In her breed notes for the dog papers last week, my Mistress got just a little bit political in calling for judges to make sure they know the breed standards of the breeds they are judging. It followed on from some ridiculous comments made recently about one of Shadow’s children when he was in a dog show. The judge said his chest was too broad! Little Basil, who has yet to broaden out to reach his full figure. As errors go, it was outrageous. Anyway, so far what she has written seems to have been well received and she is getting enquiries for our club’s training for judges. She has been wondering just how political she could get. She is fed up of dogs being pointed to as good examples who have rather more inbreeding than anyone should consider ideal. It is all very well a breeder liking a ‘type’ and then breeding close relations to maintain it, but it is not good for any species when that happens and ultimately it will develop many horrible diseases and die out. She hears people say that there are not that many of their particular breed, but normally they are talking about numbers far greater than ours. If we can look for a low level of inbreeding then so can they. It is practices such as these that give us pedigree dogs a bad name. The problem is that the lobby of people who do things like that is too powerful. Quite apart from that too many people cut corners and would not dream of travelling a long distance to find a more appropriate mate. It is time that the old practices were stamped out and that no dog could be placed in a dog show unless they also had a low level of inbreeding over 5 generations. It is not difficult to calculate it and if those who champion pedigree dogs really cared about the future they would make it a priority instead of pussyfooting around the edges.
Alfie’s Diary – the Book is available at Amazon UK –https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00583ZGSA
You can find short stories to read at www.alfiedog.com
My goodness strong words, but you are quite right