Lua Dalmatian At Crufts

[Jed]

sorry computer had a brain explosion

Edited February 10, 2011 by Jed

[Souff]

Yes, but what about broken and painful tails on young Dals?

Still broken and painful, and not cosmetic.

If somebody did something similar to what was done for the Boxers, the Dals might have a solution to their problem. Sometimes life is about thinking outside the square, not sitting around and waiting for somebody else to fix a problem.

Souff

[Souff]

oops

Edited February 10, 2011 by Souff

[shortstep]

I wish we could stick on topic, this is not about deafness and not about tails.

However, I too have thought for years that congenital sensorial deafness was related to lack of pigment, be that piebald, spotted or ticking genes, or any of the white patterns including white head patterns, and blue eyes. I think it will be connected to at least some of these lack of pigment genes.

But that does not explain everything. There are many cases in many breeds where there have been CSD pups and they have almost no white.

Border collies is one breed where this happens. I know of dog that had only a speck of white on the tip of its tail yet was born totally deaf. This dog had a black head, and it had solid black pigment on the roof of the mouth, (an old wives tail on how to avoid deaf dogs), this dog only had about 20 white hairs on the tip of its tail, how on earth could it be so unlucky to have all the pigment removed from it's cells in the ear, yet 99.9 5 of body was black? Can this really only be a random almost unblieveable bad luck case of lack of pigment placement?

There are also breeds of dogs are all white or almost all white and they have very little deafness in the breed, not even close to rates of affected dogs we see with Dals, ACDs and a few other breeds. How can this be, they should have the same rate of deafness.

Consider why would a study show that females are more often deaf then males if it is only the white colour genes and an unlucky draw on where pigment was removed?

There are many discrepancy and facts that do not make it a simple answer, it is not just white coloration genes or blue eyes. There has to be a something more going on, that turns on or off genes and contribute to the disease being expressed.

I would think anyone who had a breed affected with this form of deafness would want it to be something they could control. The thought of breeding deaf pups unless you breed out white genes is a pretty sad way to have to control it. Anyway as I said they are on working deafness now with the new screening methods and there have already been several break throughs, both in adult onset deafness and CSD. I hope they do find an associated gene that is increasing the rate of deafness in some breeds, and I hope we will see a day where we can test for that gene and avoid breeding deaf pups.

As for tails and no tails, I full support docking of tails if that is what the breeder wants to do and it is done humanly (no pain to pup). However bob tail is a defective gene and a bob tail is a deformity of the spine in dogs, call it what you will. There have never been any homozygote bobs born, indicating that is also a lethal gene as they all fail to develop. Due to this you will never be able to have a breed/gene pool of dogs where there are no pups born without normal length tails. However the intoruduction of bob tail genes or the bredig of bob tial dogs should be decided by the breeder considering risk vs benefit for the pups and the breed as a whole. If Boxers tails are being broken and this is of greater risk to the pups than the introduction of a bob tail gene and all that goes with that introduction, then that is fine. Personally I think it is much better to have boxers with tails and dock them. This is why I said I still see this as different to the introduction of a normal gene to prevent kidney disease in Dals. There is nothing wrong with Boxers so you do not need to introudce a gene, just dock their tails as has always been done. Just my opinion.

As you know I do not favor any government intervention in dog breeding and that is why I think it is valuable to have discussions on these topics. I would rather see dog breeders working out good solutions to problems such as kidney disease in Dals, than have the government make laws about it. As you know this has already happened in Victoria, so it is a real threat. I think we all need to consider that our breed may be in a situation such as this and it is helpful to start forming decisions about what we think is the right path of future dog breeding.

Back on topic.

Are there any Dals in Australia that have the Kidney disease free genes?

If someone was to import one can they be registered in ANKC, or are they banned here?

If they are banned here, was their a vote by the breeders of dals to ban them?

Why are they accepted in the UK, how did it come to happen?

Are they accepted in the northern European countires such as Norway, Sweden and Finnland?

Edited February 11, 2011 by shortstep