Pants's Liked Comments

Mixing two breeds does not magically make the bad genes disappear. If both dogs are carriers of a disease, it does not matter if their progeny has pedigrees or not, they will themselves become sick.

A pedigree is only as useful as you make it. If the dogs are not tested for hereditary diseases, then it is just a piece of paper with names on it. Those names only mean something if you know each dogs (or at least their lineages) health status.

Inbreeding does not by itself cause disease, otherwise all blue-eyed people would be sick (they descend from the first person with the mutation).

It does, however, increase the risk of doubling the genes present on each allele (for example, the blue-eye gene in humans). This in turn means that IF the parents have undesirable genes, then the progeny is at greater risk.

This is where the pedigree becomes useful - as many breed- and/or kennel clubs (in europe at least) do actually register status.

I have had both pedigree dogs and mixes, and do not think that either is better than the other at being a loving companion, but I fear that it is dangerous to tout that mixing = health, because that is simply not true.

It also "justifies" those who would just mix without checking that their dogs are healthy first, leaving their puppy buyers with the risk of a horrible experience.

At least with pedigree dogs people are (hopefully) aware of the risks each breed carries and can take steps to ensure that the puppy they buy is from tested parents (and they can also avoid inbreeding by choosing from unrelated parents). These options are seldom available to other puppy buyers (mixes can also be inbred, as they too have parents and brothers/sisters).

That being said, I am not a fan of how quite a few breeds have become over-typed, giving them physical deformities that impact their well-being. But I also object to using such dogs in mix-breeding, so it's not really a competition.
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  • Member Since 2012/08/07


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