Weighted and found wanting.
In the last post I documented how the most inbred, most refined, most “perfect” and most human-needs serving fruit, the banana, is also at the most risk for global extinction. The Cavendish is a testament to thousands of years of domestication and agricultural improvement, and although a genetic bottleneck a century ago has left us with a product inferior to the one enjoyed for generations before, our own ignorance of what we’re missing has prevented all but a select few aficionados from even noticing.
As it is, we’ve been living most of the last century with a mostly sterile, highly inbred, and inferior product whose remaining days are limited, whose governing bodies are greedy and lack initiative and foresight, and whose legacy is perhaps more pain and destruction than sweetness and light, all while trading mostly on its ancestor’s good name and nostalgia for better times. If I didn’t just spend an entire post on bananas, you might think I was talking about the situation in kennel club dogs, no?
The purebred Chihuahua, like countless other dog breeds, is a genetic mess. Natural selection didn’t slowly shrink down wolves into Chis, man’s heavy hand stuffed 50 lbs of dog into a 5 lb casing. Chihuahuas are thus prone to structural defects: their teeth don’t fit in their jaws, their throats are too small to support their windpipes, their bones are brittle and their eyes and brains don’t fit well into their skulls.
Yes, we have no Chihuahuas! We have no Chihuahuas today!
We’ve Alsatians, Dalmatians, the fruits of a flirtation,
‘tween a half-pint Pekingese and a toupee.
But, yes, we have no Chihuahuas! We have no Chiuhuas today!
They have a high incidence for luxating patellas where the knee cap doesn’t stay where’s it’s supposed to, Legg-Calve-Perthes Disease where the joints die from poor blood supply and are broken down and reabsorbed, Corneal Dystrophy where the eye clouds over, and Cryptorchidism where one or more testes are undescended and/or malformed.
Inbred Chihuahuas make great pocket-sized kangaroos – which is just sad.
They are at a moderate risk of Portosystemic Shunts, where the blood supply to the liver is compromised so it’s not fed or flushed well. They are also at risk for Mitral Valve Disease where the delicate valves in the heart become calcified, thickened with scar tissue, and deformed.
They’re at greater risk of obesity, their bulging eyes are at risk for injury, and their skulls are a mess. Not only do the bones in their heads often fail to close fully, leaving behind a permanent “soft spot” called a molera; they are prone to encephalitis, hydrocephalus, and atlantoaxial subluxation.
They can barely produce one or two offspring per litter and even then, Cesarean sections are the rule, not the exception. Fetishists in Japan have made that population of Chihuahuas and other toy breeds one of the most inbred on the planet, and in the UK they have been found to be the most expensive dog (£90,000 over a lifetime) to keep. But even here in the USA we have our fair share of grossly mutated inbred Chihuahuas. I mean, just look at that thing, it’s two hind legs away from being a banana!
If it weren’t for the constant intervention of man, this breed would go the way of the Gros Michel banana. And frankly, so would the Alsatians, Dalmatians, and the Pekingese.
* * *
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.
* * *
Pam
Kali
Jess
Christopher
Jen Robinson
retrieverman
Lori Ziemba
Paris better enjoy her dogs while she can.
She may have to return to keeping kinkajous illegally.
http://www.exposay.com/celebrity-photos2/paris-hilton-is-bit-by-pet-kinkajou-baby-luv-02N.jpg
retrieverman recently posted..A Newfoundland dogs with retriever characteristics
THey’re one of my most favorite breed.
In your neck of the woods, they’re also the most over-bred over-dumped dog in shelters, even more than Pit Bulls.
http://articles.latimes.com/2009/dec/10/local/la-me-chihuahuas10-2009dec10
I saw that a few months ago, and I thought.
Do you remember TM doing a thing about how awful it was that pit bulls were being euthanized at such a high rate?
And he never wrote a word about chihuahuas.
retrieverman recently posted..A Newfoundland dogs with retriever characteristics
Which is rather ironic. I’m sure you could reconstruct a JRT by breeding pibbles to chihuahuas.
I have a pretty good collection of old dog breeding books. Almost all of them, in regards to toy dogs, state that larger bitches should be kept as brood bitches, and bred with small males who throw small puppies. Common sense.
Jess recently posted..Biyâ berim dasht
Sadly, the fashion for head size versus hip size made even “large” brood bitches inadequately endowed to deliver naturally. Inbreeding is just a lazy shortcut, so it doesn’t surprise me that they’d get rid of the whole keeping larger dogs around and risk larger puppies ethic too.
poor dogs this just ruined my day!!
Yep again breeding for extreme type & size(whether that be small or big) is going to be the death of many breeds. So sad, my aunty had Chi’s & I asked her why are they so big to be given quite an education on the fact that her dogs where actually closer to the true origanal type than what we see today in the show rings. It started my education & further study into just how deformed many of our breeds are today.
I breed a dog that is actually a landrace type not a breed & breed standerds are now calling for all 4 types to be breed to the 1 standard & we will lose the individuality of these wonderful ancient dogs. I have Tibetan Mastiffs & my heart aches for what they are set to become & to think we will lose the smaller more shephard type & the shorter but heavily boned, the long maned lion type & your once most common of all Do Kyhi type which is heavier of bone than the shephard type & longer of leg than the lion type with a broader skull than either prevous mentioned type & with lovely exspressive faces on an open clean headed type of Tibetan & all for a huge wrinkly, drooling(they would have frozen their mouths shut drooling that much in high parts of Tibet) unsound beast. I think it was 1 of the sub types just not as extreme in type as they are betraying the type to be in all honesty. It just makes me sick to think about it it really dose. Then some want just the Do Kyhi type & imho I think both views are flawed why can’t they all exist as the landrace type they are why do they have to all be confined to a breed type? Sure breeding like type to like type is preferable but would it not make good sence to use another sub type when new bloodlines are despratly needed than just more inbreeding or having to out cross to a completely different breed because we have destroyed & breed out the other breed types & sub breeds.
Pardon my French, English is not my mother tonue.
Christopher wrote: “Sadly, the fashion for head size versus hip size made even “large” brood bitches inadequately endowed to deliver naturally.”
If you’d know anything about chihuahuas you’d also know that it’s not the head size that causes problems in whelping. Hip size does matter, yes (in ANY breed). But more common reasons are as with any other breeds; lack of contractions, a single puppy grows too big to get through the birth canal, etc. A responsible breeder breeds with bitches born from self-whelping bloodlines.
In here Europe c-sections done to chihuahuas aren’t as common as is stated in this post. I’ve worked with chihuahuas for the past twenty years and I haven’t heard a single case of Legg-Perthes. I know there are some cases, but personally I can’t name a dog having that versus for example chinese crested dogs that I can give you a list of dogs having it. Patella luxation is more common, but not on a level that should get anyone worried. Breeders use mainly dogs with healthy knees but as with hip dysplasia, it seems to be impossible to get the problem out of dogs even if you use only the healthiest ones. As you might know, also wild wolves have hip dysplasia, missing teeth, incorrect bites, etc. and yet they have survived for how many decades just fine.
What is the attribute that makes a chihuahua easily obese? Might it be the people feeding the chihuahua..? Why is molera a bad thing, what does it cause? At least it doesn’t promote hydrocephalus, epilepsy, Syringomyelia or any other neurological conditions..
Or then the breed is doing a LOT better here in Europe than in the US. We don’t have pet stores selling puppy mill chihuahuas or people dumping them on every corner so I guess the quality of the breed is higher then. Most of the European chihuahua breeders are responsible, promote health and soundness and breed with registered dogs only. I’m sad to hear that chihuahuas in the US are doing this bad because it’s a wonderful breed and at least I wouldn’t want to see it extinct..
Weird attempt to shift the blame on the Americans away from the Europeans:
Christopher wrote:
Sounds like a long list of bullshit without any documentation. It’s a common refrain to say, “that is just not true of the breed in MY country,” but this never comes with any objective data. Nor does it come with an even plausible story on why the breed would be so different.
All European Chihuahuas come from New World stock, so by harsh numerical truth, your local gene pool is smaller and less diverse than the American dogs. If you’re trying to suggest that there is something magic in your water over there, you’ll need to provide more than your opinion of the breed’s health because the actual numbers speak harshly against your statements.
I was recently told the molera is a desirable trait because it means the dog is “pure”. Apparently having an opening in the bones protecting the BRAIN is not considered a problem for these people. When I asked if they would be equally as tolerant of a weak spot in the bones protecting the heart, I was told it was not at all the same thing, as a soft spot in the rib cage is not a breed trait.
The mind, it boggles.
On a nice note, the United Kennel Club has moved to ban moleras from the show ring. Judges are now to examine dogs for the presence of the molera & disqualify dogs which possess it, including filing a report with the UKC.
Anna recently posted..RokGallery Template Integration
I have read the about this moleras (soft spot) and so called opinions and it does not compute to this reader. Think the UK is taking proper precautionary action at this time.