3rd SV Website Announcement - Page 6

Louis Donald, excellent post

Louis

Well, no. It was not obvious. There have been suggestions that Harley should be punished because of the fraud in his pedigree at the time he won the award. I read your comment as suggesting that it was Mr Wischalla's personal view that Harley should have received a lower ranking because of the hereditary disease in his bloodline. If this is a standard practice adopted by all SV judges, then the SV ought to make the public aware of it, for the sake of transparency. Surely some people have asked questions when a dog receives a lower ranking because of genetics.

I hope you meant to say that Harley may be, statistically speaking, a producer of crippling elbows, rather than the other way around.

There is little or no genetic knowledge regarding the inheritability of ED or HD. Therefore it is reasonable to assume that all dogs carry the potential to produce both HD & ED to a greater or lesser degree.

The only system we have available for breeders/owners is to x-ray and grade our dogs for both diseases, which then gives us information on how much a dog is affected. We then assume that the worse the hips & elbows grades, the more likely they are to produce the worst hips and elbows, so we avoid them or remove them from the breeding pool. We may also have some progeny information on ED & HD, unfortunately most potentially high grades are not submitted, so this has very limited value. 

From what is currently known we can be reasonably confident in assuming that ALL dogs are capable of producing ED & HD to a greater or lesser degree, and we can also establish that mixed results in a litter are quite common, even the single very bad results from an otherwise excellent group of results from a litter.

To castigate any single dog for having ED or HD from being bred from is totally wrong without conclusive evidence of exactly what his HD or ED grade actually means and if available the dogs ancestor HD & ED results as well as the dogs progeny, siblings etc. This was the thinking behind the ZW initiative from the SV.

It may be or become a matter of FACT that Jaguar and as "Louis Donald" states above "Harley may be, statistically speaking at least, a producer of acceptable elbows?!"

It is very clear on this thread that very limited knowledge and experience certainly comes through on several posts. Then again doesn't it frequently appear that many people consider that all humans are EQUAL in every possible way.

Wow David,

good reading, would like to know where I can look up your result.

However, I did discuss this with breeder friends over & over, and according to what I read in the sience world, it goes .....
" ..... the likelyhood of having dogs with HD/ED does increase, when there are ancesters to be found with bad HD/ED status..."
"....to eliminate inherible desease, all affected dogs, should be taken out of any breeding programm."
Last time I checked, this is the reason why the German SV initiated their strict breeding rules - is it just a joke ?
And yep, dogs with HD/ED may produce dogs without HD/ED, but still this does not eliminate the increased risk of themselves producing offspring with HD/ED. It trickels down the line.
And David, please stop to belittle peopel that may not want to follow your views, it gets old. Btw, did you check Jaguars actual ED status ?

My understanding was - if Mr. Wischalla would have known the true status of Jaguars ED Status, he would have placed him not in the top group. But of course I do believe that Mr. Wischalla would have also been disgusted, if he would have known about the fraud committed.
I will write to Mr. Wischalla and ask him personally.

Ulli

Oskar1 you wrote "to eliminate inherible disease, all affected dogs, should be taken out of any breeding programme."

Simply put, if this was done it would virtually WIPE OUT our entire GSD breed and most, if not all, other breeds. To say nothing about our Human race.

PRACTICALITY - something that needs to be remembered, along with knowledge & experience and comprehension of the many complexities involved in breeding. Perhaps anybody who wants to breed any living creature, especially GSD should be required to obtain a comprehensive qualification in breeding, Now that would mark progress

A lecturer at a Veterinary College once told me that he used the following question to the students:

If you only bred from 0:0 or normal hips for numerous generations. How many generations do you think it would take to be sure that you would always produce HD clear in all the offspring?

He told me that the correct answer is: NEVER.

This answer obviously opens up a serious intellectual debate about the nature of the disease.

One thing that comes to mind here is the way that the information regarding x-rays should be produced. Of all of the hundreds and thousands of x-rays that have been submitted over say the last forty years, we must ask ourselves what has been learnt from the stats published at the moment? We see lists of the males showing who has the best results in producing better hips but they do not indicate the females that the offspring came from and how the breeding families behind them come together. The current system does not reflect which breeding families produce bigger problems rather than improvements. The dysplasia problems are not going to be solved by taking into account the scores of just the sire and dam. One would have thought that after so long a period of time and, so many x-rays that the grade “noch zugelassen” could now be excluded from what is acceptable and not acceptable for breeding. Perhaps it should be compulsory for all screening x-rays be submitted so that the failures can be easily identified and attributed to the parents.

The protocol for the system of analysis and the information published needs to become more sophisticated. However, as this would take considerable resources and extensive information it will probably never come about. With this in mind it should be clear that all that the future holds is just more of the same.

There is more to breeding than taking a female on the rounds of the top winners in the hope of producing good animals. What we need is more consistency in good animals being produced.

Mackenzie

 

Agreed -
never thought that any disease can be completly be eliminated - but, you can decrease the numbers by carefully select what you breed.
To only breed with animals that are knowingly "free" of any disease, is, imo, a good start.

My statement was a quote, I am aware that this will not happen, it is my understanding, that this is the reason why the SV created such breeding regulations. It is by the book still ok to breed with NZ hipps or ellbows - but they also put down that that is the lowest level, anything worse that NZ is not permissible.
And yes, nature goes sometimes it's own way - we all know it, Babys are born with abnormaltys, yet their parents are completely healthy. It is sad at times, but that is nature for you. 
Thing here is, we know that the increased risk is there - but breed still to it ? Saying, oh, it can go either way ?
The least I can say about that, it sure does not feel right !
 
The way that I saw with this, was for me : (And this is my assumption) Further down the line it will be, NZ is not allowed to breed with. I always saw it as a start, at least that was my impression that I took out of many sience puplikations. It was the fault of massive inbreeding that we have a "bottleneck" - but it can be reversed, if now the selection of breedings are done more carefully. 

Ulli

Nice post McKenzie - thanks.

There was an interesting comment made by David Payne in his post 15th February regarding hips.  I can recall a UK breeder, whose name escapes me at the moment, in the seventies who had successfully bred 4 or 5 generations clear of HD and, on her next mating produced several dysplastics.  This experience gives credibilty to what David has said.   The breeder was, of course, devastated at the time.

Mackenzie