Homeland K-9 Dog Training Academy

kids home on a snow day, everyone is ready for spring and tired of being inside. 

 last night and tonight is the airing of the 130 something of the westminster dog show.  as a dog guy, i can't help but get sucked in. 

perhaps someone can shed some light on this topic.  i don't get the whole conformation thing.

look how pretty i am

look how close i am to the standard as this one judge sees it

look how much money i spent in advertising to get me here to westminster

seems very political. 

granted, i  have seen some very nice dogs on the program.  i have also seen one of my favorite breeds, the malinois, have the tail tucked while being examined by the judge.

you hear the announcers repeat that the dogs are not being judged against the others, but how closely they  meet the breed standard.................

ARE YOU SERIOUS

i fail to see the point of one judge apponting a winner of how closely this dog or that dog meets breed standard. 

to get on my soap box, i often see temperment and drive bred out , as the popular fad is bred in. 

look at the sloping backs of some of the hearding breeds over the last 50 years.

look at a true working border collie.  a true thing of beauty in my opinion.  that would never make best of breed as it would be not close enough to "standard."  and one of the lesser drive dogs, with never an aptitude test, is appointed winner.

i am posted this to bring up discusion.  not to bash the show circuit.

i'll get off my soap box now and listen to some of your opinions, i honestly value them.

I agree completely regarding dog shows!  I actually have a border collie & couldn't agree more!  I've been told multiple times that she must have belonged to a working line (I got her at a shelter) b/c she's skinny & lanky (for lack of a better word) like working dogs.  You can tell which are the show dogs b/c they're so fluffy.  

And GSDs....it seems they keep on choosing the American GSDs, they look smaller & seem to limp.  I'm actually getting a GSD from a wonderful breeder in TX this summer, she breeds the German-line GSDs.  But I won't be showing.  No offense to any conformation people out there, but I don't see the point in running around in a circle w/ my dog!  I know it's more than just that.  ; )  With the few times I've gone to dog shows to do agility (but included conformation trials), conformation can be very political.  

Just my two cents...    : )

thanx for the reply kj

another point that comes to mind are the gun dogs.  no test of is this dog gun shy?  or will it retrieve in icy water? 

who knows....  never been tested. 

do the beagles have the hunt drive to take them over hill and dale

do the sled dogs have the desire and will to actually pull

with that being said, i will be watching tonight.  i want to see the working dogs.  can't help my self.  i have the sickness.

kj, send me a pm about your soon to be shep.  there is a good thread on here several months back about show vs working lines.

When I got my first GSD (2002) I did not know very much between show/work or any of the lines. I bought my first GSD (all black) which was a Canadian Work/Show line female. Very nice dog and I was able to do SAR work with her. After working with her I ran into some old showline (American Line) guys that lead me into a german/american showline male.  I showed up at a local show and took home a 1st in class and 3rd in group. I was pumped after this, I did a few more shows taking very good result. Later that year I paid a handler to show my young male in a big GSD show. I was pumped until I was told that we would not do good because my pup was a sable, after the show I had a dog that moved the best or second best but got a 5th place result. With that being said, I was done with my dog shows. lol Later in life I figured out it did not matter who your dogs were out of or who you know, its all about what the judge likes and what the judge wants.

It would be nice to see a dog show include what the breed really was made to do, hunts, ob, protection, and the list goes on.

I took my Beagles out today, they hunted super hard thru this crazy snow. We had to carry them back to the car because they were so worn out. When he got back to the car they were trying to get back into the woods to hunt some more. lol

     Is showing a complete disgrace to the dog community? I don't believe so. All others things equal in a dog (drive, temperament, health concerns, etc.) it stands to reason that one would want the "best looking" dog of that particular breed. The problem is that the things besides breed standard are often overlooked in dogs used for conformation.

     Take for instance the study of Dr. I. Stur of the University of Vienna Animal Genetics Institute, who has gone on record saying, "the more beautiful a dog is, the worse is its constitution." What prompted Dr. Stur to say this? His statement was made in response to his study of sixty-two German Longhaired Pointers in which twenty-one conformation and temperament traits where isolated and classified by experienced judges. Quite succinctly, the results showed that dogs more likely to win in the show ring were less likely to perform well in the field.

     The simple fact of the matter is that in breeding to conform to breed standards, we unwittingly breed for homozygosis in genes that affect behavior and health. What does that mean? Genes that affect a dog’s outward appearance can be tied to genes that affect a dog's temperament. To understand the interconnectivity of genes in dogs, consider the experiments of Soviet scientist Dmitri Balyaev. Balyaev attempted to domesticate the silver fox by selectively breeding only those animals that showed the least fear towards humans and those that showed the most positive response towards humans. Within twelve generations he produced foxes that craved human attention in much the same way a puppy does. The foxes also entered in estrus twice yearly (like most breeds of dogs), developed lop ears instead of prick ears, barked like dogs, developed curled tails, lost their musky scent, developed mottled coats and shed like dogs. The desired result was to create a silver fox that could be easily handled to harvest their fur, but the traits tied to their temperament produced a spotted and shedding coat; this is converse of what we often see in breeding for looks.

     Consider also, the following: studies have shown a positive correlation between Dalmatians with blue eyes and deafness in the breed. The obvious answer would be to discourage the breeding of blue-eyed dogs of this breed. The AKC breed standard allows Dalmatians to have blue eyes; the UKC breed standard considers this a fault.

     Selective breeding for looks has produced many undesirable results. The Bulldog is the premiere example of this. The breed is extremely brachycephalic (“short-faced”) and has an upturned muzzle, which has made the very susceptible to heat-stroke, breathing issues and the common flatulence of the breed. The wrinkles of the face must be cleaned often and serve no working function like those of the Bloodhound. The large head comparative to the rest of the body means that caesarian birth is a must. Quite literally, this breed would not exist without man. They would die off within a few generations because of health issues and inability to give natural birth.

     Fanciers of this breed often state that they were originally bred for the “sport” of bull-baiting in which the dogs would hang on to the nose of a bull until the bull was exhausted and could be slaughtered. This is simply not true. The ancestors of this breed, however, were used for bull-baiting; as were the ancestors of the American Pit Bull Terrier, Staffordshire Bull Terrier, Boxer, American Bulldog, etc. The Bulldog in its current form can die of heat stroke and exhaustion easily in temperatures over eighty degrees Fahrenheit—what makes one think this dog could bring down a bull?

     From a common ancestry, we can see how breeding for workability and breeding for looks have produced two very different breeds of opposing degrees of function and workability: the Bulldog and the American Pit Bull Terrier. As noted above, the Bulldog has no ability to work. The American Pit Bull Terrier, however, has greatly retained its ability to work. Consider for instance that the most working-title dog in the world was Diane Jessup’s Bandog Dread, an American Pit Bull Terrier. Dread had titles in events to include obedience, protection (SchH III and IPO III, both the highest titles in their sports), tracking, weight pull and even herding. Also consider that the UKC offers a title called “Super Dog” to those dogs that are titled in conformation, agility, weight pull and obedience. Of the fifty-five dogs who currently own this title, eighteen of them are American Pit Bull Terriers—more than any other breed. I’ve never seen a Bulldog titled in any working venue, though I’d venture to say they’d earn high in trail at a paperweight competition. There are two points to be made in this: one, man can ruin a working dog by breeding for traits that have nothing to do with work; and two, a dog who can title in conformation can still work if one has placed the proper breeding emphasis on drive, temperament, etc.

     While there are many people who judge the value of a dog in its able to work, there are those who simply want a Labrador Retriever as a family pet, not a gundog. This is fine, but one should also consider the negative effect that breeding for conformation may have on temperament. Note for instance a study of John Peters at the University of Arkansas, the abstract for which is as follows:

“Through selective mating and line breeding of pointer dogs we have developed and continued two strains which are fairly behaviorally distinct. We now have data accumulating from the crossing of these two lines. Although the offspring from the crosses are still young, it can be seen that some stable male parents have had nonenvironmental, i.e., genetic, effects. The offspring are in many respects like their nervous mothers, but in some behavior, notably social behavior, they can be mistaken for the stable strain of dog. Heart rates have mimicked those of the nervous mothers and seem in no way influenced by the stable ancestry in “Effect of Person” tests. There is a marked difference between stable and unstable dogs in the effect of “Person” on heart rate: the unstable dogs show practically no cardiac response to “Person” (petting), whereas the normal dogs show the usual marked bradycardia to petting.”

     The most nervous pups produced in this experiment were from a promising conformation prospect named Allegheny Sue. The study shows that dogs with unstable temperament often appear to be stable, which demonstrates the need for temperament testing as a requirement for show dogs and further illustrates Joe’s point in that he has seen Belgian Malinois with tucked tails in the show ring.

     I’ve written a lot more than I probably should have, and more than most people are going to bother to read, but the important thing is this: there’s nothing wrong with a dog conforming to breed standard as long as the dog is also healthy and temperamentally sound. The unfortunate truth is that conformation breeders often produce dogs that may be unhealthy, fearful, aggressive or unrepresentative of the original function of the breed. Dogs originally formed a symbiotic relationship with man because they served a working purpose and selective breeding of dogs began for this reason as well; somewhere along the line we stopped worrying so much about what they could do, but more about what they looked like.

wow......  talk about a well thought out response.  you have really done your research.  ever thought about writing a column for the news paper?  i would read it........

Thanks, Joe...I probably just read too much.  A lot of what I talked about can be found in a book called The Dog's Mind by Bruce Fogle, D.V.M., M.R.C.V.S.  It's a twenty year old book and somewhat dry at times, but the information concerning dog genetics and behavior is invaluable.  Also, if you'd like to see the Russian Silver Foxes produced by Balyaev, check out what a speciestypical animal looks like at http://cbsu.tc.cornell.edu/ccgr/behaviour/01_Images/whiteface2.jpg and what the more neotonized and tame version he produced looks like at http://img.tfd.com/wiki/0/0f/Russian_Tame_Silver_Fox.jpg  They could be mistaken for Austrialian Shepherd mixes.