Dog's bloodline
- Thread starter Saint
- Start date
True, it leads to birth defects. Also in humans.
SilentLi89
Registered Senior Member
I don't know about being aggresive, but I've had dogs that were too finely bred and they and almost all of their siblings developed cancer and died at only 6-7 years of age. You don't always see the effects of inbreeding within only one or two generations, but over time it starts to cause genetic problems.
That's why I stick with mutts now. Overall they tend to be much healthier, but at the same time you can't ever be entirely sure of what you're getting. Like the vet thinks my puppy might have bull terrier in her, but she looks more like a slightly larger than average, pomeranian.
That's why I stick with mutts now. Overall they tend to be much healthier, but at the same time you can't ever be entirely sure of what you're getting. Like the vet thinks my puppy might have bull terrier in her, but she looks more like a slightly larger than average, pomeranian.
Fraggle Rocker
Staff member
No, they won't have a consistent, specific flaw like aggression. The danger is that both parents may have the same (one or more!) identical recessive gene. If it doubles up in the puppy's chromosomes it can cause any of a wide range of defects in behavior or, worse, health. If you continue to inbreed the same family of dogs to each other, generation after generation, you are very likely to have serious health problems, but behavior problems can also occur.
Back in the days of kingdoms, this was a big problem in humans. Royal families would marry their sons and daughters off to each other rather than outbreeding (a word we use with dogs but most people don't apply it to humans) with commoners. As a result, royal families became notorious for having children with terrible medical conditions such as hemophilia or intelligence defects. The King of England would go to great pains to marry his son to the daughter of the Queen of Serbia (I'm just making this up as a generic illustration, don't go looking for it in a history book), to try to get as far away from his own family members as possible, but it would turn out that both of them were great-great-great-grandchildren of some ancient King of Bavaria.
Many of the popular modern dog breeds have this problem inherently, because they were created in the late 19th century or even more recently than that. Someone started with eight or ten dogs that had characteristics they liked, and they bred them to each other, and then bred their children to each other, and then bred their grandchildren to each other (and back to their grandparents of course) until they got a "perfect" breed standard. If you trace the lineage of a living member of one of these breeds back 50 or 100 or 150 years, you'll find that they all have exactly the same ancestors.
Fortunately Canis lupus familiaris (the subspecies of wolf we call "dogs") has vastly more genetic diversity than humans (the genes of a Great Dane and a Chihuahua are more different from each other than the genes of a human from Iceland and a human from Borneo), so it's possible for a responsible breeder to work around this problem if he's careful.
For example, my wife and I breed Lhasa Apsos, as I've mentioned before. They are one of the oldest breeds, going back at least 5,000 years to the Mongolian nomads who encouraged them to follow their caravans and clean up the garbage, and were eventually adopted by the Buddhist monks in Tibet as watchdogs to keep robbers from stealing the treasures in their Himalayan monasteries. They were unknown in the America until around 1920, when a traveler brought something like 25 of them home with him from Tibet.
Virtually all Lhasa Apsos in America are descended from those same 25 dogs. Breeders would carefully weed out any individuals with health or behavior defects, and after a few decades they had some pretty good bloodlines.
But all American breeds began having serious problems in the 1960s, when we had an explosion of prosperity and millions of us began buying purebred dogs instead of getting a mongrel from a neighbor whose dog just had puppies. To fulfill this demand, the phenomenon of "puppy mills" sprang up, particularly in a few specific states like Missouri where breeders contribute to the campaigns of local politicians so they don't try to shut them down. They raise dogs like "factory farmers" raise chickens and pigs: cages stacked one atop the other, a hundred dogs in one barn who never get out for exercise or companionship, dripping urine and feces on top of each other. When they get a particularly nice looking dog, they breed it back to its own parent or grandparent to reinforce the genes responsible for appearance, and in so doing they are also doubling up genes that cause health or behavior problems.
We bought a Lhasa Apso in 1982--our first dog after being "cat people," like many young Americans who live alone. He died of "old age" after living only seven years. His pancreas failed! He had so many ailments that the veterinarian could hardly list them all. Like almost all dogs he was sweet and lovable with his own people, but around anyone else he was a little asshole who bit them and we could never take him to a park.
The AKC (American Kennel Club), who manages the registry of purebred dogs, should be helping to solve this problem but they are not. All of these "puppy mills" dutifully pay their registration fees so their dogs are "AKC registered," which is supposed to be a record of good breeding. The AKC is happy to take their money and maintain logbooks that show dogs being bred to their siblings, their parents and their grandparents for twenty generations. If you want to show your dog competitively, all you have to do is prove that he has AKC registration. The judges don't care if she has inherited health problems, they just look a the "conformation"--the shape of the head and body, the proportions of the legs, the way the tail sets, the texture of the fur, the coloration.
The AKC should be shut down in disgrace!
After our first experience with a Lhasa Apso we vowed to do our part to improve the breed. (First we got a Maltese, a much healthier breed, incredibly sweet and very intelligent, but we still missed our Lhasa Apso.) One day we were in the veterinarian's waiting room with our Maltese and a lady walked in with a Lhasa Apso. She was thirteen years old and in good health! We asked her where she got her and she gave us the name of the breeder. We bought one of her females and then tracked down another breeder who had her dogs and we carefully checked the records to make sure his dogs were not closely related to ours. We bred our female to his male and raised a litter of puppies who were very strong, healthy and had a good disposition, even if they were not "perfect" specimens of the breed standard for appearance.
We have continued to do this, eventually getting a dog from the other side of the country to help "keep our gene pool clean." We had one female from that first generation who had no particular health problems and was as sweet as chocolate cake, and lived to be fourteen. Some day we expect to have Lhasa Apsos who reach age 20, like they did fifty years ago.
It's not clear how much cancer has to do with genetics, in humans or other species. For a long time, commercial dog food was full of preservatives and other really horrible chemicals, and just like in human "junk food" some of those chemicals can be carcinogenic. These days a lot of people cook their own dog food. The problem with that is you're using meat from "factory farms" and it's full of hormones, antibiotics and other chemicals. Animal feces is supposed to be good fertilizer for plants, but the feces of many domestic animals contains so many preservatives and antibiotics that it will actually kill the nitrogen-fixing bacteria in your lawn and turn it brown! This is why dogs go out and eat shit: the bacteria culture in their gut has been killed by the food they eat and they're desperate to replenish it. If your dog does that, add (live) yogurt to his meals.
Sadly, so many breeds have been mismanaged that even if you get a hybrid, it's quite possible that all of its ancestors had health problems. Especially in the large dogs. If your dog is a mix of German Shepherd, Labrador, Boxer and Great Dane, they are all famous for hip dysplasia.
And, as you say, you have no idea what kind of disposition you're getting. Some breeds are couch potatoes, others want to chase frisbees all day. A very few breeds (like our Lhasa Apsos) are rather solitary and don't mind being locked up alone all day, but some demand constant companionship and will bark until your neighbors break down your door and give it to them. Some love everybody, others will try to keep strangers away, or even your mother-in-law if they don't like her. Some will make friends with your hamster or cockatiel, others will consider it dinner. Some will let your kids pull their hair, others will bite them for doing it.
Yes indeed. But there's no shortage of dogs on this planet, so there's no need for you to breed your dog. Living with an "intact" dog is very difficult. When a female is in estrus ("in heat") she can smell a male dog a mile away, and you would be amazed at how much strength she can muster to jump over a fence, or how clever she can be at slipping out through an opening you didn't even know was there. Every intact male for a mile around will be able to smell her pheromones, and they will bark and become aggressive trying to get to her, pissing everywhere to mark territory and also jumping over fences and out of windows.
Most of our dogs are neutered because they're our pets, but we always have a couple of breeders. When a female is in estrus we keep the intact male(s) separated from the rest of the pack so they don't start fights and so we don't have puppies too often--once a year for five or six years is the maximum for the female's health but they'll have a litter every six months if you don't control them. One of our males--a little twenty-pound (9kg) Lhasa Apso--jumped out of a window the height of my chest and down to the patio that is four feet (1.3m) lower than the interior floor!
Please be a responsible member of civilization and have your dog neutered when he or she is 4 months old. I absolutely promise that if you don't do this, you will regret it. With a male, especially, it must be done when he is very young. They develop behavior patterns that become fixed in their brain, and if you wait until they're adults they won't ever change. They will "mark territory" by pissing on your walls and furniture, and they will continue to chase after females in estrus even though you have removed their main source of testosterone. A castrated male dog is fully capable of having an erection, copulating with a female, and getting a "tie." It doesn't happen all the time, but it happened with one of our dogs that was neutered too late in life.
well
If you want to create a new race or a new blood line, you need to cross close related animals to make wanted characteristics stable. and then after you stabilized the genes you want then you are all set, you can not create a new breed bringing fresh genes from another dogs. You have to make them homozygous to a characteristic. Later to make the race healthy you can cross the dog with similar race and do retro breeding to make the characteristics more stable....
If you want to create a new race or a new blood line, you need to cross close related animals to make wanted characteristics stable. and then after you stabilized the genes you want then you are all set, you can not create a new breed bringing fresh genes from another dogs. You have to make them homozygous to a characteristic. Later to make the race healthy you can cross the dog with similar race and do retro breeding to make the characteristics more stable....
I would imagine it has the same benefits for dogs that it does for humans -- probiotic culture to promote healthy gut flora. Note that Fraggle specified "live" yogurt, indicating a type that has probiotic culture added.
First, let me state that I am not advocating incest, especially not incest between an adult & a child.
Breeding of close relatives is not in itself a cause of defective offspring. It increases the probability of recessive genes becoming paired resulting in a trait being realized in the offspring.
If a brother & sister have no recessive genes that are detrimental, their progeny will be okay.
Some European royal families had a high percentage of hemophiliacs. This was due to some one in the ancestral line having a recessive gene for hemophilia. It was not soley due to incest. If nobody in the ancestral line had that recessive gene, there would not be any progeny with hemophilia.
Cleopatra was the result of 5-6 generations of brother sister marriages. There is no indication that she had any serious hereditary defects. Her beauty might have been exaggerated (nobody calls the king or queen ugly in their presence nor do they write down such an opinion). History strongly suggests that she was intellectually competent, healthy, & did a reasonable job of running Egypt.
Much of the modern statistical evidence relating to incest is gathered from families that are atypical. With the long term taboo against incest, the best & the brightest seldom have incestuous relationships.
Breeding of close relatives is not in itself a cause of defective offspring. It increases the probability of recessive genes becoming paired resulting in a trait being realized in the offspring.
If a brother & sister have no recessive genes that are detrimental, their progeny will be okay.
Some European royal families had a high percentage of hemophiliacs. This was due to some one in the ancestral line having a recessive gene for hemophilia. It was not soley due to incest. If nobody in the ancestral line had that recessive gene, there would not be any progeny with hemophilia.
Cleopatra was the result of 5-6 generations of brother sister marriages. There is no indication that she had any serious hereditary defects. Her beauty might have been exaggerated (nobody calls the king or queen ugly in their presence nor do they write down such an opinion). History strongly suggests that she was intellectually competent, healthy, & did a reasonable job of running Egypt.
Much of the modern statistical evidence relating to incest is gathered from families that are atypical. With the long term taboo against incest, the best & the brightest seldom have incestuous relationships.
Fraggle Rocker
Staff member
Canids, which include the canines (dogs/wolves and related animals such as coyotes and jackals), and the vulpines, (the various species of foxes) have an extremely short digestive tract, one of the shortest of all mammals, if not the shortest. Food passes through them very quickly. Enzymes and acids alone cannot break down the food fast enough to extract all the nutrients from it.
Therefore, a canid has to have a live, healthy bacterial culture in his intestines. The bacteria break the food down biochemically, transforming larger molecules into smaller ones, softening the various plant and animal tissues to make it easier to extract the proteins and sugars.
Cows are able to maintain an extremely powerful bacterial culture in their gut--so powerful that it can break down cellulose and turn it into more easily digestible food--because their gut is enormous and also because they keep their food inside their bodies for several days. Canids can't do this with their short gut; their food goes in and out in a few hours. Therefore they routinely ingest bacteria to replenish what is lost. Of all the predators, the canids are the only ones who eat all of their prey, including the intestines and their contents, thereby borrowing the bacteria from the dead animals and using it for their own digestion. Canids will even behave as scavengers, taking over a kill after the original predator has finished with it and eating the intestines to help themselves to all that rich bacteria. They will even eat the stool of other mammals to ingest the bacteria that came out with the waste material.
Canids will even eat decaying plant tissue to get the bacteria. This is probably why dogs were first attracted to human settlements: they were surrounded by middens, or garbage dumps, full of the entrails of our own kills and leftovers from our meals--a cornucopia of bacteria.
Today we feed dogs ultra-sanitary food made in sterilized factories. It contains no bacteria at all. This is not what they need, They end up with insufficient bacterial culture in their gut, and as a result they have difficulty digesting their food and extracting all the nutrients. This is why domestic dogs so often eat stool--that of other dogs, other species, and even their own.
Cheap dog food even contains preservatives, which makes things worse. The preservatives kill the bacteria in the dog's gut. Even if you cook your own dog food, the meat you buy (at least in the United States) comes from farm animals that have been drenched with antibiotics because of the crowded, unsanitary conditions in which they are raised. In fact most of America's antibiotics are given to food animals rather than sick humans. The antibiotics are even worse for the dog than preservatives, because they are much more aggressive in killing bacteria.
Most dog (and cat) feces is so full of antibiotics and preservatives that you should not allow it to sink into your lawn. It will kill the nitrogen-fixing bacteria in your soil, sterilizing it and possibly making it incapable of supporting plant life.
This is why we very often need to assist our dogs in maintaining their bacterial culture. The easiest way to do this is to add yogurt (the good kind with live culture) to their diet. The bacteria in the yogurt will replenish their intestinal culture and help them stay healthy.
If you see your dog aggressively rummaging through garbage, eating the stool of other dogs or other animals, and even his own stool, this may be a sign that he is desperate for bacteria. In that case, start adding a couple of spoons of live yogurt to his meals.
I dont think you have to worry about that if you buy from a breeder. They want to sell the puppies as soon as they are able to.
Fraggle Rocker
Staff member
The laws for identifying food vary from one country to the next so I can't say with certainty what you should look for in Malaysia. In the United States our labeling laws for food are very strict. The container says "CONTAINS ACTIVE YOGURT CULTURES" in one spot, in another it says "MEETS NATIONAL YOGURT ASSOCIATION CRITERIA FOR LIVE AND ACTIVE CULTURE YOGURT," and there's a little symbol at the bottom with the stylized letters AC** and the words "LIVE & ACTIVE CULTURES."
But you don't have to assume that your dog needs this if you don't see any problems such as eating stool. I give yogurt to the two dogs I have with me here in Maryland because they eat stool, but the other eight dogs that my wife has back home in California do not eat stool and do not get yogurt. I think she buys better dog food there than I can get here, 3,000 miles away.
Saint
Valued Senior Member
Quoted:
http://www.buzzle.com/articles/yogurt-for-dogs.html
Yeasts are single cellular organisms, which are the normal inhabitants in a dog's body. One of the family of yeast called Candida Albicans are known to survive on sugars and fats, and release toxins that affect the dog's immume system, nervous system and the endocrine system. Yeast toxins cause a hot of health problems, the symptoms of some of which are listed here.
Food Allergies
Hives and other skin eruptions
Itching and skin rashes
Diarrhea
Scratching in and around the ears
Constipation
Depression
Hair loss
Chewing paws
Offensive body odor
Only plain, unflavored yogurt is the best for your dog. You can easily make plain yogurt at home. But, if it is too much hassle for you, then varieties of plain yogurt are available in the stores. Check the label to be sure that the yogurt contains active L. acidophilus. Your dog may like the flavored yogurt, but it contains high sugar content, much more that your dog can consume. Too much sugar can cause bacterial imbalance as bacteria thrives on sugar. Yogurt which contains artifical sweeteners has to be avoided as the dog might be allergic to sugar substitutes. These can produce side effects like depression, seizures and disorientation. But how much yogurt for dogs is required? You know that yogurt is beneficial for your dogs. You also need to know how much yogurt should your dog consume. Yogurt contains calcium which is good for the bones of your dog. But overfeeding your dog with calcium supplements is known to cause bone abnormalities in dogs. The quantity of yogurt should be 1 tsp to 1tbsp depending on the size of your dog. If you are giving yogurt for the first time, start with small amounts to prevent stomach upset.
http://www.buzzle.com/articles/yogurt-for-dogs.html
Yeasts are single cellular organisms, which are the normal inhabitants in a dog's body. One of the family of yeast called Candida Albicans are known to survive on sugars and fats, and release toxins that affect the dog's immume system, nervous system and the endocrine system. Yeast toxins cause a hot of health problems, the symptoms of some of which are listed here.
Food Allergies
Hives and other skin eruptions
Itching and skin rashes
Diarrhea
Scratching in and around the ears
Constipation
Depression
Hair loss
Chewing paws
Offensive body odor
Only plain, unflavored yogurt is the best for your dog. You can easily make plain yogurt at home. But, if it is too much hassle for you, then varieties of plain yogurt are available in the stores. Check the label to be sure that the yogurt contains active L. acidophilus. Your dog may like the flavored yogurt, but it contains high sugar content, much more that your dog can consume. Too much sugar can cause bacterial imbalance as bacteria thrives on sugar. Yogurt which contains artifical sweeteners has to be avoided as the dog might be allergic to sugar substitutes. These can produce side effects like depression, seizures and disorientation. But how much yogurt for dogs is required? You know that yogurt is beneficial for your dogs. You also need to know how much yogurt should your dog consume. Yogurt contains calcium which is good for the bones of your dog. But overfeeding your dog with calcium supplements is known to cause bone abnormalities in dogs. The quantity of yogurt should be 1 tsp to 1tbsp depending on the size of your dog. If you are giving yogurt for the first time, start with small amounts to prevent stomach upset.
Dinosaur, Cleopatra was probably beautiful, but back them the peasants were really abused if I can say this way, sickness and fleas, and all kind of other things were really affecting the peasant population, Royalty were probably same standards than today middle class in USA. So when you dont have to work and you keep yourself clean, and out of the sun light, well yes you are going to be prettier, than the rest of the population even is I send you now back then and you spend some times with the peasants and then you go and visit Cleopatra you probably are going to find her like a doll...