017
    • March 2017
    • February 2017
    • January 2017
    • December 2016
    • November 2016
    • October 2016
    • September 2016
    • August 2016
    • July 2016
    • June 2016
    • May 2016
    • April 2016
    • March 2016
    • February 2016
    • January 2016
    • December 2015
    • November 2015
    • October 2015
    • September 2015
    • August 2015
    • July 2015
    • June 2015
    • May 2015
    • April 2015
    • March 2015
    • February 2015
    • January 2015
    • December 2014
    • November 2014
    • October 2014
    • September 2014
    • August 2014
    • July 2014
    • June 2014
    • May 2014
    • April 2014
    • March 2014
    • February 2014
    • January 2014
    • December 2013
    • November 2013
    • October 2013
    • September 2013
    • August 2013
    • July 2013
    • June 2013
    • May 2013
    • April 2013
    • March 2013
    • February 2013
    • January 2013
    • December 2012
    • November 2012
    • October 2012
    • September 2012
    • August 2012
    • July 2012
    • June 2012
    • May 2012
    • April 2012
    • March 2012
    • February 2012
    • January 2012
    • December 2011
    • November 2011
    • October 2011
    • September 2011
    • August 2011
    • July 2011
    • June 2011
    • May 2011
    • April 2011
    • March 2011
    • February 2011
    • January 2011
    • December 2010
    • November 2010
    • October 2010
    • September 2010
    • August 2010
    • July 2010
    • June 2010
    • May 2010
    • April 2010
    • March 2010
    • February 2010
    • January 2010
    • December 2009
    • November 2009
    • October 2009
    • September 2009
    • August 2009
    • July 2009
    • June 2009
    • May 2009
    • April 2009
    • March 2009
    • February 2009
    • January 2009
    • December 2008
    • November 2008
    • October 2008
    • September 2008
    • August 2008
    • July 2008
  • Recent Comments

    markgelbart on Retiring this Space
    oneforestfragment on Retiring this Space
    The Evolving Natural… on So does the maned wolf break t…
    SWestfall3 on So does the maned wolf break t…
    Ole Possum on So does the maned wolf break t…
  • Meta

    • Register
    • Log in
    • Entries feed
    • Comments feed
    • WordPress.com
  • Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

    Join 1,701 other followers

  • Pages

    • About
    • Contact
    • Patreon
    • Premium Membership
    • Services
  • Subscribe to Retrieverman's Weblog by Email
  • Revolver map

    Map

  • Top Posts

    • Coyote tracks in the snow
  • SiteCounter

    wordpress analytics
    View My Stats
  • Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

    Join 1,701 other followers

  • Donate to this blog

  • Top 50 Northwest Dog Blogs

    top 50 dog blogs

Blog at WordPress.com.

WPThemes.


Cancel
loading Cancel
Post was not sent - check your email addresses!
Email check failed, please try again
Sorry, your blog cannot share posts by email.
%d bloggers like this: