Posts tagged "dog breeding"

Is your mixed-breed a mistake of monumental proportions, or the crowning achievement of thousands of years of thoughtful selective breeding?

Despite millions of labradoodle owners across the planet who are convinced their pups are the greatest thing since sliced bread, the man credited with pioneering the breed has massive regrets about his involvement in the "oodle" craze.

"I don't regret the dog, not for the purpose I bred it for," Wally Conron tells Paw Nation, "I regret all the people who got on the bandwagon willy-nilly. People who are breeding poodle crosses for the money, who have no concern for parentage."

How was Conron to know that by crossing one of his kennel's best Labs with a standard poodle, he would unwittingly spark an international trend that would spawn the schnoodle, the groodle, the roodle and countless other similar designer breeds?

In 1988, service-dog trainer Conron received a letter from a woman in Hawaii who needed a seeing-eye dog that wouldn't shed, because her husband was highly allergic. At that time, no one had ever bred a Labrador retriever with an allergy-friendly standard poodle, at least not on purpose.

Now, only 22 years later, labradoodles have their own Facebook pages. Labradoodle enthusiasts, along with other groups of "oodle" owners, are even vying to have the breed recognized as an official breed by the Kennel Council.

Locked deep in the DNA of man's best friend are secrets and clues that have teased scientists for years, ever since the discovery that dogs evolved from wolves long, long ago. But when, where and how did it happen? It's an ancient puzzle that experts are still trying to piece together, with intriguing results.

Just last week, an international team of researchers announced they had finally figured out where in the world dogs first originated: the Middle East, though they can't pinpoint a more specific location. "Dogs seem to share more genetic similarity with Middle Eastern gray wolves than with any other wolf population worldwide," one of the study's lead authors, Robert Wayne, professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) tells Science Daily. "We know that dogs from the Middle East were closely associated with humans because they were found in ancient human burial sites," Wayne is quoted as saying. "In one case, a puppy is curled up in the arms of a buried human."

The study also found that while "80 percent of today's modern breeds evolved in the last few hundred years, some dog breeds have ancient histories that go back thousands of years," reports Science Daily. According to the study's authors, these ancient breeds include the "basenji, Afghan hound, Samoyed, saluki, Canaan dog, New Guinea singing dog, dingo, chow chow, Chinese Shar Pei, Akita, Alaskan malamute, Siberian husky and American Eskimo dog."

Will a British TV show about the possible dangers of dog breeding set off the cultural controversy here that it did in the U.K.?

When "Pedigree Dogs Exposed" first aired on the BBC in August 2008, the film's depiction of the extreme health problems suffered by some pedigreed dogs caused a national outrage. In fact, the BBC felt so strongly about its own documentary that, bucking tradition, it refused to air the annual Crufts dog competition, which is as prestigious in Britain as the Westminster or National Dog Show is in the U.S.

Stateside, BBC America premiered the program on Thursday.

"Pedigree Dogs Exposed" puts forth interviews and at times disturbing footage about dog breeding that suggest it is an immoral and unethical practice. Featured in the documentary is Sylvie (above), a Cavalier King Charles Spaniel that according to the film suffers from Syringomyelia, meaning her skull does not sufficiently fit her brain. The documentary states that Syringomyelia is described in humans as "one of the most painful conditions you can have, a burning pain, a piston-type headache, so that even light touch, even items of clothing can induce discomfort for these animals."

At the start of the program (which you can watch below in its entirety), a narrator states, "This film reveals, for the very first time, the extent of health and welfare problems in pedigree dogs. Later on, a talking-head interviewee says, "People love these animals. It's like seeing a close relative falling apart. In many ways I think that's just criminal."



Documentary - BBC - Pedigree Dogs Exposed

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