Border Collies:
The Landauer legacy in Border Collies goes back to the 1960s when my father’s older sister bought their youngest sister a border collie puppy for her twelfth birthday.  The five...4June 16, 2013

Dad, Dale Carnegie, and Dogs

The Landauer legacy in Border Collies goes back to the 1960s when my father’s older sister bought their youngest sister a border collie puppy for her twelfth birthday.  The five…

“Bedlam Farm” ~ home of author Jon Katz and the back drop for his many books & HBO movie. This beautiful farmstead offers a gracious 4 bdrm Greek Revival home...15June 14, 2013

Katz Sells His Farm

“Bedlam Farm” ~ home of author Jon Katz and the back drop for his many books & HBO movie. This beautiful farmstead offers a gracious 4 bdrm Greek Revival home…

“Health testing” is not health testing. It is disease testing. No test will ever tell you that your dog is healthy.  Health is more than simply the absence of known...68May 18, 2013

“Health Testing” in Dogs is Limited

“Health testing” is not health testing. It is disease testing. No test will ever tell you that your dog is healthy.  Health is more than simply the absence of known…

Health & Genetics:
A second silent spring awaits the wolves at Isle Royale, a tacit death knell for the struggling inbred population.  There were no puppies born in 2012 and last summer when...1June 19, 2013

Misconceptions about Inbred Wolves

A second silent spring awaits the wolves at Isle Royale, a tacit death knell for the struggling inbred population.  There were no puppies born in 2012 and last summer when…

There’s a lot of blame to go around concerning why Dalmatians are a train wreck of a breed and the favorite targets of such scorn are Disney and Backyard Breeders....319May 31, 2013

Why Dalmatians are a Train Wreck

There’s a lot of blame to go around concerning why Dalmatians are a train wreck of a breed and the favorite targets of such scorn are Disney and Backyard Breeders….

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: May 29, 2013 . CONTACT: Office of Frivolous Approvals 742 Evergreen Terrace, Springfield, ST 86753-09E9 Phone: (573) 442-0418; Fax: (573)875-5073 OFA BOARD APPROVES “CARFAX” – A NEW...29May 29, 2013

OFA to Rollout Carfax for Dogs

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: May 29, 2013 . CONTACT: Office of Frivolous Approvals 742 Evergreen Terrace, Springfield, ST 86753-09E9 Phone: (573) 442-0418; Fax: (573)875-5073 OFA BOARD APPROVES “CARFAX” – A NEW…

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1

Misconceptions about Inbred Wolves

By
Christopher
– Posted on June 19, 2013Posted in: dogs, health & genetics, inbreeding mistakes

A second silent spring awaits the wolves at Isle Royale, a tacit death knell for the struggling inbred population.  There were no puppies born in 2012 and last summer when the puppies should have undenned and filled the island with their distinctive yips, none were heard to mark the presence of another generation.  This last winter no new wolves were counted during the yearly census confirming the fears that 2012 would be the first year in 50 that no new wolf life would grace the island; this year could be the second.

Wolves with milky eyes are being spotted on the island, probably due to inbred disease.

Wolves with milky eyes are being spotted on the island, probably due to inbred disease.

June marks the earliest that scientists would expect to hear the vocalizations if a litter was born this year.  None reported so far.  The possibility for pups remains as researchers believe that half of the 8 wolves on the island are female and although the population now is as low as it has ever been in the half-century of study, the balance of males and females means that regrowth is possible.  Some females were spotted out of their dens earlier in the spring which signals that they likely didn’t have a litter.

An entire litter of stillborn wolf pups claimed the life of their mother as well, likely caused by inbreeding depression in the small population.

An entire litter of stillborn wolf pups claimed the life of their mother as well, likely caused by inbreeding depression in the small population.

Beyond the spinal malformations you’re probably aware of, additional inbred diseases are becoming apparent in the population.  Some wolves are being spotted with clouded eyes and a female wolf was found dead in her den during the 2009 winter having birthed only one of her litter, the first time a failure to whelp causing death has been observed in a wild wolf.  The population has fallen every year since.

wolf_moose_population_graph_isle-royale

The Isle Royale wolves were once central to the debate over how significant inbreeding is in wild wolves and just how detrimental inbreeding depression could be.  Amazingly some wolfaboo scientists were inbreeding depression denialists, although history and re-examination of their studies has not helped their position.  The debate now is shifting to what should be done, if anything to remedy the situation on the island which few believe will turn itself around.

Herp Derp Wolves die out, but herp derp humans seem to multiply.

Herp Derp Wolves die out, but herp derp humans seem to multiply. Art by akreon

I’ve written before about how inappropriate it was that inbreeding apologists were using the Isle Royale wolf population as an example of animals that are either adapted to or unaffected by high levels of inbreeding.  The wolves are on the brink of extinction, so time has bolstered this observation.

It’s an open question if and how much the influx of new genes has changed the bone deformities which had come to define Isle wolves.  Surprisingly, before the results of the bone study were published, Isle Royale was used as an example of a wild population that was thriving and unharmed by inbreeding and isolation.  This is why I’m cautious of anyone who argues from ignorance regarding their ability to inbreed and avoid disease.  This is the third lesson: don’t assume that inbreeding can exist in high levels without detriment and don’t cite wild populations if no one has ever done a detailed health study to document the true health of the population.

Professor Linda Laikre in the Division of Population Genetics at Stockholm University prechoed* this sentiment over a decade ago:

Several misconceptions exist regarding inbreeding and the conclusions that can be drawn from the kind of studies of captive animals presented here, and unfortunately these misunderstandings appear to be fairly widespread. I discuss a few of these misconception in some detail because of their importance in practical conservation management.

The view that carnivores, and particularly wolves, regularly reproduce with close relatives in the wild still seems to be common. It is surprising that this notion is so difficult to change because it is based on weak argumentation.

First, it has been speculated that the effective population sizes of carnivore species in general are small (WATHEN et al. 1985; CHEPKOSADE et al. 1987), that the social structure of many carnivore species such as that of the wolf promotes close inbreeding (MECH 1970, 1987; SHIELDS 1982; HABER 1996), and that inbreeding does not pose a problem to wild wolves (SHIELDS 1983; MECH 1995). As pointed out by RALLS et al. (1986) there are no empirical data supporting these speculations. For instance, in their extensive literature review RALLS et al. (1986) could only find one occasional observation of a mating between wolves identified as close relatives (grandfather-granddaughter) in the wild (PETERSON et al. 1984).

Second, the results of a computer simulation study performed by WOOLPY and ECKSTRAND (1979) have been taken as evidence that wolf packs are highly inbred. The weakness of this study is also discussed by RALLS et al. (1986).

Third, the situation at the Isle Royale (Lake Superior, USA), where a single wolf pair is believed to have founded a population which has persisted for five decades is frequently referred to as an example indicating that wolves are adapted to inbreeding (MECH 1995; SWEDISH ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY 1997a). Wolf numbers at Isle Royale increased during the first three decades to a maximum of approx. 50 individuals, but has dropped considerably on several occasions during the last 20 years (PETERSON 1997). For instance, the winter 1997-98, 13 of a total of 24 animals died (ENVIRONMENTAL NEWS NETWORK 1998). To consider the Isle Royale case as a proof of wolves being adapted to close inbreeding disregards several facts: i) the effects of inbreeding on various traits have not been studied in this population, ii) it is not clear that the repeated drops in population size are not coupled with genetic factors (WAYNE et al. 1991), iii) even if the wolf population at Isle Royale should prove to be insensitive to inbreeding this observation cannot be used to conclude that wolves in general are adapted to close inbreeding.

The occurrence of inbreeding depression in a wild animal species bred in captivity provides clear indications that this particular species is not adapted to close inbreeding. This conclusion is obvious to a geneticist, but is frequently questioned by, for instance, wildlife managers and behavior specialists, who express the idea that genetic studies on animals in captivity are not relevant to those in the wild (e.g., SWEDISH ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY 1997a).

This misconception may stem from the fact that conclusions regarding behavior of animals in the wild may not be possible to draw from behavior observations of captive animals. In contrast to behavior, however, the genes are the same whether the animal is free or held in captivity. Of course, it is not certain that the same type of inbreeding effects occur in every population.

If and how inbreeding depression is expressed depends on the particular genes that the individuals which are inbred carry. For instance, in a recent study of two captive populations of Mexican and red wolves no effect of inbreeding on juvenile survival and litter size could be detected (KALINOWSKI et al. 1999). This does not mean, however, that other characters in these populations are not affected by inbreeding, or that other wolf populations are not sensitive to inbreeding. As a parallel to the skeptic question “even if inbreeding is harmful in captivity, how can we be sure that inbreeding will have the same effects in the wild?” one may consider a query like “this chemical substance has proven toxic in laboratory animals, but how can we be sure it will cause damage in nature?”.

Laikre, L. 1999. Conservation genetics of Nordic carnivores: lessons from zoos. – Hereditus 130: 203-216. Lund, Sweden.

Inbreeding apologists in the dog world love invoking the notion that wolves inbreed all the time and are just fine and not harmed.  As is clear from the scientific evidence, this once common refrain is nothing more than an unsupported meme that is not backed up by empirical or observational evidence.

Scientists are fighting against this misconception because it has major implications on the structure and success of wildlife conservancy programs.  Dog breeders should take note as these same principles are vital for the maintenance and rejuvenation of our breeds as well.

 

* prech·oed
past participle, past tense of prech·o
Verb
Statement of an idea prior to another source, especially when the existence of the first source is unknown to the second or less prominent. e.g. Archibald Carey prechoed Martin Luther King when he ended a civil rights speech with “from every mountainside, LET FREEDOM RING!”

REFERENCES:

Chepko-Sade BD and Shields WM, Berger J, Halpin ZT, Jones WT, Rogers LL, Rood JP and Smith AT, (1987). The effects of dispersal and social structure on effective population size. In: Mammalian dispersal patterns. The effects of social structure on population genetics (eds. BD Chepko-Sade and ZT Halpin) The University of Chicago Press, Chicago and London, p. 287-321.

Haber GC, (1996). Biological, conservation, and ethical implications of exploiting and controlling wolves. Conserv. Biol. 10:1068-1081

Kalinowski ST, Hedrick PW and Miller PS. No evidence for inbreeding depression in Mexican and red wolves. Conserv. Biol., 1999.

Mech LD, (1970). The wolf: the ecology and behavior of an endangered species. The Natural History Press, Garden City, New York.

Mech LD, (1987). Age, season, distance, direction, and social aspects of wolf dispersal from a Minnesota pack. In: Mammalian dispersal patterns. The effects of social structure on population genetics (eds. BD Chepko-Sade and ZT Halpin) The University of Chicago Press, Chicago and London, p. 55-74.

Mech LD, (1995). The challenge and opportunity of recovering wolf populations. Conserv. Biol. 9:270-278.

Ralls K, Harvey PH and Lyles AM, (1986). Inbreeding in natural populations of birds and mammals. In: Conservation biology. The science of scarcity and diversity (ed. ME Soule) Sinauer Associates, Sunderland, Massachusetts, p. 35-56

Shields WM, (1982). Philopatry, inbreeding, and the evolution of sex. State University of New York Press, Albany.

Shields WM, (1983). Genetic considerations in the management of the wolf and other large vertebrates: an alternative view. In: Wolves in Canada and Alaska: their status, biology and management (ed. LN Carbyn) Canadian Wildlife Service Report Series 0069-0031, 45. Ottawa, p. 90-92

Swedish Environmental Protection Agency, (1997a). Forslag till itgardsprogram-Varg (Canis lupus, Linnaeus 1758). (Suggested action program-Wolf (Canis lupus Linneaus 1978 (In Swedish), Stockholm, Sweden

Wathen WG, McCracken GF and Pelton MR, (1985). Genetic variation in black bears from the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. J. Mamm. 66:564-567.

Wayne RK, Lehman N, Girman D, Gogan PJP, Gilbert DA, Hansen K, Peterson RO, Seal US, Eisenhawer A, Mech LD and Krumenaker RJ, (1991). Conservation genetics of the endangered Isle Royale gray wolf. Conserv. Biol. 5:41-51

Woolpy JH and Eckstrand I, (1979). Wolf pack genetics, a computer simulation with theory. In: The behavior and ecology of wolves. Proceedings of the symposium on the behavior and ecology of wolves held on 23-24 May 1975 at the annual meeting of the Animal Behavior Society in Wilmington, NC (ed. E Klinghammer) Garland STPM Press, New York and London. p. 206-224.

 

 

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Comments and disagreements are welcome, but be sure to read the Comment Policy. If this post made you think and you'd like to read more like it, consider a donation to my 4 Border Collies' Treat and Toy Fund. They'll be glad you did. You can subscribe to the feed or enter your e-mail in the field on the right to receive notice of new content. You can also like BorderWars on Facebook for more frequent musings and curiosities.
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4

Dad, Dale Carnegie, and Dogs

By
Christopher
– Posted on June 16, 2013Posted in: border collies, dogs, people
My father and Bongo, 1960s

My father and Bongo, 1960s

The Landauer legacy in Border Collies goes back to the 1960s when my father’s older sister bought their youngest sister a border collie puppy for her twelfth birthday.  The five older boys–whose job had been to chase off any ravenous teenaged suitors–were away at college and grandpa approved of the puppy as a distraction to keep Little Sister out of trouble and her mind off dating boys for as long as possible.

Of course the plan failed and when summer came a month later, Little Sister was too busy training teenaged boys to do her bidding and the puppy whom she had named Bongo was still peeing on the carpets.  So the role of housebreaking the dog fell to my father who was just back from his Freshman year at college and whose head was filled with Dale Carnegie’s tips on how to make friends and influence people from his introductory Business classes.

Fundamental Techniques in Handling People a Puppy

  1. Don’t criticize, condemn, or complain.
  2. Given honest and sincere appreciation.
  3. Arouse in the other person puppy an eager want.

The 1960s were the era of rolled up news papers and rubbing the puppy’s face in their puddles, but my father knew intuitively that you can’t gain an animal’s trust by being mean to it, and “once you break their trust they never forget, so never break their trust.”

To this day, Dad won’t even psych the dogs out when throwing the ball. “It’s no great feat to trick a child or an animal, and all it proves to the dog is that you’re untrustworthy. If they don’t trust you to throw the ball when you tell them you’re throwing the ball, they won’t trust you when you call them back from getting hit by a car either. Throw the ball kid and stop tormenting the dog.”

Dad instilled an “eager want” in Bongo by withholding breakfast and feeding every morsel the dog ate out of his hand.  My Dad was Bongo’s world and he made Bongo feel like he was the most important thing in my father’s world. And he was.  Border Collies want to be your friend and they want to please you, all you have to do is show them how.

Be a Leader: How to Change People A Dog Without Giving Offense or Arousing Resentment

  1. Begin with praise and honest appreciation.
  2. Call attention to the dog’s mistakes indirectly. oops!
  3. Talk about Fix your own mistakes before criticizing the dog.
  4. Ask questions (lure) instead of giving direct orders.
  5. Let the dog save face.
  6. Praise every improvement.
  7. Give the dog a fine reputation to live up to.
  8. Use encouragement. Make the fault seem easy to correct.
  9. Make the dog happy about doing what you suggest.

He applied Carnegie’s techniques to Bongo, who first had to learn his name so that dad could reinforce it as “the sweetest and most important sound in any language.”  Dad always made a ritual out of naming the dogs over the years since, “You can’t train a dog if you don’t have its attention, and for that it needs to know its name.”

Me and my first Border Collie, Sassy. 1985

Me and my first Border Collie, Sassy. 1985

I have a vivid memory of being a little tyke, twenty years after the Landauers were certified Border Collie people thanks to Bongo, sitting with my parents in a circle on the kitchen floor, each armed with a different cache of meat: ground hamburger, cut up chunks of hot dog, and bits of crispy fried bacon. We were all going to be little Sassy’s friends but I was to be her best friend, so I had the bacon. We took turns calling her name and rewarding her with treats and praise when she came running. It’s a game we’ve played with every puppy since, and I always claim the bacon.

The_old_Landauer_place

The old Landauer place. Dutch elm disease razed the roof of the parkway cathedral in the 1980s, but it’s slowly being rebuilt.

The Landauer house was on a corner lot along one of Denver’s iconic tree lined parkways, where the vault of branches formed twin sylvan tunnels as the canopies merged over the east and west bound lanes, separated by greenbelts large enough to play football on every block. These were the summer playgrounds for hundreds of neighborhood kids and the small side street which bordered the yard led to a Dolly Madison two blocks down, making it a popular highway for little kids going to and from the ice cream store.

Dad would train Bongo out in the yard which was separated from the sidewalk by a hedge low enough for the little kids to see over. They’d marvel at the little dog that could dance and do back flips, and very often they’d drop their ice cream. Bongo would vault the hedge and collect his tips after each performance and soon he would accompany the herd on their confectionery migration to Dolly Madison where he’d perform tricks outside the front door to increase the number of dropped and offered cones.

He soon learned to recognize the sound of kids pulling a red wagon filled with used glass soda pop bottles clinking down the street on a mission to collect the deposit at the grocery store and treat themselves with an ice cream cone on their way home.  Bongo would let himself out of the house, chaperon the kids to the store, and freeload licks from their cones as they pulled him back home in their now empty wagons.  After Bongo gained five pounds in one month, Dad had to curtail Bongo’s freelance performances, but that didn’t stop the kids from getting their fill of the canine celebrity in the neighborhood.

Historic Elitch Gardens

Historic Elitch Gardens

That summer and for several after, the little kids from the neighborhood would knock on the Landauer front door and ask if Bongo could come out and play, and my father always obliged.  Bongo’s reputation grew right along with his repertoire of tricks which my uncles–who are never ones to inflate my Dad’s achievements–confirm numbered in the seventies.  His exploits with Bongo earned him the nickname “Pavlov” with his siblings, and they still call that to this day.

One summer Dad and Bongo were invited to perform at the original Elitch Gardens.  Part of their informal act involved Bongo retrieving a hat, jumping on my father’s back and dropping it on his head.  This time, however, Bongo didn’t return with a hat, but a bag of popcorn he pilfered from the audience and in perfect form dumped it all over dad and fit the empty bag on as an ersatz dunce cap.

The hat that Bongo failed to retrieve filled with loose change and while Bongo took his payment in the form of cotton candy unwittingly shared by the circle of little kids who watched the show, my father spent some of the bounty on a token from a novelty metal press machine that would stamp out messages of your choice on a small aluminum disc.

★ BONGO ★
**** E **TH AVE PKWY
REWARD

A few years later at the end of a huge Thanksgiving feast with the entire family back together, someone let Bongo out the back door to relieve himself after he had mooched much of the turkey and several choice bits of prime rib for himself and had the sulfur emissions to prove it.  He never came home and weeks of searching turned up no clues.  The favorite theory among the neighborhood kids was that Bongo ran away with the Circus because their final show of the year was on Thanksgiving and they were gone the next day and if any dog belonged in the Circus it was Bongo.

Dad believes that Bongo was so charismatic and eager to perform that he charmed the first family he came across and some father’s desire to please his kid trumped returning the dog to his rightful owners.  It wasn’t the first time someone had tried to buy or steal Bongo, people had offered my dad any price for the dog but he never even considered their offers.  Over the years, other people would take a special liking to our Border Collies and convince themselves that they’d made an instant and special connection with the dog because they were so friendly and would lick their hand or offer an endearing look in their eye.  Some would even try and walk off with the dogs, but they never succeeded.  Perhaps they did with Bongo.

Thirty years later an envelope with no return address and no note arrived at the Landauer house, mailed from somewhere in Denver.  Grandma and Grandpa had died and in a few weeks the house would be on the market and sold.  Inside the envelope was a small aluminum disc in perfect condition.  It read ★ BONGO ★ …. and when my uncle handed it to my father he said with a smile and a tear in his eye, “You know, the circus is in town.”

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Comments and disagreements are welcome, but be sure to read the Comment Policy. If this post made you think and you'd like to read more like it, consider a donation to my 4 Border Collies' Treat and Toy Fund. They'll be glad you did. You can subscribe to the feed or enter your e-mail in the field on the right to receive notice of new content. You can also like BorderWars on Facebook for more frequent musings and curiosities.
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15

Katz Sells His Farm

By
Christopher
– Posted on June 14, 2013Posted in: border collies, dogs, people

bedlam_farm_for_sale_jon_katz

“Bedlam Farm” ~ home of author Jon Katz and the back drop for his many books & HBO movie. This beautiful farmstead offers a gracious 4 bdrm Greek Revival home loaded w/ warmth & charm, offering beautiful views of the Black Creek Valley & situated on 92 acres of land. The quintessential farmstead, this property includes a grouping of restored barns, heated studio perfect for the artist, 15-20 acres of pasture, high quality fencing, & frost free hydrants for watering the animals. Country living at its best.

It seems that Border Collie arch-fiend Jon Katz is ready to move on and leave all the dead dogs he’s written about and buried on his “Bedlam Farm” in the past.  Eighteen months ago he was flirting with offering it for sale at $650,000.  His Realtor obviously demurred and he thought he’d get $475,000 but the property was actually listed for $450k.

Today the sizable acreage is still on the market for a full hundred thousand less.  And while $375k sounds like a steal for so much property (ghosts of dead dogs past not withstanding), the yearly taxes on the place are over $11,400.   That’s almost as much money going to a rural municipality which provides little in the way of services as you’d be paying in equity-building mortgage payments which are also a tax write off.

Although many of my past dogs have had great fondness for certain places on the land we lived on, I’ve never been able to bury their ashes under those favored apple trees or in the shade of the hedge because I’d hate the thought of leaving them behind one day.  They belonged to me, not to the land.  And while I entertain no fanciful notions of rainbow bridges or anything after life save the oblivion of death, there’s just something unpalatable about someone else’s dog taking a dump on top of the final resting place of my cherished companions or their remains being carted off to some landfill when some new owner decides to put in a pool where the orchard used to be.

So for now, the dogs travel with me in their little tins, and perhaps when I’m gone and cremated we’ll all share the same vault in a wall somewhere.  Not that it will really matter since I’ll be dust then too.  But today their dust has symbolic value to me as it serves as a tangible reminder of their physical presence in my life and the very real living memory of them I carry in my mind and feel in my soul.

That’s something that you just can’t buy and you certainly can’t sell it either.

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Comments and disagreements are welcome, but be sure to read the Comment Policy. If this post made you think and you'd like to read more like it, consider a donation to my 4 Border Collies' Treat and Toy Fund. They'll be glad you did. You can subscribe to the feed or enter your e-mail in the field on the right to receive notice of new content. You can also like BorderWars on Facebook for more frequent musings and curiosities.
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18

Pathological Altruism

By
Christopher
– Posted on June 13, 2013Posted in: people

bleeding_heart

One legacy of the overwhelming Left-liberal bias in academia, especially in the social sciences, is the avoidance and rejection of hypotheses that have the potential to damage the politically held beliefs of the Left.  A sort of secular taboo exists against studies and findings which undermine concepts like altruism and egalitarianism and which suggest any significant genetic differences between cultures, races, genders, or which document genetic predisposition toward behaviors that aren’t politically correct like aggression or violence.

Democrats outnumber Republicans in Sociology and Anthropology by more than 25 to 1.
From Gene Expression, data: Dan Klein

The academic sanctity of altruism is so intense that there is no named mental disorder for its excess listed in either the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders or the International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems publications.  So how is it that the “Bible of Psychiatry” could lack such a condition? Perhaps because Psychiatry has always had a strong pseudo-scientific bent influenced heavily by pop-culture and politics: the politics of the Left.

There are numerous qualities and traits that are deemed good, moral, and even essential to normative life that are nevertheless evidence of a personality disorder when exhibited in excess.  Drinking water, eating food, and exercise are biological necessities but polydipsia is considered clinical evidence of mental illnesses like schizophrenia when its cause is psychogenic versus biogenic.  Excessive eating is classified as Binge Eating Disorder. Compulsive exercise is associated with several body perception disorders.  Lack of emotions is captured in psychopathy and antisocial personality disorder and excessive emotionality is a sign of histrionic personality disorder.  There’s even a name for something as specific as collecting books in excess: bibliomania. Heck, in the brand new DSM-5, they’ve even added a mental disorder for drinking excess amounts of coffee! Caffine Intoxication.

There’s no such designation for excess altruism despite there being roughly 300 disorders in the DSM.

The closest is “self-defeating personality disorder” which lists “engages in excessive self-sacrifice that is unsolicited by the intended recipients of the sacrifice” as one of its indications.  This disorder, however, was not formally included in the body of the DSM and was merely a proposal in the appendix of the third edition that was included only to be rejected–a sort peremptory dismissal–and has failed to appear in all subsequent editions. Sure we considered the possibility that it exists, but it doesn’t because we say so.

Of note, two scientists who were working on proposed revisions for the newly released DSM-5 have quit the project over concerns for the lack of objectivityand failure to focus on evidence:

the [DSM-V] proposal displays a truly stunning disregard for evidence. Important aspects of the proposal lack any reasonable evidential support of reliability and validity. For example, there is little evidence to justify which disorders to retain and which to eliminate. Even more concerning is the fact that a major component of proposal is inconsistent with extensive evidence.

In my attempt to discern if anyone other than Rand has considered altruism to be a vice instead of a universal virture I queried google with terms like “excessive altruism” and “compulsive self-sacrifice” before arriving at “pathological altruism” which proved to be the most forthcoming.

Given such infertile conditions for evidence-based science and hostility to politically incorrect or unpopular theories through conformity and group-think, it’s not surprising that challenges to the historical paradigms and their icons (such as Freud) are slow in coming and are most likely going to feature minds who are skeptical of Left-liberal doctrine.  So can altruism be a vice?  Ayn Rand certainly believed so on a philosophical level, and so does a new book that not only coins the term “Pathological Altruism,” but investigates the harms it can bring.

Give us the layman’s explanation of “pathological altruism.” What is it?

Pathological altruism is an evolutionary oxymoron. What do I mean by this?  Altruism is underpinned by traits and behaviors, such as empathy, that evolved to help us humans function smoothly together.  But altruism has an oxymoronic flip side—sometimes our well-meaning attempts to help others can make matters worse.  As Pathological Altruism reveals, this can happen far more often than you might think.

Do  you have a story or a case study that illustrates how altruism can be harmful?

The same parent who might run into a burning house to save her child can be the parent who “helicopters” in to a university and threatens a lawsuit because her darling son received a well-deserved D on his report card. Altruism can be beneficial at every level of society—a brother’s love, a neighbor willing to lend a helping hand, a philanthropist’s endowment.  But in the same way, pathologies of altruism can be harmful in many ways, at many levels.  The Germans followed Hitler not because they believed he was evil, but because they believed that by following him, they were doing something good. My most recent book, Cold-Blooded Kindness (Prometheus), uses a true crime story as a literary vehicle for exploring how our own feelings of empathy and caring for others can be used as a manipulative tool. This is a critical concept.  It can be deeply empowering to learn that sometimes it’s normal and healthy to turn off our feelings of empathy—that handling our feelings for others in a responsible fashion can allow us, and those we love, to live healthier, happier lives.

To which disorders can selflessness gone awry contribute?

It’s important to realize that selflessness gone awry is not necessarily affiliated with any diagnosable disorder.  In fact, because of society’s emphasis on the benefits of altruism, empathy, and caring for others, the problems affiliated with these seemingly beneficial traits have been largely ignored by science. Pathological altruism is associated with disorders and conditions such as anorexia, the amorphous traits of codependency, animal hoarding, depression, excessive and misplaced guilt, and self-righteousness.  It is also seen in suicide bombing—the one common trait of suicide bombers is their sense of altruism for those who share their ideology.  Pathologies of altruism can even underlie genocide.  A Rwandan Hutu, for example, didn’t wake up in the morning and think “Gee, I’m feeling totally evil today—I’m going to go out and kill Tutsis.” No—instead, he thought—“I’ve got to protect my family and people against those cockroaches, the Tutsis.” In other words, it was feelings of altruism, as well as hatred, that impelled many Hutus to kill.

What factors/conditions in an individual’s personality most contribute to altruism becoming warped?

The road to pathologies of altruism can take a number of different paths.    Warped altruism can arise from excessive feelings of empathy and caring for others—some people are simply naturally hypersensitive.  Or it can arise from self-righteous, inflexible feelings of certitude—we may jump to conclusions and be absolutely convinced that we are helping others, and be unable to look pragmatically at the results of our “help.” Our sense of kindness, in other words, can sometimes blind us, allowing us to be manipulated, or simply to make faulty knee-jerk decisions that ultimately worsen the very situation they were meant to solve.  This is a powerful and important idea—one that is vital for us to understand if we truly mean to help others.

So what does this all have to do with dogs? Well, I contend that pathological altruism plays a significant role in the dysfunctions preset in the shelter and rescue community in dogs and is a major source of friction between those groups and breeders. More on that later.

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Comments and disagreements are welcome, but be sure to read the Comment Policy. If this post made you think and you'd like to read more like it, consider a donation to my 4 Border Collies' Treat and Toy Fund. They'll be glad you did. You can subscribe to the feed or enter your e-mail in the field on the right to receive notice of new content. You can also like BorderWars on Facebook for more frequent musings and curiosities.
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26

Don’t Blame BYBs for Dalmatians Either

By
Christopher
– Posted on June 5, 2013Posted in: dalmatians, dogs

sneering_dalmatian
The reason why numerous breed-in-movie-equals-doom stories persist is the arrogance of breed elitists who lament the idea of the unwashed masses finding out about their precious breed and ruining their fun by getting involved or buying dogs from their competition or the favorite bogeyman “backyard breeders” and “puppy mills.”  Attention-seeking money pit operations like the HSUS also perpetuate these memes to drive donations and latch on to the reflected glow of media attention.

In the case of the Dalmatian the “breed ruined by Disney” mantra is actually a cover story perpetrated by the breed club and fancy to mask their own culpability in ruining the reputation of their breed by producing unsatisfactory dogs.  And let’s be clear, it’s not this blog that is ruining the Dalmatian’s reputation. The internet’s opinion of them today is perfectly aligned with the New York Time’s characterization of them back in 1997.

We know that Dalmatians were not ruined by unscrupulous fringe breeders and mills, their genetic problems are universal and saturated in the breed: the genetic predisposition for deafness, the uric acidosis, and the temperament issues are all due to their unique coloring, founder effects, closed registry genetic degradation, and  placing cosmetics above health.  These problems plague the cream-of-the-crop Dalmatians just as much as any produced by scapegoat BYBs.  Blaming the nebulous backyard breeders for the inherent genetic problems in the breed is like blaming a used car lot for the Ford Pinto. Sure, they’re selling defective products, but they didn’t create the defect and the swankiest dealership in the country is still selling defective goods.

The appeal of Dalmatians is pretty obvious: they have a unique coat pattern that defines the breed.  And some claim that the Disney marketing machine has also created an enduring and repeated demand for the dogs too.  I’ve already cast doubt on that claim showing that Disney magic has a poor track record if we’re to believe it’s the cause of Dalmatian popularity.

The downside of Dalmatians aren’t as obvious from the outside but are well known now.  They are deaf, they are unhealthy, and they are mean.  The reports of the Disney Disaster almost always include blame laid at the feet of “popularity” and “backyard breeders” ruining the breed.

That 1997 New York Times article, After Movies Unwanted Dalmatians, follows this pattern:

In the movie, the Dalmatians are cute and fun. But at home, they shed, tend to snap and sometimes bite, and often do not particularly like children, former owners complain.
…
Overbreeding is suspected in genetic defects in Dalmatians like deafness and urinary tract problems. But breeders say buyers would have fewer problems if they bought from reputable sellers and knew what they were getting into.

Notice the explicit statement that the inherent problems of the breed can be avoided or mitigated if you buy from a “reputable” source.  This is nonsense, but it doesn’t stop that line of thought being repeated.

Here are some gems from an article written by Terri Hasse who founded “Save the Dalmations” based on her clearly mistaken belief that the 1996 film would bring popularity and disaster to Dalmatians:

“We began in 1996 when founder Terri Haase and a friend started taking their Dalmatians to movie theaters during the showing of “101 Dalmatians” to distribute educational flyers in an attempt to stop impulse buying of Dalmatian puppies.”

When confronted with the fact that no such increase in registrations happened, Terri blames crypto-BYBs:

It was anticipated that another increase in registrations would take place following the movie, however this does not seem to have occurred. This does not mean that fewer Dalmatians are being bred, but would seem to indicate that responsible breeders as well as puppy mills are not producing as many puppies, since these are the two main groups that register puppies and dogs with the American Kennel Club. Backyard breeders almost never register the puppies they produce and have been primarily responsible for the huge overpopulation of Dalmatians that are now flooding the shelters in the United States of America and in Canada.

Notice that Terri fails to mention that the boom and bust in Dalmatians was perfectly captured by AKC registrations from 1983 through the 1990s, but now mysteriously it’s Backyard Breeders who “never register” who are responsible for a boom that already came and went and isn’t happening again … but it is, you just can’t see it?

AKC Dalmatian Registrations 1983-2003

AKC Dalmatian Registrations 1983-2003

It is asinine to believe that the AKC and whatever people register there were perfectly willing to produce TENS OF THOUSANDS of Dalmatians per year during the last boom, but would be totally unwilling to respond to market forces again.

As the numbers of individual Dalmatian registrations declined, the Dalmatians rank in registrations as compared to other breed registrations has also fallen. Since too much popularity can ruin a breed, the decline in registrations and rank are good indicators of less puppy mill involvement. Hopefully now the responsible, reputable breeders will be able to serve the public’s needs for Dalmatians that are healthier, BAER tested for deafness and of sound temperaments, provided they can educate the public not to purchase Dalmatian puppies from pet stores and backyard breeders.

Remember that the genetic propensity for hyperuricemia, deafness, and unsound temperaments are saturated in the breed due to the universality of their color (extreme piebald) and universality of the uric acid disease gene. There are no HUA Dalmatians that are free from these problem genes and the only saving grace in the breed is that genetics is not destiny.  Extreme piebald in Dalmatians leads to 3 in 10 dogs being deaf in at least one ear, so 7 in 10 escape the predisposition (one of, if not the, worst track record in dogs).  Almost all of them would avoid genetic deafness if they weren’t extreme piebald.  Not all traditional Dalmatians will form urate stones, and diet and water intake can be managed to lessen the risk, but the genes are still there and they will be passed on to the best of puppies.  The same is true of temperament issues caused by deficient melanin.  Does this preclude individual Dalmatians from being nice, well adjusted dogs? No. But it doesn’t help and like the deafness, what percentage of clinically dysfunctional dogs is ok, knowing that we could mitigate almost all that risk by doing away with the extreme piebald?

So even Dalmatians from the super-bestest most reputable show breeder who is just swell have the same genetic predisposition to disease as all other Dalmatians (save the LUA Dals which avoid the urate stone disease but are still just as deaf and just as dingy).  If the public needs a dog that is healthy, can hear, and has a sound temperament, they’d best look elsewhere as there are no Dalmatians that are built to those specs.  If you find a good Dalmatian, it’s only because it beat the odds which are stacked against them by vanity and the obsession with the extreme piebald coat.  It’s even possible that most Dalmatians clear these hurdles and are perfectly wonderful dogs, but that’s no thanks to the breeders who continue to deny that when they are breeding for perfect spots they are also breeding for multiple defects.

The massive marketing efforts of Disney and other companies to promote sales of their spotted merchandise certainly must have influenced backyard breeders into thinking they could make money selling real Dalmatian puppies. The constant flood of cute-spotted-puppy images into the public consciousness also encouraged many families to purchase Dalmatian puppies from pet stores and backyard breeders without any thought given to whether this was an appropriate breed of dog for their lifestyle.

A Dalmatian isn’t an appropriate breed for any lifestyle except masochists.  They’re dingy, they’re unhealthy, they’re defective, and they’re mean.  And when the public found this out they moved on.  It has nothing to do with the “quality” of the breeder who made them.  It’s also amazingly disingenuous to pretend that the FANCY of all groups doesn’t follow fads and breed on the demands of other people’s whims.  That’s the entire point of what they do.  They don’t improve dogs, they respond to fads and enshrine novelty at nearly any cost.

Is all this publicity bad? It has had and currently is having tragic results when uninformed buyers purchase Dalmatian puppies from backyard breeders, unethical breeders or pet stores. Tragic for the Dalmatians, that is, who have been abandoned or euthanized once they grew up and were no longer cute little puppies. For the 1996 release of the “101 Dalmatians” movie, the Dalmatian-owning community in conjunction with a very cooperative press, made a heroic effort to disseminate information to the public about Dalmatians in an effort to reduce impulse buying and indiscriminate breeding of Dalmatians. Despite these efforts, the news from rescue groups and humane societies has been that large numbers of Dalmatians are coming in to them.

The tragedy for Dalmatians is that they are a show creation, made in England and named with almost no actual evidence for an exotic land to the East to give them an exclusive name for their exclusive coat color.  This is no different than the Chinese Cresteds that aren’t Chinese.  By being a breed created around a rare coat color the founding pool was small and the deleterious uric acidosis gene permeated.  This is due to the fancy, not any backyard breeder or pet store.  And the deafness and personality problems are due to the extreme expression of albino-like white on the skin and coat of the dogs.  Again, this comes entirely linked with how ALL Dalmatians look and there is no separating it from their appearance.  No relation to backyard breeders or pet stores at all.

Three things need to happen to improve these statistics. First, the public must be educated about the Dalmatian breed and its needs and to purchase Dalmatians only from reputable breeders or rescue organizations.

Well, I’m doing my part to educate the public about the breed. Stay away.

If you’re not ok with 30% deafness and neurological issues, then there are no reputable breeders who can sell you a Dalmatian puppy that isn’t predisposed to that.  If you’re ok with deafness and muddled brains, but pissing sharp rocks is not ok, then you should only seek out a LUA Dalmatian breeder.

Second, backyard breeders must be put out of business, whether by regulations or by lack of business. The backyard breeders are the true villians in the Dalmatian tragedy, even worse than Cruella DeVil because they are literally responsible for the deaths of thousands upon thousands of Dalmatians.

Here’s where Terri Hasse shows us her membership card in AFART, the Authoritarian Fascist Asshole Redirection Team, where idiots deflect blame and responsibility by calling for governmental tyranny to enforce some draconian law on vague boogeymen while avoiding the simple truth that the problem could be solved by a handful of people in the breed club passing an updated breed standard that allowed new blood to be brought in to the breed to displace the disease-linked coat color and replace it with something that is more healthy if not as unique.

We don’t need police and district attorneys to solve the Dalmatian problem.  We need the fancy to pull its head out of its ass.

Third, more inducements to spay and neuter pets are needed to permanently remove the temptation to breed a pet. Reputable breeders should sell their pet quality puppies already spayed or neutered and no pet store should be permitted to sell intact puppies or kittens. If shelters and rescues are required to spay/neuter all animals before placement, why should pet stores, who are fronts for puppy mills, be permitted to sell intact animals?

Nothing like a non-sequitor call for castration of pets!  Again, the only problem Dalmatian genitals is that they are not evolved to pass slushy urine filled with jagged shards of urate crystals.  Note that the AKC had no issue what-so-ever cashing their checks for the 40,000+ Dalmatian puppies being produced at the height of the boom.  And nor were all those dogs magically produced by oops litters and unthinking people who didn’t go for spay-neuter.  They were produced by people who knew exactly what they were doing.

The Dalmatian overpopulation problem is going to be around for a few years more, unfortunately. Rescue organizations everywhere in North America are overwhelmed by the massive numbers of Dalmatians that need assistance. Please contact your nearest Dalmatian rescue and volunteer so that more Dalmatians can be saved. Even though we can’t save them all, it will make a difference to those we can save.

The hilarious part of this ill-conceived comment is that it was written just following the steepest decline in Dalmatian registrations ever.  The “overpopulation” problem wasn’t around for years to come, the bubble had already burst.  Whereas 5 years before this statement the AKC registered almost 45k Dalmatian puppies, they only registered fewer than 5k in 1999, and the numbers would drop to 1k in the following years.  The public rejected these dogs so swiftly that there are fewer Dalmatians registered now than there were in the 1970s and before.

dalmatians_are_vicious_mean_dumb

And despite all the hand waving and wailing on my last Dalmatian post, it wasn’t any form of media (be it a Dalmatian movie, an evil NYT report, or a nasty blog written by a snarky Border Collie guy) that did the Dalmatian in. It was wide-exposure combined with their innate deficits.  Who wants dogs that “snap,” “bite,” and “aren’t good with kids?”  Not too many people.  And the same concerns ring true today.  Google compiles the most common search terms and uses this data to predict what you’re searching for, finishing your sentence for you with the most common next words.  When searching for “Dalmatians are” the responses are “born without spots,” “vicious,” “mean,” and “dumb.”  Hardly a ringing endorsement of the Dalmatian’s finer points.  When searching the query “Why are Dalmatians ” the most popular next words are “deaf,” “mean,” “aggressive,” and “fire dogs.”

The results from Canada are not reassuring:

google_dalmatian_canada

From England:

Why are Dalmatians deaf
Why are Dalmatians mean
Why are Dalmatians aggressive
Why are Dalmatians fire dogs

Dalmatians are born without spots
Dalmatians are dumb
Dalmatians are mean
Dalmatians are vicious
Dalmatians are deaf

From Switzerland:

Dalmatians are born without spots
Dalmatians are dumb
Dalmatians are vicious
Dalmatians are mean

Why are dalmatians deaf
Why are dalmatians mean
Why are dalmatians fire dogs
Why are dalmatians aggressive

In German:
Dalmatiner sind dumm (dumb)
Dalmatiner sind Kampfhunde (fighting dogs)
Dalmatiner sind taub (deaf)

Warum sind Dalmatiner oft taub (often deaf)
Warum sind Dalmatiner taub (deaf)
Warum sind viele Dalmatiner taub (why are many Dals deaf)

google_dalmatian_mexico

From Mexico:

Los Dalamatas son sordos
Los Dalamatas son agresivos
Los Dalamatas son bravos
Los Dalamatas son peligrosos

Porque los Dalmatas son sordos
Porque los Dalmatas son perros bomberos
Porque los Dalmatas son bomberos
Porque los perros Dalmatas son bomberos

Dalmatians are deaf.
Dalmatians are aggressive.
Dalmatians are ferocious.
Dalmatians are dangerous.

Why dalmatians are deaf.
Why dalmatians are fire dogs.
Why dalmatians are firefighters.
Why dalmatian dogs are firefighters.

It’s clear that this breed needs a lot of work to improve its reputation AND to improve its reality, because that’s the really important thing.  What good is it to be thought to be good when the reality doesn’t support this.  It’s better to be a good breed.

Perhaps Dalmatians are doomed to small breed status because the odds that Dalmatian breeders will change their spots is as slim as them changing their dog’s spots.  And that’s the only thing that will improve the deafness and temperament issues save magical genetic engineering that might someday allow the ears and brain to be preserved while the coat color is maintained.  Who knows if that will ever be a reality.  Science might one day save the Dalmatian, but I doubt that the breeders who claim to love them so much ever will.

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Comments and disagreements are welcome, but be sure to read the Comment Policy. If this post made you think and you'd like to read more like it, consider a donation to my 4 Border Collies' Treat and Toy Fund. They'll be glad you did. You can subscribe to the feed or enter your e-mail in the field on the right to receive notice of new content. You can also like BorderWars on Facebook for more frequent musings and curiosities.
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18

Dogs Bomb at Cannes Film Festival

By
Christopher
– Posted on June 1, 2013Posted in: dogs

The 2013 Cannes Film Festival just wrapped up and anyone hoping for a charming dog movie the likes of  Best In Show, Babe, or 101 Dalmatians left disappointed.  There’s about a 0.0000% chance that any of this year’s dog movies which were shopped at the festival are going to inspire anyone to run out and buy a pooched based upon the canine star.

In fact, the first of this year’s line up of steaming dog excrement appears to have been written so that the film company wouldn’t actually have to hire a real canine actor to appear in the movie since the dog is INVISIBLE!

Abner the Invisible Dog

Abner_the_Invisible_Dog
Fresh off his stellar run as “The Guy from the Beneful Commercial,” David DeLuise plays a bumbling crook who steals two magical potions from a science lab which accidentally give some overly-perky tween’s dog the ability to talk and turn invisible and awkward make-it-stop non-hilarity ensues!

(My Dog the) Champion

My_Dog_the_Champion

Lance Henriksen was illiterate until his 30s when he taught himself to read using the movie scripts he was given to portray.  Apparently he still hasn’t mastered the ability to tell if a script he reads is crap or not because everyone’s favorite Android from Aliens can’t pump any life into this snooze-fest of teen angst and agility dogs.

Two actors we’ll probably never see again deliver poetic lines like “she’s not a cattledog, she’s a champion!” while they trip over cliche teen mating rituals by making sexual innuendos about dog training:

“Do you think you could, like, um, show me how to train her?” she said bashfully, kicking the ground.

“Sure!,” he said exuberantly, simulating his copulation techniques by dancing like Michael J Fox got struck by lightning.

Watch the Trailer (with epic French Horn music!) now! 

 

Wiener Dog Nationals

Wiener_Dog_Nationals

Morgan Fairchild, who only took the role to prove that she isn’t dead yet, takes on the thinly reskined clone of Cruella DeVille as the evil antagonist who wants nothing more than to buy a family’s shelter Weiner dog to make it into a schnitzel or something, only to suffer humiliation as the dog wins the Wiener Dog Nationals!  Keep an eye out for Alicia Witt, fresh off her role as the randy Ms. Pasternak and entirely un-reminiscent of her role as child super genius Aria Atreides from Dune.  ”For he is the Kwisatz Haderach!”

Not all news is bad news for dogs at Cannes, however.  Stealing the spotlight in the Liberace biopic, Behind the Candelabra, is an aged, pasty, one eyed pocket pooch named Baby Boy, and no, I’m not talking about the prosthetic in Matt Damon’s speed0.  The festival committee gave their punny “Palm Dog Award” to the decrepit miniature poodle which represented the entirety of the chemistry between Damon and Douglas: nearly lifeless and sort of creepy.

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Comments and disagreements are welcome, but be sure to read the Comment Policy. If this post made you think and you'd like to read more like it, consider a donation to my 4 Border Collies' Treat and Toy Fund. They'll be glad you did. You can subscribe to the feed or enter your e-mail in the field on the right to receive notice of new content. You can also like BorderWars on Facebook for more frequent musings and curiosities.
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319

Why Dalmatians are a Train Wreck

By
Christopher
– Posted on May 31, 2013Posted in: dalmatians, dogs, health & genetics, sine qua non disease

snarly_dalmatians

There’s a lot of blame to go around concerning why Dalmatians are a train wreck of a breed and the favorite targets of such scorn are Disney and Backyard Breeders.  Neither of these are responsible for the problems facing Dalmatians, being a Dalmatian is the one and only factor to blame.  By this I mean that the major issues facing the breed {predisposition toward deafness, urinary stone disease, and temperament problems} are all intrinsic, universal, and inextricable from the breed.

The pervasive issue with urinary stones can be solved by changing very little of what we understand a Dalmatian to be (just one gene out of 19,300 need change), but the pureblood brigade is resisting the only fix for this universal problem (every dog in the breed has two copies of the bad gene), as it would require violating their fundamentalist and inane orthodoxy of breed purity.  The other two issues can not be solved without robbing Dalmatians of their signature looks: their spotted coat.

Deafness in Dalmatians isn’t caused by over-breeding, popularity swings, or backyard breeders. It’s caused by the predominance of white in the Dalmatian coat caused by the extreme piebald allele (sw).  ALL Dalmatians are susceptible to acquiring coat-related deafness and the more extreme the whiteness, the greater chance of deafness; i.e. dogs with blue irises or missing tapetal pigmentation are more likely to be deaf.  And the rates of deafness are not as favorable as you’ve probably read.  In 2003, Strain recorded 7.5% bilateral deafness and 18% unilateral deafness.  In 2004, he documented 8% bilateral deafness and 22% unilateral deafness in Dalmatians using BAER testing, making for 25-30% deafness incidence in the breed.  Dubbed the “Dalmatian Dilemma” by Dr. Cattanach, you can’t remove deafness without breeding against the breed standard which mandates the extreme piebald coat and favors a rather limited expression of black.  A strong predisposition for deafness is thus a sine qua non disorder in Dalmatians.

Urinary tract problems are not caused by over-breeding, popularity swings, or backyard breeders. In fact they are caused by under-breeding and founder effects. The gene pool of Dalmatians is so small that the gene which causes uric acidosis / hyperuricosuria / high uric acid (HUA) /urate stone disease / bladder and kidney stones / urinary obstruction  is SATURATED and homozygous in every dog in the breed.  Their urine is filled with sharp crystalline sludge which can cause pain, irritation, infections, blockages, and death.  There is not a single multi-Championship Best In Show lovingly bred and sold for a mint Dalmatian dogs that is free of the disease gene. Not one.  They all have it and they will all pass it on.  Even though this disease is not intrinsic to the breed standard nor to any other traits of the breed that need to be preserved, it remains another dilemma because there are no healthy pedigreed Dalmatians who carry a safe gene.   Thus, the only way to rid the disease and the gene from the breed is to bring in new blood in the form of an out-cross and there are still pedigree purists who will hold the breed hostage to a fundamentalist and unwavering interpretation of purity.  There’s no practical barrier to solving this problem, there are Low-Uric-Acid (LUA) 99.99% Dalmatians ready to breed to, and as of July 2011 the political barrier to registry with the AKC has been torn down.

Dalmatian rage isn’t caused by over-breeding either.  White-skin related shyness and anxiety and thus aggression and biting is known and documented over many species such as chickens, Holstein cows, horses, and several dog breeds.  Despite their black spots, Dalmatians are a profoundly white skinned breed (extreme piebald) and unlike “white” Golden Retrievers, it is a true white where there are no surviving melanocytes in their white pigmented skin.

Nervousness is also common in animals with large areas of depigmented hair and skin. For example, dairymen report that mostly white Holstein cows are more nervous and difficult to handle for milking compared to more pigmented cows. Also, I recently observed some extremely abnormal behavior in a highly depigmented Paint stallion at a horse show.
…
While blue eyes and large areas of depigmentation on most of the body might signal neurological defects, it seems that smaller amounts of depigmentation are linked to calm temperaments and large amounts of meat and milk in cattle. For example, high-producing Holstein dairy cows are partially depigmented with black and white patches. Herefords are a high-producing beef breed that are reddish-brown with a white face and belly. These animals also have mostly calm temperaments.
…
A certain amount of piebaldism tends to make an animal quieter, but too much might make it nervous. There are many good horses with white socks and a blaze, but every horseman in the last century noticed a relationship between piebaldism and the value of a horse. The old saying goes:

One white foot, buy him.
Two white feet, try him.
Three white feet, be on the sly.
Four white feet, pass him by.

Temple Grandin discusses the albino/melanin issue in depth in her book Animals in Translation, using white Dobermans and Dalmatians as examples:

Pure white animals (and people) have more neurological problems than dark-skinned or dark-furred animals, because melanin, the chemical that gives skin its color, is also found in the midbrain, where it may have a protective effect. You see all kinds of problems in white animals. Dalmatians with the highest ratio of white fur to black are getting close to true albinism. They’re more likely to be deaf than other dogs, and they are often airheads you can’t train. Black-and-white paint horses have problems, too. It’s not unusual for a paint horse to be plain crazy, especially if he has blue eyes.
…
The color of the animal’s skin is more important than the color of its fur. If its skin is dark, that’s good. The inside of a dog’s mouth should be mostly black, with some white.
…
I am definitely against human doing things like deliberately breeding albino Doberman pinschers because they look so pretty. These animals are not normal, and they suffer. People who own albino Dobermans report that their dogs have poor vision, intolerance to sunlight, skin lesions, and problems with temperament, usually aggression. In one survey 11 percent of owners said their dogs had bitten people. That’s an enormously high number considering how rare dog bites are in comparison to the number of dogs living with humans.
…
Nature doesn’t evolve a Dalmatian. The Dalmatian has been artificially bred to be mostly white, and is starting to be closer to albinos than to normally pigmented animals. It’s not an albino, but it’s getting there.

The wonderful fancy dog breeders are not breeding for more black on their dogs, in fact they most often breed for less. The temperament issues persist and blanket the breed because the breed is defined by their mostly white coat and it’s a sine qua non feature.  It has nothing to do with the dogs being bred in a puppy mill or a mansion.  There is no breeder who can tell you they are “breeding for temperament” who can overcome this effect and still be breeding a Dalmatian with a spotted coat.  Shyness, erratic behavior, and biting are NOT caused by “backyard breeders” who don’t care about temperament, they are caused by ALL Dalmatian breeders who care more about the unique coat than they do temperament.

Being a Dalmatian is what is wrong with Dalmatians.  No amount of finger pointing at popularity bubbles, Walt Disney, backyard breeders or any other cause can change this.  To be a Dalmatian is to be prone to deafness and to be predisposed to suffer from mental disorders caused by insufficient melanin.  Not every Dalmatian will be deaf, some 70% are not, but that’s just the luck of the draw and 30% deafness is a disgrace!  Obviously the same can be said of Urate stone disease and Melanin deficient temperament problems: not all Dalmatians will present with clinical symptoms but they all have the genes for it.  To be a pedigreed Dalmatian means that you will likely piss shards until you die, unless you’re one of the lucky few Dalmatians to come from breeders who have put aside fundamentalist interpretations of “breed” and taken advantage of the LUA Dalmatian program or fate spares you from your genetics.

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Comments and disagreements are welcome, but be sure to read the Comment Policy. If this post made you think and you'd like to read more like it, consider a donation to my 4 Border Collies' Treat and Toy Fund. They'll be glad you did. You can subscribe to the feed or enter your e-mail in the field on the right to receive notice of new content. You can also like BorderWars on Facebook for more frequent musings and curiosities.
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29

OFA to Rollout Carfax for Dogs

By
Christopher
– Posted on May 29, 2013Posted in: dogs, health & genetics, inbreeding mistakes, sine qua non disease

dog_flees_from_ambulance

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
May 29, 2013
.		 CONTACT: Office of Frivolous Approvals
742 Evergreen Terrace, Springfield, ST 86753-09E9
Phone: (573) 442-0418; Fax: (573)875-5073

OFA BOARD APPROVES “CARFAX” – A NEW HEALTH CERTIFICATION FOR PUREBREDS
Following research showing mixed-bred dogs are 1.7 times as likely to be hit by cars than purebreds. And something about ligaments too.

After committing over $9,000 in new canine health research funding, the OFA (Office of Frivolous Approvals) is proud to announce a new service aimed at helping purebred dogs reign supreme over mongrels in all disease categories.  A new 10-year study of over 27,000 dogs with a documented inherited disorders, slated to be published this Saturday, shows that mud-blood dogs are 1.3 times as likely to present with a CCL rupture and 1.7 times as likely to be hit by a car compared to inherently superior purebred dogs.  These were the only two categories where Purebreds were under-represented compared to inferior unimproved mongrels.

OFA, in conjunction with the AKC (and taking inspiration from PeTA) is pleased to announce the CARFAX (Canine Accident Reporting Form And Exchange) certification program which aims to squash this discrepancy once and for all.  We’ll help you get your well-bred dog run over and document it with a board-certified veterinarian technician.  You can proudly send other breeders and puppy buyers to our site to prove that your dog is not the one holding all purebreds back from total dominance over mixed breds in the area of maximum disease expression.

Following a century of eugenics and breed improvement within the closed registry system, the study has documented that Purebreds stand atop the podium of disease for all but one of 24 inherited disorders judged by the researchers at UC-Davis.  For 10 of the 24 diseases, purebred dogs were the undisputed champions:

10 disorders were more prevalent in purebred dogs, compared with those found in mixed-breed dogs. Aortic stenosis and dilated cardiomyopathy in the cardiac category, hypothyroidism in the endocrine category, elbow dysplasia and IVDD in the orthopedic category, and atopy or allergic dermatitis, bloat, cataracts, total epilepsy, and portosystemic shunt were all diagnosed in a greater proportion of purebred dogs than mixed-breed dogs (P < 0.05). The OR for these disorders ranged from 1.27 (cataracts) to 3.45 (dilated cardiomyopathy) for purebred dogs, relative to mixed-breed dogs, indicating a greater probability of the condition in purebred dogs.

In a true display of comradery through elitism, breeds from every Show Group participated in the victory over lowborn mongrels in almost half of the competitions:

Ten genetic disorders had a significantly greater probability of being found in purebred dogs.

  • For aortic stenosis, the top 5 breeds affected on the basis of the percentage of dogs of that breed affected and mixed breeds were Newfoundland (6.80%), Boxer (4.49%), Bull Terrier (4.10%), Irish Terrier (3.13%), Bouvier des Flandres (2.38%), and mixed breed (0.15%);
  • for dilated cardiomyopathy, breeds included Doberman Pinscher (7.32%), Great Dane (7.30%), Neapolitan Mastiff (6.52%), Irish Wolfhound (6.08%), Saluki (5.88%), and mixed breed (0.16%).
  • Breeds affected with elbow dysplasia included Bernese Mountain Dog (13.91%), Newfoundland (10.28%), Mastiff (6.55%), Rottweiler (6.31%), Anatolian Shepherd Dog (5.41%), and mixed breed (0.90%);
  • for IVDD, Dachshund (34.92%), French Bulldog (27.06%), Pekingese (20.59%), Pembroke Welsh Corgi (15.11%), Doberman Pinscher (12.70%), and mixed breed (4.43%);
  • for hypothyroidism, Giant Schnauzer (11.45%), Irish Setter (7.69%), Keeshond (6.63%), Bouvier des Flandres (6.55%), Doberman Pinscher (6.30%), and mixed breed (1.54%); for atopy or allergic dermatitis, West Highland White Terrier (8.58%), Coonhound (8.33%), Wirehaired Fox Terrier (8.16%), Cairn Terrier (6.91%), Tibetan Terrier (5.86%), and mixed breed (1.08%);
  • for bloat, Saint Bernard (3.76%), Irish Setter (3.42%), Blood hound (3.39%), Great Dane (2.80%), Irish Wolfhound (2.70%), and mixed breed (0.20%);
  • for cataracts, Silky Terrier (22.76%), Miniature Poodle (21.49%), Brussels Griffon (20.51%), Boston Terrier (19.61%), Tibetan Terrier (18.92%), and mixed breed (4.04%);
  • for epilepsy (total), Catahoula Leopard Dog (3.90%), Beagle (3.57%), Schipperke (3.42%), Papillon (3.40%), Standard Poodle (3.19%), and mixed breed (0.91%);
  • and for portosystemic shunt, Yorkshire Terrier (10.86%), Norwich Terrier (7.41%), Pug (5.88%), Maltese (5.87%), Havanese (4.35%), and mixed breed (0.35%).

No single breed dominated the listings. Labrador Retrievers and mixed-breed dogs were more frequently evaluated at the veterinary medical teaching hospital; therefore, those dogs typically had a greater prevalence of every disorder. However, the most frequent breeds affected by each disorder changed when adjusted for absolute numbers of dogs of that breed evaluated at the clinic. Although some breeds appeared multiple times in different disorders, no breed dominated by the percentage of breed affected.

Unfortunately, despite our current menu of health tests and the expert level inbreeding and popular sire use the Fancy has adroitly used since the Victorian era, no improvement has been made over accidental backyard bred miscegenated mutts in the following events:

Of the 24 disorders assessed, 13 had no significant difference in the mean proportion of purebred and mixed-breed dogs with the disorder when matched for age, sex, and body weight. Disorders without a significant predisposition included all the neoplasms (hemangiosarcoma, lymphoma, mast cell tumor, and osteosarcoma), hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, mitral valve dysplasia, patent ductus arteriosus, and ventricular septal defect in the cardiac category; hip dysplasia and patellar luxation in the orthopedic category; hypoadrenocorticism and hyperadrenocorticism in the endocrine category; and lens luxation in the other category.

The final category is one which scientists have yet to prove conclusively is an inherited disorder: being hit by a car.  But since the scientists disclosed in the study that “Mode of inheritance was not a factor in the selection of the conditions under study” we’re just going to go ahead and call car strikes an inherited genetic disorder, bringing the number to 25.  Don’t worry, when we declare mixed bred dogs “pure” they become so, it works the same way with diseases.  What we say goes.

Remember, we’re the people who will COUNT YOUR DOG’S TEETH for $15 and give you a certificate if they have the right number.

While there are many theories why our elite purebreds are not being run over in the same rate as untouchable dogs, the current theory is PeTA’s “Better Tread than Bred” campaign which disproportionately services mutts.  PeTA (Pet Enjoyment Tantamount to Auschwitz) is solving the “overpopulation” problem by taking dogs (mostly mongrels) and cats from their Virgina shelter and running them over with their VeganVan™, breaking their pelvis and naughty parts, thus preventing these racially inferior beings from procreating indiscriminately and producing over 67,000 new dogs and cats.

To combat this unfair advantage we’ve partnered with the AKC (Animal Killing Club) to establish a new ribbon-awarding performance event which will be funded by donations from the Trial Lawyers Association of America: Canine Recrational Accidents Suppressing Heterosis, also known as CRASH.  We’ve arranged to provide a board-certified veterinary technician to drive around in an ambulance at all 2-day dog shows where entrants can allow their pedigreed pooches to chase said ambulances–no training necessary–be run over, and get certified on the spot as meeting all the qualifications to document a genetic propensity to being struck by a vehicle in superior rates to mongrels which will not be invited to participate.  Any dogs also suffering a CCL rupture during their vehicle strike will be awarded a fancy acrylic ribbon in addition to their framed certification.  There will be a $54 filing fee and if your dog fails to be run over by the ambulance you will not be forced to file any documentation of such until your pedigreed perfection passes the test.

###

Founded in 2013, the OFA is a not-for-profit foundation with the mission to promote the “health” and welfare of companion animals through a an obsession with rare genetic diseases by fetishizing tests which are not correlated with disease expression and don’t reflect the actual incidence and severity of diseases which really harm dogs. 

###

Quotes taken from:
Prevalence of inherited disorders among mixed-breed and purebred dogs: 27,254 cases (1995-2010).
Bellumori TP, Famula TR, Bannasch DL, Belanger JM, Oberbauer AM.
Department of Animal Science, College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, University of California-Davis, Davis, CA 95616.

Note: While the interpretation here is satire, the actual findings in the linked study are presented in an honest and accurate manner and reflect the actual published data.

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29

Don’t Blame Disney for Dalmatians

By
Christopher
– Posted on May 28, 2013Posted in: dalmatians, dogs

Dalmatian_aggression_bite

Despite the prevalence of claims that Hollywood drives fads in dog breed popularity, there’s little evidence that this is true.  In fact, actual data sharply contradicts the unthinking mantra that popular movies make for popular breeds.  The converse is the more likely scenario: already popular dogs get featured in moves.  Hollywood mostly follows trends, rarely does it set them.

The often repeated conventional wisdom is that Dalmatian puppy popularity spiked following releases of Disney’s 101 Dalmatians: from the original in 1961 through the re-releases in 1969, 1979, 1985, and 1991; and the live action film in 1996 and its sequel in 2000 with a TV show between them.

The registration data just doesn’t support the idea that every time Disney comes out with a Dalmatian movie the breed experiences a popularity boom as we see just as many declines in popularity or stable runs of popularity as we see increases.  If Disney is a factor at all, it’s clearly contingent on a other factors coming together that simply aren’t present during most of their releases.

See if you can spot the complete failure in logic in the following account from multi-dog-book author Elaine Waldorf Gewirtz:

From 1951 until about 1960, the Dalmatian ranked around 30th in the United States, as indicated by AKC registrations. When the animated film 101 Dalmatians made its debut in 1961, the public rushed out and bought Dal pups because they seemed so cute and cuddly in the movie. Their ranking continued to climb from 27th place in 1988, to 15th place, then ninth in 1992. The media further catapulted the Dalmatian’s popularity by using its image in numerous television commercials, billboards and print advertisements.

So in the decade before the movie was first released the Dalmatian dog was ranked 30th in the country and after a supposed Dalmatian-puppy-rush the breed was still ranked about 30th nearly 30 years and FOUR trips to the big screen later.  So there was no evidence of any significant boost in popularity from the original film.

If the movie is a potent driver of popularity, how come we don’t see any effect at all from the 1960s to the 1980s?

But Dalmatians DID have a popularity boom.  Starting in 1983 and lasting until 1993 AKC registrations of Dalmatians had a string of positive yearly growth that quickly passed 10% per year and flirted with 40% growth per anum.  But 1983 was 4 years after the last  theatrical release and 2 years before the next release of 101 Dalmatians.  Is the 4th time the charm?

The dates of the movie releases do not represent profound shifts in Dalmatian popularity; rather, they are congruous with pre-existing trend lines.  The most significant rates of increase occur between releases and in the case of the 1985 release the rate of growth accelerates as we move away from the release, peaking BEFORE the 1991 release.  It’s a strange trend that grows stronger the further you get away from the supposed initiating event.

The rate of increase actually began to fall after the 1991 release turned sharply negative just two years later.

The 1996 live-action movie was released when the breed was already 3 years into a steep decline in AKC registrations and the two years following the film were the most significant declines.  By 1999 the registration numbers were lower than any time in the preceding twenty years.  The live-action movie and its sequel in 2000 not only didn’t create a fad they did nothing to stop an aging fad from dying rapidly.

AKC_Dalmatian_Registrations_1975-2010

This readily available fact doesn’t stop the bullshit-mill from repeating the story though.  Take this 1997 story from the New York Times:

In the movie, the Dalmatians are cute and fun. But at home, they shed, tend to snap and sometimes bite, and often do not particularly like children, former owners complain.

Animal shelters around the country have reported sharp increases in the number of unwanted Dalmatian dogs this year, many of them given to children as gifts last Christmas after the release of Disney’s remake of the movie ”101 Dalmatians.” Although nationwide figures are not available, some shelters say they have seen the number of abandoned dogs more than double and that they fear the problem will only grow worse with the new ”101 Dalmatians” television program on ABC.

A spokeswoman for the American Humane Association, Joyce Briggs, said that the group planned to survey members at its annual meeting next month to find out the extent of the abandoned-Dalmatian problem.

Well isn’t that fantastic? We have lots of CLAIMS of increases but NO ACTUAL DATA! (But we’ll look into it next month and um, not get back to you). I’ve already documented that the “Christmas Puppy” epidemic is a myth.

In South Florida, where animal control officers in Dade and Broward Counties say they have seen up to a 35 percent increase in Dalmatian returns, animal shelters say owners have found the dogs high-strung, willful and aggressive. The dogs also require lots of exercise and in some cases special care because of health problems associated with indiscriminate breeding.

Animal rights advocates say movie and television exposure can increase numbers. In the case of Dalmatians, they say, amateur breeders and so-called puppy mills flooded the market when the 1961 cartoon version was re-released in 1985 and 1991, and after the 1996 movie remake.

If the shelters are so sensitive to Dalmatian numbers, why on earth didn’t they report on the 9-fold increase in dogs you’d expect to see between 1980 and 1995?  By the time this article was written, Dalmatian numbers were in a nose dive.  And the only Flordia link I’ve found is by a single woman rescue, not “animal control officials,” and you’ll notice that they don’t include the AGE of the dogs that are supposedly flooding in to their shelters.  If they did, do you think they’d support the idea that these dogs were juveniles purchased because of the movie 6 months before or were they juveniles and adult dogs that were purchased during the huge boom which occurred outside of a convenient movie release?

Even Wikipedia repeats the fable and provides a source.  But when we look at the link it’s to a 2003 Press Release from the Marine Aquarium Council and claims:

(Hollywood, Calif.) Rewind to the summer of 1996: Following the release of the Disney’s blockbuster 101 Dalmatians, families flocked to pet stores to buy Dalmatian puppies. Fast forward to the present: As Disney and Pixar are preparing to release their new animated feature, Finding Nemo, the marine aquarium industry anticipates a similar interest in a new type of pet—tropical fish.

Well, the live action film didn’t even debut until November of 1996, so no one was buying Dalmatian puppies that summer in response to the film.  And as we can clearly see no new rush happened in the summer of 1997 (or any year since) either! That’s not legitimate documentation, it’s simply another uninformed and unsubstantiated repeating of the rumor.  Rubbish!  The rest of the Wikipedia coverage isn’t any better.

101 Dalmatians

The Dalmatian breed experienced a massive surge in popularity as a result of the 1956 novel The Hundred and One Dalmatians written by British author Dodie Smith, and later due to the two Walt Disney films based on the book. The Disney animated classic[31] released in 1961, later spawned a 1996 live-action remake, 101 Dalmatians. In the years following the release of the second movie, the Dalmatian breed suffered greatly at the hands of irresponsible breeders and inexperienced owners. Many well-meaning enthusiasts purchased Dalmatians—often for their children—without educating themselves on the breed and the responsibilities that come with owning such a high-energy dog breed.[32]Dalmatians were abandoned in large numbers by their original owners and left with animal shelters. As a result, Dalmatian rescue organizations sprang up to care for the unwanted dogs and find them new homes. AKC registrations of Dalmatians decreased 90% during the 2000–2010 period.[33]

I’ve already established that no “massive surge in popularity” happened in the 1950s or 1960s or 1970s, so the entire first premise is simply not true for the USA.

I’ve already established that NOTHING happened following the release of the second movie, either and that breed popularity was already plummeting before and continued after its release.

The claim that Dalmatian registrations plummeted 90% between 2000 and 2010 in response to a backlash against the reality of owning a Dalmatian compared to the movie is a lie, too.  While the reasons for the drop are conjecture, the statistic itself is absolutely false.  The highest yearly registration for Dalmatians came in 1993 with 42,816 and by 1997–the first year we’d see an effect from a late 1996 release–the registration numbers were already down to 22,726 and 9,722 the next year.  By 1999 the total was 4652, an 89% drop from the high and this all occurred before the year 2000 when it was supposed to have started.  The decline continued but not nearly at the same pace and a new floor was established over the second half of the next decade at around 1,000 dogs registered per year.

If Disney movies had any appreciable effect on Dalmatian popularity, it’s a very curious phenomenon.  No measured increased associated with the landmark debut in 1961,  no bump from the 1969 re-release either.  No particular improvement from the third outing in 1979.

By 1985 we’re already seeing an upward trend and the year following the fourth release isn’t spectacularly abnormal either.  The 1991 release is right in the middle of the boom but even then the year before is more impressive than the year after, and if we’re to believe that the bubble has staying power from 1985, we don’t see it happening after 1991 when the tide soon begins to go out on the breed.

The live-action movie, the TV show, and the sequel don’t even move the needle from the precipitous crash even though the proceeding boom means that there must be plenty of breeding dogs available that could be used to expand the numbers to meet demand.

I was a child of the 1980s and after the disastrous Carter presidency and optimism and economic boom under Reagan there was a clear cultural shift toward conspicuous consumption and pampering the children of the baby-boom “me” generation.  I remember vividly how quickly and ferociously fads came and went, especially involving items marketed for children (He-Man and G.I. Joe existed as cartoons simply to push plastic action figures in stores).  The must-have toy of Christmas 1985 was a Teddy Ruxpin and my mother had to brave the brutality of other desperate mothers descending on Toy-R-Us stores to get me one.  As with most other children that year, mine was defective and had to take a “vacation” early in 1986 back to the factory for repair/replacement.

This is the very same time we see the huge increase in Dalmatian breeding and it’s possible that years of pent up lust for Dalmatians driven by over-exposure to the Disney film finally made parents relent and buy the dogs in celebration of good times and a desire to own one that they hadn’t displayed in the previous 20 years.  But I think it’s much more likely that the 4th release of the film is simply coincidental and not causal to the fad.  If it is causal, we most certainly have to acknowledge that other factors played a much larger part given that the exact same film released 6 years previous and two times before that, had no appreciable effect.

In my next post I’ll examine the concomitant blame for the rise and fall of Dalmatians that likewise doesn’t align well with the evidence.

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Comments and disagreements are welcome, but be sure to read the Comment Policy. If this post made you think and you'd like to read more like it, consider a donation to my 4 Border Collies' Treat and Toy Fund. They'll be glad you did. You can subscribe to the feed or enter your e-mail in the field on the right to receive notice of new content. You can also like BorderWars on Facebook for more frequent musings and curiosities.
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3

Sacred Honor

By
Christopher
– Posted on May 27, 2013Posted in: people

AmericanLegion

In the last words of the Declaration of Independence, the signers made a solemn promise to the cause of freedom:  ”With a firm Reliance on the Protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.”  To the English king these words were high treason.  In the War of Independence that followed, all the signers became hunted men.  Five of them paid with their lives.  Seventeen lost everything they owned.  But in the end, they kept their promise of freedom and independence to all Americans who followed them.

Our Constitution is the fulfillment of their sacred promise.  It stands as a flaming torch above the tidal waves of tyranny that have swept country after country into oceans of despair.  It is an elegant, simple document based on a profound principle: that common men can govern themselves, turnover power peaceably, and become great nations—without kings, without dictators, and without privileged classes.

The endurance of our Constitution lies in the first three words:  ”We the people.”  Every citizen is included in all three branches of our government.  All citizens influence these branches by direct vote, by representative vote, and by direct participation.  We the people decide who will be chief executive, we the people decide who will make our laws.  We the people sit on juries that decide justice and we the people vote for who will judge us.  These are the rights of all free men.  And these are the duties of each American citizen.

The Constitution forged a mighty chain made up of American citizens that stretches from you and me, across two centuries of time, to Washington and Jefferson.  The chains of our Constitution have endured the searing red flames of invasion, civil war, world wars, economic depressions, and a succession of evil ideologies that would rob us of our freedoms.  But will the chains of our Constitution survive the rust and corrosion of our own apathy, cynicism, and laziness?

It is ominous that in 1999 many Americans demand more rights, but reject their duties.  The centuries have dimmed their understanding that every one of our hard-earned rights comes with a duty.  A duty that cannot be ignored, or avoided, or shunted aside.

Before all other duties, we owe our country the duty to defend it from our enemies.  To serve when called.  If need be, to give up our lives.  As Thomas Jefferson foresaw, “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.”  Our Constitution is written in the blood of a million patriots.  In every generation, thousands of Americans have paid with their lives so that the rest of us can enjoy the blessings of liberty.  Yet, many of my generation reject this duty to serve and defend our country just as many did in the generation before mine, sitting out the Vietnam War in Canada or Sweden. When the war ended, they returned home to enjoy all of the same rights as those who had served.

Look next at our sacred duty to vote.  In the presidential election of 1896, 79% of eligible Americans voted.  One hundred years later in 1996, only 54% voted.  In its original form, the Constitution allowed only free white men over the age of twenty-one to vote.   After five hundred thousand Americans died in the Civil War, Congress passed the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments, freeing the slaves, making them citizens and giving them the right to vote.  In 1996, only 50% of African Americans voted, and only 27% of Hispanics voted.  In 1920 the 19th Amendment was passed by Congress giving women the right to vote.  In 1996, only 55% of women voted.  In 1971, the 26th Amendment lowered the voting age to eighteen from twenty-one.  In 1996, only 31% of the eighteen to twenty year olds voted.  31%.  The trivial reasons for not voting would make Washington and Jefferson and all patriots weep.

Our government is made up of imperfect men.  When our government fails, the cause is not the Constitution.  The cause is the failure of the electorate to vote for honorable leaders.  Millions of Americans have cast aside their sacred right to vote, the one and only weapon that can drive out of our government the morally bankrupt, the incompetent, and the tyrants to be.  The deadly silence of the electorate allows a minority of voters to elect presidents, special interests to dictate our agenda, and a handful of men to squander our tax dollars.  Our founders saw in a majority of common men the collective wisdom to see through lies, false promises and blind ambition.  Surely, we have among us men and women with noble hearts and with fine minds willing to lead.

The judicial branch defines the scope of our morality as a people, our tolerance, and our commitment to equality under the law.  This duty has become sorely abused and twisted.  Our best-educated citizens shun jury duty.  We have allowed lawyers to pervert the system by demanding only jurors with little education and little experience.  We allow politicians to appoint more judges and take from us the right to elect them.  There can only be justice when we all participate.

We deserve better.  Our founders deserve better.   Our future demands better.  49% of our high school seniors do not know that our right to freedom of religion comes from the Constitution.   It is clear that we must restore our Constitution in the minds of each of our citizens, our school children, and our immigrants.  We must teach this generation that knows only peace, the price of that peace and the duties that keep us strong.  In every classroom, in every newspaper, on every television we should demand that our living Constitution be taught, explained, and understood.  We must insist that all citizens learn the Constitution, unvarnished and untainted.

Throughout the land we must restore and renew all the duties upon which our Constitutional rights depend.  We must vote.  We must serve on juries.  We must pay taxes.  We must reject fanatics that despise all government and see only conspiracy and evil wherever they look.  We must flog with disgust the cowards who mock us for loving our country while they desecrate our flag.

Our Constitution is the envy of the world.  It is the bane of tyrants.  It is a bastion of hope for the oppressed of Earth.  We must protect it from those who fear greatness, worship weakness and preach hopelessness.  We cannot let our precious inheritance to be stolen away by the dark and silent thieves, ignorance and indifference.

We must each of us, take upon ourselves the duties of free men.  To read our Constitution, to understand it, and to live the Constitution.  To insist that our lawmakers and judges follow it.  In an imperfect world, governed by the imperfect, our Constitution is the safe broad path between the claws of tyranny and the teeth of anarchy.  On our journey from a glorious past to a noble and glorious future, let no man drop the torch!  Let no man throw away our fire!

«==¤==»

Speech given in 1999 before the Englewood Local, Denver District, and Colorado State American Legion by high school senior, Christopher Landauer. It was always an honor to speak before our Veterans and in some small way say thank you for their service and sacrifice.

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