This is not an apple, it's a pipe.

It is the nature of Evolution and the human mind to repurpose what exists into what could be: to innovate, experiment, and sometimes to improve. The fate of such change is almost always failure–99.9 % of all species to ever have lived are extinct and 95% of new businesses fail within 5 years–but occasionally unplanned, unimagined, and even unwanted uses and abilities surpass the ability, potential, or popularity of the original.

This isn’t a simple re-purposing, such as using an apple or corncob to create a pipe; such uses don’t surpass the original nor are they particularly exemplary in their new form.  Though I couldn’t resist bringing surrealist painter René Magritte into this thought stream by combining two of his images which both ask about the fundamental nature of reality, representation, symbolism and existential identity.

In branding, especially in branding dogs, I think the community is way too hung up on the past–and often an artificial past–in how we define and value our dogs. We turn them into symbols and representations and we place the story over the existential truth.

Conformation shows are very much about the painting of the pipe versus the pipe itself. The goal of a painting is to exhibit the skill of the artist, not to make a superior pipe. The painting just has to LOOK like a wonderful pipe. Then, as artists are want to do, trends and abuses turn into movements and in some epochs the art is realist, even romantic, other times it’s impressionistic and then downright absurd.

Conformation is all about the change, never about performance.

The trialists are also absorbed in the past, but in a different way; they are fundamentally against the evolution and repurposing of dogs. They find value in the antique nature of the breed and revel in stasis and reenactment. While a performance standard does speak to an existential truth (and this is why we don’t see the grotesque distortions we find from conformation artists), it doesn’t prevent the performance task from becoming obsolete or surpassed in popularity.

Trials are all about performance, never about change.

So what happens when we don’t constrain either of those variables and take a measure of what is produced in an existential, realist, and measured manner?

The Internet is for social networking and porn.

The Internet was funded by the Department of Defense for use by the military.  National defense and elite scholarship were the original use and designing factors governing its design.  Now, the military and elite institutions are taking more and more of their networks offline and spend fortunes putting up barriers to those that are still connected to the Internet.

In reality, the Internet is primarily for social networking and pornography, not national defense or scholarship.  An impartial observer who was not indoctrinated in what the Internet is supposed to be or what it was in the past would hardly notice the national defense and scholarship aspects and would declare it to be a massive undertaking which people use to convince others that they are having lots of sex followed closely by actually viewing images and videos of strangers pretending to have lots of sex.

Last year, social networking surpassed pornography as the most popular use of the internet and more social networking activity takes place over the Internet than any other outlet.  Likewise, pornography is the second most common use of the Internet and more people get their pornography over the Internet than any other source.

These are unintended and arguably unwanted developments in the use of the Internet, but the reflexive superiority of the task and the platform  are undeniable.  It’s not for education or defense, it’s for social wish fulfillment and fantasy.

Love and other drugs: Viagra and Ecstasy are far more popular for carnal pursuits than for their original medical uses.

While we’re on the subject of unexpected innovation for purposes of initiating or aiding sexual activity, here are three examples of other tools (all pharmaceuticals in this case) which have surpassed their initial use in pursuit of that goal.  Viagra was developed specifically to treat hypertension and angina, with zero thought or design given to a secondary use as an erection inducer.  It wasn’t until the drug made it to human trials that it was found to be useless for angina but effective for increasing blood flow to the penis.  That is now its primary use and it is the primary drug prescribed for that condition.

Methylenedioxymethamphetamine was first synthesized a century ago as an intermediary product in part of a Merck plot to plagiarize a successful Bayer drug used to treat hemorrhages.  Its psychotropic effects wouldn’t be appreciated for another six decades after it had been investigated as an appetite suppressant and decongestant like Ephedrine, and later as an analog to Mescaline in a study done by the US Army.  MDMA found its way to the streets by the 1970s and soon into the basket of drugs offered to patients by psychotherapists. Ecstasy was classified as a Schedule I controlled substance by the mid 1980s, but that didn’t prevent its rise to prominence as a recreational drug second only to Marijuana in popularity, passing Cocaine and Heroin as drug-of-choice for first illicit drug experience.

Latisse is a far more popular cosmetic than it was a medical treatment.

Bimatoprost (“Lumigan”) was a rather unremarkable member of a family of drugs (prostaglandins) used to treat glaucoma until it was discovered that a side effect of the drug was the darkening and thickening of the eyelashes.  Rebranded as “Latisse” the drug is now FDA approved for cosmetic use and is being sold as a beauty product.  Its value as a cosmetic has already far surpassed its use as a medicinal drug.  It is the only drug approved for cosmetic eyelash enhancement, so it currently dominates a much larger market than its previous incarnation as one of many treatments for hypertension in the eye.

This is not a phone. It's a clock with some extra features.

Perhaps the most obvious approachable and active nursery for useage drift is the cell phone.  It’s hardly a phone any more, as by any measure what used to be subordinate bonus features are now vastly more popular than the once sole raison d’être of the phone: to make voice calls.  Teens send 6 times as many text messages as phone calls and even the least likely to text adults still use that feature more than dialing calls.  The most popular use of the device is actually to tell the time though, and the ubiquity of cell phones has made the wrist watch an increasingly obsolete tool.  Applications and Games have recently surpassed Internet browsing and e-mail as the largest share of data bandwidth and now people spend more time listening to music on their phone than making phone calls.

We might call it a phone, but that’s hardly its main use anymore.  While there are still single purpose phones in the world, their use is dropping like a stone and the number of cellphone only households has surpassed the number of landline only households and the recession has caused many dual-phone households to ditch their landline to save money.  The landline will likely live on, but only at a fraction of its previous popularity and in instances where the downside of cell phones (reliability, battery driven) make them impractical.

A dog is what you make of it and more people are making sport dogs than working dogs.

All of these tools were manipulated by man into filling a niche use.  So too is the dog a man-adapted tool that has been continually manipulated to fill existing and new human niches.

So what IS a Border Collie then? By far its most popular use is as a pet. Not only does this use easily make up more than 90% of Border Collies, they are quite successful and good pets–easily a Top 10 breed and perhaps as high as Top 5.  This has probably been the case for over a century going right back to the very founding days of the breed as a trial dog. It’s an undeniable truth that despite having the goal of creating winning trial dogs, the majority of puppies in a litter never stepped on a trial field.  This is true for all competitive endeavors, it’s just that all the hype and branding comes from the minority use.

Among the fraction of Border Collies that are trained and compete, there are many times more Border Collies who play Frisbee, Flyball, Agility, and Obedience than have ever entered a sheep or cattle trial; and their ability in all these venues is exemplary.  There isn’t another breed that can hold a candle to the Border Collie at dog sports, they are so dominant that they have been given a Border Collies Only division to compete in.  Participation and growth in dog sports is robust and although some performance events started as a side show to conformation shows, they are now independently sustainable and there are numerous organizations that organize dog sport events that have no connection to and compete directly with the AKC.

This isn’t a “paradigm shift” in the formal sense, as the sport dog in no way precludes the use of the “working” dog despite surpassing it in popularity.  I’ve been accused of putting dog sport Border Collies forth as “the new paradigm” but I make no such claim. Not only is ‘paradigm’ so over-used as to be meaningless, the original definition required a true revolution in understanding such that the use or way of thinking before the shift was eclipsed and supplanted (think “the earth is flat” to “the earth is round;” when you accept the latter, the former is meaningless).

Sport dogs and working dogs can co-exist and the value of the breed stock is not mutually exclusive.  Creating pet and sport Border Collies is not a revolution, it’s a concurrent evolution.  The reality is such though, that the market and demands of the sport world are larger and more intricate than the working breeders can provide.  Thus, breeders can and will continue to breed to a sport and pet standard despite the moral cries from the sheeple that they should not do so.

This is not speculative advocacy on my part, projecting what I wish the reality were, it is a simple observation of the extant truth.

Both the blog and the puppies turned 4 this year. Here's Mercury at a few weeks old.

Back in March I set some goals for this blog.  At the time there were 125 feedburner subscribers and my goal was to reach 150 by the end of the year.  The blog broke 200 subscribers on November 18th and now we’re closing in on 210.  You have rewarded me richly with your loyalty, thank you.

Back then you had left 785 comments in total on the blog.  Today the number surged passed 2,040.  You have rewarded me richly with your engagment, thank you.

I’ve published 65 posts in those 282 days, you’ve left 1255 comments on them, averaging 4.45 comments per day and 19 comments per post.

I’ve published 33 posts since the last update 143 days ago, since then you’ve left 727 comments at 5 comments per day and more than 22 comments per post.

I’m so grateful that both interest and engagement is growing.

Several new blogs have linked in since the beginning of the year, please reward them by checking out their content:

Brigadoon Border Collies
Carnivore Cafè
Conker the Shiba Inu
Dobermann Daze
Dogma and Cattitude
Dore River Border Collies
Masakado Shiba Inu
Musings of a Biologist and Dog Lover
Prick-Eared
Rancho Buena Fé
Smartdogs’ Weblog
Stephen Bodio’s Querencia
The Court of Tails
The Dog Scoop

All the blogs that link in to BorderWars are listed under the Incoming! box to the right of the content and new posts from all these bloggers appear in the Allied Communication box.

2011 has been a transformational year on the blog, and I’m grateful that you are all coming along for the ride, helping me grow and refining my understanding of dogs and the issues that contribute to what make them so wonderful.  It’s been a great four years and I’m very proud of how far we’ve come.

I will strive in 2012 to continue to bring unique and important content, to tackle tough issues with facts and candor, and to expand both my audience and my knowledge.  Again, thank you.

Biologist Claire Wade and her Toller "Burn" during an NSDTRC-USA Field Test.

The 2011 study A Genealogical Survey of Australian Registered Dog Breeds is a shoddy piece of work and a disgrace to the scientific method.

The world-wide population of Cavalier King Charles Spaniels descends from only 6 dogs.  This bogus study manufactured 836 observed CKCS “founders.”

GIMME AN F!

The authors Mohammad Shariflou, John Hames, Frank Nicholas, and Claire Wade did themselves and the canine community no service in writing it and I contend that Claire Wade allowed her own bias for and attachment to Nova Scotia Duck Tolling Retrievers to taint her judgment. Combined with her failure to disclose her extant conflicts of interest as a Toller owner, breeder (stud service), trainer, and breed club member, this bias and its resultant corruption of the methods and characterization of the results by the authors are de facto academic fraud.

The authors begin by suggesting that their analysis is circumspect and all encompassing when it’s anything but:

To better understand the actual nature of pedigree dog population structure on a whole-population basis, we examined data records for a representative sample of recognised pedigree breed populations in Australia.

This is a lie.  This paper did NOT look at a whole-population basis at all, in fact the researchers went out of their way to limit the information they were looking at and purposely excluded data that is both informative and readily available.

The world-wide population of Pekingese Lion Dogs descends from only 5 dogs.  This bogus study manufactured 1053 observed Peke “founders.”

GIMME AN R!

They looked at only a fraction of the data available in one registry in Australia, going out of their way to remove all known dogs before import which were certainly contained on their import pedigrees but not included in the analysis.  This means that they failed to look at the whole-population of any dog breeds  despite claiming otherwise.  They didn’t even come close.

Only one breed, the Australian Terrier, passed the 10 generations of data mark. The other native Oz breed, the Australian Cattle Dog, fell short at only 9.7 generations but this low mark still greatly surpassed the imported breeds.

Generation Equivalents (EqG): 3.0, 2.1, 3.5, 5.4, 4.4, 3.1, 3.4, 3.3, 4.8, 4.1, 4.1, 1.7, 7.6, 2.6, 10.1, 9.4, 7.7, 8.3, 8.1, 7.6, 9.7, 7.6, 6, 7.5, 7.3, 8.7, 6.6, 4.8, 6.7, 6.6, 4.9, 8
mean: 3.9

These scientists threw away so much prior-to-import data and the documented history within Australia is so limited for almost all these breeds that their results are based upon an average of only 3.9 generations! This is less information than would appear on one single import pedigree and we know that most of these breeds have many more generations of documented history.

The world-wide population of Nova Scotia Duck Tolling Retrievers descends from only 9 dogs.  This bogus study manufactured 84 observed NSDTR “founders.”

GIMME AN A!

As I’ve shown before, Nova Scotia Duck Tolling Retrievers should have between 11 and 22+ generations of documented pedigrees.  I’ve traced my own Border Collies back (including significant history in Australia) between 20 and 70 generations.

It’s really laughable then that they claim their results are “comparable with other species of domesticated animals.”  How can you compare genetic analysis of an entire species to a circumcised look at a niche registry in a remote island country?

Why would you make such a comparison when your data doesn’t support it and your methodology precludes making such comparisons in the first place? These sorts of throw away comments suggest an author with an agenda to create sound-bites for breed apologists instead of a scientist with ethics and objectivity.

Claire Wade's Toller "Burn" a.k.a. Am, NSDTRC-US CH Edlyn Seastar Dodge N Burn WC CGC CCD JD, is a conformation show champion.

Using complete national pedigree data supplied by the Australian National Kennel Council (ANKC), this study examined the levels of inbreeding and popular sire use in 32 Australian dog breeding populations with different registry sizes.

This statement is misleading.  It says “using complete national pedigree data” but as you’ll soon find out the researchers discarded much of that data, so the use of “complete” is highly inappropriate.  If you want to use the word ‘complete,’ you should include all known pedigree data, worldwide, period.

The world-wide population of Samoyeds descends from fewer than 20 dogs.  This bogus study manufactured 149 observed Sammy “founders.”

GIMME A U!

For Nova Scotia Duck Tolling Retrievers, this analysis was already completed and published before the Wade paper in 2009 by Katariina Mäkii: Population Structure and Genetic Diversity of Worldwide Nova Scotia Duck Tolling Retriever and Lancashire Heeler Dog Populations. For the Australian subpopulation, the study found an inbreeding level of 28% and looked at 13.2 complete generation equivalents worth of pedigree data.

It’s not that this data contradicts the ANKC data, it’s that the Mäki data was not artificially manipulated to exclude known relationships and create bogus founders out of thin air.

The Wade study looks at but the tip of the iceberg and pretends that everything below water doesn’t exist.

Claire Wade's Toller "Burn" is an import to Australia and a stud dog for hire. He's sired at least two litters to date.

The evaluation of data over the entire registration histories of breeds shows inbreeding trends over time.

The world-wide population of Leonbergers descends from only 5 dogs.  This bogus study manufactured 149 observed Leonberger “founders.”

GIMME A D!

This statement is misleading and if it was intended to suggest to the reader that these researchers were looking at “the entire registration histories” then it is a bold lie.

Even for the few breeds which were developed in Australia, I’d like to see some evidence that they were founded within the ANKC and that their breed is represented well within just that registry.  I have my doubts as the study claims to only have data from 1954 from the Australian Cattle Dog and 1955 for the Australian Terrier.  It’s likely that the ANKC is not the parent/founding registry for these breeds and thus their formation is not contained in their registry database (or that data has been excluded in this study).

In the genealogical analysis, animals with known parents born from 2000 to 2009 inclusive were used as the reference population. The completeness of pedigree information was determined by complete equivalent generations (EqG) in the reference population. Founders (f) were defined as animals with unknown parents (typically imported dogs with known parentage but outside of the Australian registry) contributing to the gene pool in the reference population.

This little gimmick is what completely invalidates this entire study.  They are creating “founders” out of thin air, throwing away the information which documents inbreeding and then declaring that there is no inbreeding!

This is Australia we’re talking about so almost every single breed was developed elsewhere and there’s a good chance that the two Australian breeds were not developed within the AKNC, so this one step not only obliterates evidence of the true founder effects on the breeds, it also white washes the very real import bottleneck that Australia has.

Import bottlenecks are no small matter.  Think of the rising inbreeding documented in culturally or geographically isolated human communities: Muslims in Europe & Australia; Polygamist Mormons; Ashkenazi Jews; Bedouins; Martha’s Vinyard, Pitcairn Island, Faroe Islands, Easter Island, Iceland; Hirado, Japan.

As far as dogs are concerned, Australia is no different.  Not only are they geographically isolated from the countries of origin and the largest dog markets in the world, there are also historical import barriers that prevented the easy flow of dogs into the country.  Many of these barriers still exist: it’s very expensive and laborious to sort through all the red tape, bureaucracy, and quarantine to import a dog into Australia.  This greatly limits the gene pool versus the global population of a breed.

If you read this study as presented, you’d be given the mistaken impression that Australian dog breeds are miraculously well off genetically.  This is true only if you blind yourself to reality. But that’s exactly what Wade has done:

Observed values for breed mean inbreeding coefficients are considerably lower than those reported by Maki (2010), who analysed international pedigrees of rare breeds, but are in line with those reported by others based on national data (Calboli et al., 2008; Leroy et al., 2006). For example, it is likely that the observed disagreement with the Maki analysis for the Nova Scotia duck tolling retriever breed (Australian F = 0.03 vs. International F = 0.26) is related to the treatment of imported individuals in our data and, as part of this, the lack of pedigree information from ancestors of the imported dogs. The correspondence of our breed mean results with other national data collections suggests that the majority of the inbreeding identified by Maki (2010) for this breed is probably derived from distant rather than recent co-ancestry. Recent inbreeding is expected to be more deleterious to population health (Hinrichs et al., 2007) and so inbreeding coefficients calculated over more recent population history (such as are presented in this analysis) may have more relevance to breed health than total inbreeding.

The first bit of intentional distortion here is that Mäki didn’t just look at all International data, she also published subdata which included Australia.  Wade clearly doesn’t want to point out that the Australian subpopulation of Tollers is actually more inbred than the International average at 28% inbred versus the 26% Wade quoted.

Wade is trying to claim that the post-import Australian breeders are doing such a bang-up job of avoiding inbreeding that they’ve dropped their COI numbers, this isn’t the case, obviously, as the Australian dogs are more inbred on average, not less.

The second distortion is that Toller inbreeding is “distant” versus “recent.”  Tollers are not an old enough breed to distinguish between distant and recent inbreeding.  As you saw from my recent COI post, Toller inbreeding skyrockets after only 4 generations: 9.57% at 7 generations, 19.35% at 8 generations, and 25.9% at 9 generations.  This is NOT distant inbreeding.

Wade quotes the 2007 paper by Hinrichs et al to suggest that Toller inbreeding is somehow so distant that they are protected from the effects of inbreeding.  The Hinrichs paper defined “new” inbreeding as at least 25 generations of pedigree information! Tollers don’t even have that many generations in their entire history, so the notion that the Hinrichs paper is applicable to Tollers is a joke.  The fact that Wade would try and apply the Hinrichs paper but redefine “new” inbreeding as under 4 generations and “old” inbreeding as anything over that is a horrible distortion of the truth and of another researcher’s work.

When you look at less and say it’s more, you are a liar.

When you look at more and say it’s less, you are a liar.

Claire Wade and the other authors of this paper looked at less information and claimed that it was more.  Knowing that COI levels were more, they manipulated their data to tell you it was less.  

This is fraud. 

At the end of many research papers you’ll find a signed statement that reads something like this:

The Conflict of Interest statement signed by Claire Wade

This represents a commitment to the integrity of the scientific process, the credibility of the presented findings, and a reaffirmation of public trust that is central to peer review and publication.  Conflicts of Interests arise when an author or researcher has any relationship or interest which can influence their judgement and the potential for bias can exist and should be disclosed even if the author believes that such a relationship will not affect their scientific judgment.

While financial conflicts are the most obvious (Researcher X is currently employed by Pharmaceutical Company Z whose drug Amazicure is being investigated in this study), conflicts can arise from personal relationships or rivalries, academic competition, and even a passion for the subject being studied.

Claire Wade is a Toller owner, breeder, trainer, and conformation show exhibitor.  She imported her Toller “Burn” into Australia and it’s possible that his offspring are included as data in this study.  She has a vested interest in the promotion and breeding of Tollers and that is a conflict of interest that should have been disclosed in this study and it was not.

What does that spell?  F-R-A-U-D!   F-R-A-U-D!   F-R-A-U-D! 

This is a chart of what I found as I looked at Burn’s COI from 1 Generation all the way up to 12 generations.

Claire Wade's NSDTR "Burn" has a COI of nearly 30%. If you're a fool you might pretend it's lower than that by looking at only a few generations.

COI is a measure of inbreeding in an individual and it’s almost always denoted with the number of generations that are being looked at in the calculation.  For example, a COI5 or COI(5) is looking at 5 ancestor generations and only calculating the inbreeding that is seen within those dogs.  It ignores consanguinity of any dogs further back in the pedigree for the sake of calculation simplicity.  A COI of rank N is intentionally blinded to all dogs in generations N+1 and beyond.  Some pedigree software packages treat generation 1 differently, so it’s wise to confirm just how many dogs are being looked at if you’d like to compare COIs calculated by different software packages (some count the individual as generation 1, others count the parents as generation 1).

Why would someone want to intentionally blind themselves to more information?  First, the COI calculation is not trivial and doing it by hand is time consuming and arduous for most people.  Second, the calculation requires extensive pedigree information that is not always available for many generations.  Third, looking at lower N COIs will measure recent inbreeding versus deeper inbreeding.

Am, NSDTRC-US CH Edlyn Seastar Dodge N Burn WC CGC CCD JD "Burn" A Nova Scotia Duck Trolling Retriever owned by biologist Claire Wade.

But let’s not fool ourselves that lower N COIs are better or more accurate or that higher N COIs are trivial.  COI calculations are meant to predict the level of homozygosity (doubled up alleles) in an individual due to the same ancestors showing up multiple places in the pedigree.  No matter how many generations you look at, the dog’s pedigree and ancestry doesn’t change.  Consanguinity has created a certain level of doubling up on alleles in the dog and that will not change if you blind yourself to more distant generations.  The more generations you look at, the closer your calculation will approximate the real level of inbreeding present in your dog.  That’s why a COI calculation of N+1 is in general always superior to COI(N).  More information is always equal to or better than less information.

In practice though, we run across both pedigree collapse and a limit to how far back our knowledge extends.  Once we start hitting founder dogs, going back any further generations on those dogs won’t actually give us more information because that information is lost or unknown.  If the oldest known ancestor is at most 10 generations back from our current dog, taking a COI(15) won’t really tell us anything that a COI(11) will.  But how do we know when our COIs are giving us diminishing returns?  Well, we can keep taking higher N COIs until they stop changing much.  They might stop changing because we’ve taken into account all known inbreeding or they might stop changing because we’ve run out of useful information, or both.

To illustrate this, I’ve graphed Claire Wade’s pet Toller Burn’s COI over N generations from N=1 to N=12.  You can see this chart at the top of the post.  Notice how as we look at more generations the COI quickly rises and it doesn’t start to stall until the 10th generation and we don’t see significant change only two generations after that.  If you asked me what this dog’s COI was, I’d say at least 28%.  There’s really no reason to look at fewer generations as none of those numbers would tell you anything of value.

A pedigree chart of Claire Wade's Toller "Burn" showing pedigree collapse

Now if we look at Burn’s graphic pedigree again, we can see why the COI peters out at 12ish generations: there’s really no more information after that point which can move the COI significantly.  Every dog on Burn’s complete pedigree can be traced back to Burn in 11 generations or less.  In the following chart, the “Min Gen” column shows the first generation a given ancestor shows up in and the Max Gen shows the last generation they show up in.  Count records how many times they show up in the pedigree total.  As you can see, all the ancestors show up in 11 generations or less as 11 is the largest number in the Min Gen column.

While there’s certainly information after the 12th generation, we aren’t adding any new names to the pedigree after that point, just connections between them. Each generation after we’d need to see twice the level of inbreeding just to begin to make a difference on the COI given that there are theoretically twice as many possible breedings each level. Seeing as most paths going back are already dead ends, there’s no way we can keep that up. The few lines that go to 20 generations or more are likely to have already contributed to for/against the COI in a significant way already.

In her published paper, Claire Wade would have you believe that looking at 4.1 generations of Toller data is enough. What do you think now that you’ve seen the whole truth?

The staff here at BorderWars diligently monitoring the airwaves.

There’s nothing more rewarding as a blogger than to have a reader use your blog as a resource to add intelligently to a discussion elsewhere on the Internet.  BorderWars reader JackieD recently posted a link back here that started a good discussion on the UK’s Dog Rescue Pages.

Here are some of the comments and my thoughts on each:

misty11 - 3rd Oct 2011, 7:37 pm

The problem is there are so many people doing research into the breed that everyone picks up on it! Toller breeders are very open about everything and all info is shared worldwide. Tollers are very healthy compared to other breeds, but it’s easy to find out about any health problems because we are so open it is all easily available.
The ‘only’ health problem in tollers is auto-immune disease. How many health problems do, for example, golden retrievers, border collies, GSD’s have?
and tollers are long lived, many live to over 14.

Here misty11 is parroting Claire Wade in a knee jerk response to any Toller analysis: we’re just being picked on because we’re so open!  This is nonsense. Tollers are being looked at because all breeds are being looked at and in Tollers we have a few studies and not a lot of consensus on what’s going on in the breed and what the best path forward is, most notably the scientist vs. scientist war of letters regarding out-crossing.

This issue is being hashed out on several dog blogs right now, most notably on Jemima Harrison’s Pedigree Dogs Exposed blog in three posts so far:

• Will this Toller x litter save the breed?
• Tollers Take Two…
• Toller x pups 6-8 weeks old

More on this from me soon.

jackied - 4th Oct 2011, 8:26 am

He’s done articles on how astonishingly inbred Border Collies are

Yes, two of the articles worth checking out are:

• Only 8 Border Collies
• Impending Doom

Boo’smum - 4th Oct 2011, 1:02 pm

Surprised to hear BCs are so inbred! Guess I just assumed that, with there being so many of them (and so variable), therefore, I’d thought, they’d have a pretty wide gene pool? Clearly not! (Goes to show what I know… which isn’t much, admittedly!)

One small quibble though: “inbred” is a term I’d use for an individual and not for a breed per se, unless like Tollers, nearly every member of the breed is highly inbred.  Being inbred, as one might measure with a COI calculation, really only looks at the genetic diversity of an individual, which for most genes can carry only 2 possible copies (alleles).  But in populations, we might have dozens and dozens of variations of any gene or certain loci might be fixed with just one allele.  This sort of mechanism can work independently of any individual’s level of inbreeding.

So, for Border Collies, the problem is not just that some individuals are highly inbred, it’s more that the overall levels of diversity in the gene pool are dropping like almost every other breed.  Inbreeding is like broiling one piece of meat… cooking it quickly, but loss of genetic diversity is like turning up the temperature in every oven just a few degrees.  Inbreeding is fast and localized as to how it throws away genetic diversity.  Genetic drift and patterns of selection are slower and more spread out, but they also remove genetic diversity (intentionally and unintentionally) from an essentially closed population.

Inbreeding can be undone with one outcross. Loss of genetic diversity would require many individual insertions of new DNA (or restoration of lost DNA) over time and all over the breed’s gene pool.

The two processes ARE related.  You can’t turn up all the ovens and not expect to burn some steak, nor can you broil a lot of beef without shifting the average meal from medium rare to well done.  A breed like Border Collies is mostly a slow burn save for a few popular sires who more than make up for their small number by their significant impact on the breed.  In Tollers or Cavaliers, you also have the issue of extreme population effects trumping recent breeding patterns: too few founders make inbreeding unavoidable even though breeders on the whole aren’t trying to close breed individual litters.

jackied - 4th Oct 2011, 8:26 am

The problem with Border Collies is that just a few champion sires were used so extensively for breeding that their genes came to dominate the entire breed, even though there are so many Border Collies registered. Detailed analysis of the ISDS studbook reveals that genetically the foundation stock of Border Collies is equivalent to just 8 dogs, worse than many ‘rare’ breeds.

Probably the only redeeming feature is that in the past the emphasis on performance over appearance in BCs has been stronger than in some other breeds.

Yes!  But it’s important to note that the 8 genomes is not the original founding population, rather the breed has been pared down from the original founders and their theoretical genomes down to just 8 today.  Many rare breeds (and some quite popular breeds) have the problem of having a founding population that is quite small.

Border Collies have around 1000 nominal “founders,” and in the ISDS there are just under 650 that still have any influence on the current population. As you can see from the following chart, there are several means of looking at genetic variability in a breed and like-sounding terms are not always directly comparable.

The effective number of unique Border Collie genomes across the entire extant ISDS population is only 8.3 individuals worth of information.

So I don’t know how BCs compare to rare breeds without being able to look directly at the same information, but the message I think this data is telling is that BCs are not special in regards to the general trend in all closed populations to lose genetic information over time, often quickly.

mum24dog - 4th Oct 2011, 8:26 am

But then most BCs/WSDs won’t be ISDS registered so who knows what has gone into their genetic make up?
And just because a dog is ISDS registered doesn’t mean that it only has BC genes – google Turnbull’s Blue – a Beardie whose line still throws up hairy faced dogs today. (I assume we’re ignoring the KC version and discussing the real thing.)

It would be a major error to draw conclusions about a breed as whole from only registered dogs of a working type breed – a clear case of selection bias. There must be 1000s of dogs that warrant the description of BC out there going about their daily job that pass right under the ISDS radar.

And of course we can’t ignore the culling factor. Many dogs don’t reach an age to test their genetics for one reason or another.

But at least the ISDS stud book isn’t closed like that of any breed unfortunate enough to have caught the eye of the KC. Dogs still can obtain registration on merit.

The ISDS population is special and significant in all Border Collies.  This is the founding population and every single border collie on the planet can be traced back  to ISDS registered dogs and I’d venture to say that the vast majority of BC genetics worldwide are from ISDS registered stock originally.  One cannot claim to understand the genetics of the breed without knowing the ISDS studbook.

Remember that the BC is NOT foremost a working breed, it is a breed formed around the SPORT of sheep trials.  This is the reason for the stud books, the name, the society, and the requirements for registration on merit.  The working sheep dog, while related in both purpose and genetics, is a more nebulous concept that we have much less solid genetic information on.  There are, of course, WSDs that are from pure registered BC stock, but there are also mixes and dogs that have been off the books for decades or centuries.

My own Border Collie stock has been breed to an unpapered “Border Collie,” both working on a cattle ranch, and their offspring have gone on to work on that ranch and others, all without papers, all joining the greater WSD landrace, but all off the books and not easily studied by pedigree research.

In general this is a one way trip, as very few WSDs make their way back into the papered registries and even fewer go on to have a significant genetic impact there.

If you have an unpapered WSD, you probably don’t have a lot to worry about since you can always breed it to whatever you want, you obviously don’t care a lot about pedigree papers.  But if you have a Border Collie, don’t pretend that you get all the benefits of the collie landrace when your dog probably hasn’t had the benefits of that model for more than 100 years and 30 generations.

This isn’t selection bias at all!  It’s looking at known quantities with specific names and definitions.

Despite claims by BC elitists like Eileen Stein, BCs are NOT being bred like sled dogs (as in, a richly diverse landrace with new blood entering all the time and all over the gene pool).

mum24dog - 5th Oct 2011, 10:45 am

And yet with the BC we have a breed that is used worldwide to perform a multitude of tasks, most requiring great physical fitness. Clearly any loss of genetic diversity is not a huge problem for the success of the breed.

Popularity and genetic variability are really two different issues!  Trying to downplay one because the other is thriving is not really good analysis.

Bananas are incredibly popular worldwide, but that doesn’t change the fact that the superior Gros Michel banana is now all but extinct and we are left to eat the smaller, less tasty, and more fragile Cavendish banana today.

• Yes! We Have No Bananas

Similarily, the great personality, intelligence and dexterity of the Border Collie have made it an incredibly popular dog worldwide.  This does not mean, however, that they are healthier today than they were 50 years ago or a century ago.  This does not mean that we are taking the right steps to preserve them for another 50 or 100 years.

Genetic diversity isn’t a “huge” problem… until it is.  TNS wasn’t a problem in Border Collies until BOOM, suddenly it was a problem, mostly because it didn’t have a name, a clear diagnosis, and any breed wide awareness.  It was always there, but no one put the pieces together.

Uric acid problems in Dalmatians were always there, it just wasn’t until there was a DNA test and people found out that there wasn’t a single genetically normal dog in the entire breed.

Epilepsy is a problem in Border Collies.  But we have no solutions, so it doesn’t get a lot of air time.  When we get a test, a firm diagnosis, a means of inheritance, and eventually a study that shows just how prevalent it is within the breed, we’ll get more openness and admission.

mum24dog - 5th Oct 2011, 3:31 pm

In any breed a list of potential defects needs to include the level of incidence so far as it can be measured, along with a breakdown of sub groups within the breed where there are distinct populations such as the BC so the likely risk can be assessed.

This! This! A million times this!  Why is it so hard for dog people to understand that the NUMBER of diseases seen in a breed is not nearly as important as the INCIDENCE of disease across all diseases.

If Dalmatians only had 1 disease, high uric acid levels, they’d still be worse off than a breed that had 100 listed diseases but where only 10% of those dogs had one or more of those diseases, because ALL Dalmatians have high uric acid levels.

If we wanted to think like an engineer, we could actually perform a calculation like this to really compare breeds in a relevant and fair manner:

For every dog and every disease add up [% dogs with the disease] * [severity of that disease].

Wouldn’t you agree that having more sick dogs is worse than fewer dogs? And wouldn’t you agree that a painful and untreatable disease is worse than a mostly benign condition that doesn’t cause much pain or other problems?

Also, the entire tactic of comparing your breed against other breeds is suspect in the manner many breed apologists are doing it.  NO ONE WANTS COMPARATIVE HEALTH!  We want actual health.  It’s not any comfort that your breed has 2% less cancer than another breed when you’re both above 50% cancer rates.

No one should care that some online website lists 5 diseases for your breed and 9 for another and so you think you can ignore what you’re doing and sit on a high perch.  In the land of the blind, the one eyed man might be king, but that sucker still doesn’t have depth perception!  Come on people, don’t accept early deaths, smaller litter sizes, poor quality of life and many other problems simply because you can find one breed that’s worse off.

That’s settling for mediocrity simply because something else is atrocious.  Mediocrity is WORSE when it allows you to be complacent instead of taking action to solve the problems when they’re minor or before they are a crisis.  We’ve spend the better part of the last decade dealing with bursting bubbles: the dot com crisis, the housing crisis, the banking crisis; do we REALLY need to keep suffering the damage of explosive bubbles when long standing problems come to a head or will we finally realize that the time to act and to change our ways is BEFORE permanent and extensive harm is done?  An ounce of prevention and all….  or were you too busy getting foreclosed and watching your 401k languish to worry about the problems that might blow up in our faces next year or the year after that?

Objects in the Mirror Get Worse Off Each Year

When we look back on today’s culture from some point in the future, what will we say? What will we be embarrassed about? What sins will we forgive ourselves for with the old “hindsight is 20/20″ idiom? If we ask these questions, perhaps we can see such mistakes clearly–right now–if we only take the time to think critically.

Fashion choices often dominate this sort of thought exercise as trends change quickly, are by their nature recognizable, and are often iconic to a given year or decade.  I have no doubt that the collective “we” will one day be incredibly embarrassed by men in tight pants with a swath of emo hair across their forehead or sporting the fauxhawk with a popped collar, women in jeggings or low rise jeans with a visible thong and a tramp stamp, and of course toe shoes which make even Crocs look good.

But fashion so rarely matters in the long run except for your ability to display old family photos.  Other trends and events have lasting effects on the culture and the future psyche.

At one point in history, not so very long ago, frontal lobotomies were standard practice and over 50,000 people in the US alone had their brains scrambled with a blunt tool in the hopes that it’d cure what ailed them.  It almost never did and some of the victims are still with us.  This trend in the United States was spearheaded almost entirely by the singular vision of one charismatic individual: Dr. Walter Jackson Freeman II.

Who are the modern Dr. Freemans and what practices will we one day look down on like we now view lobotomies?

When the science is new and there’s a lack of consensus with only a shallow record of study and few results to analyze combined with a scant  handful of people in positions of power, a singular messiah or very small group can have great sway over the culture.

But time and progress marches on and more people become aware, more eyes and minds are on the problem, the record grows and data goes from anecdotal to comprehensive.  New solutions arise and old ways are reformed or discarded.  Sometimes we forgive the front-runners for their imperfections but other times we see them as monsters.  So too do we realize that some great minds of the time were under-appreciated and their keen insights are only appreciated after their deaths.  Nikola Tesla is one such genius who is only now enjoying a resurgence in importance and recognition.

If I had to provide some names for the Dr. Freeman’s in the Dog Fancy, Lloyd Bracket and Carmen Battaglia come to mind.  The first gave us the eponymous formula that is basically Blakewell style inbreeding with a dog on the cover, and the later is his current day champion within the AKC.

In the future I’ll bring you more analysis on Carmen Battaglia PhD and you can read my thoughts on Brackett here:
Brackett’s Formula for Failure
Brackett’s Formula: Nothing Special

Who are your nominations for Freemans and Teslas in dogdom?  Who should we dump into the rubbish bin of history and whose stock will rise in the future?

The problem with two-faced dogs is that shit coming out of their mouth doesn't help you distinguish which face they're talking with.

Patrick Burns is a two-faced dog who is trying very hard to publicly convince his readers that he lives close to his moral code, but in the honesty of private communication he reveals his true contempt for divergent viewpoints, open dialogue, women, alpha males, libertarians, breeders, pitt bulls, vegans, and others.

It’s time to vote this fool out of the sandbox, he does not play well with others and is intellectually dishonest.

Patrick “I call myself Terrierman” Burns is Tolerant and Circumspect:

“I believe in balance and can co-exist with divergent viewpoints so long as both sides are represented”

Patrick “Wrong century, wrong country” Burns Lives Close to His Moral Code:

I came of age after birth control but before AIDS, after marijuana but before crack. I regret nothing, but I will say that I did enough in the late 1970s, that I rediscovered the virtues of living close to my own moral code which (oddly enough) does not have much in common with the late 1970s.

Patrick “I actually have invented my own immoral code” Burns Loves Jesus:

That said, I believe in the essential message of the New Testament, which is Do unto others, as you would have them do unto you. I have not invented my own moral code.

Patrick Burns Hates Women, Ron Paul, Me, and Probably You Too:

From: Patrick Burns <siriusdogma@gmail.com>
Sent: Fri, September 11, 2009 6:41:46 PM
Subject: Re: Fw: 10,000 Thank You’s for SB 250

I wrote a pretty tough piece to pry of three or four lunatics at about the place you are now.   See >>http://terriermandotcom.blogspot.com/2009/01/zombies-time-wasters-and-anonymous.html

One was a fellow who plunked down a few hundreds dollars for AKC border collies, never saw a sheep in his life, and then proceeded to say what was wrong with Don McCaig.  Such people exist.

Then I had a guy who got his first gun 10 years ago and became a gun nut.  No dog, no hunting.  Just a man who needs a piece to know he’s a man, and he rode in on every turn he could to explain his Ron-Paul like theology and why everyone should go to the mall fully strapped..

Then there’s “Mrs X”, the libertarian puppy mill breeder from Michigan or Wisconsin I think.  She’s a Ron Paul loony dirt bag.

I had a crazy broad show up who is Pit Bull breed blind.  According to her, a Pit Bull never bil anyone ever.  Right.  If you gave this lady a break stick, she’d think it was a marital aid.

Then there’s the guy who is a wannabe Tarzan.  For him, dogs are part of his he-man loin cloth persona. Hes got lot of dogs, but he hasn’t actually discovered what any one dog or one breed can really do.  He’s like the guy who buys an orchestra full of instruments at a pawn shop, and after a while can play Three Blind Mice on most of them.  Figure he knows now!

Then I have had a couple of vegans, a few show ring people, etc.  Not many for all of that, and I do not edit comments very much.  The trick is to shit-can the sticky tapes who only want to argue all the time.  I do not educate one-on-one.  That’s what books and Google and experience in the field are for.

I wrote this >> http://terriermandotcom.blogspot.com/2009/01/zombies-time-wasters-and-anonymous.html to shake loose the sticky tapes.  Pretty harsh, but it works.

So too does asking people to actually do real research work, LOL.  Still waiting for someone to got through those pit bulls mortality reports.  No takers, because the evidence is pretty solid that NO dog is likely to kill you, but Pits are disproportonately owned by dick heads and a lot are still bred by dick head fighters.

You want to write the post on me blog re: the three dogs I put up tonight?  The top two are first-generation Boxers, the bottom is a modern American pit bull from a numbskull kennel.  The point is that boxers and pits and all the rest are all one things, just as Jack Russell terriers are, Parson Russells, and Russell Terriers.

YES, over time, some temperament problems do get smoothed out (you get what you breed for, and what you breed for depends on the person who is the breeder).

Patrick

Apparently living close to one’s moral code means calling people who read and comment on your blog ‘lunatics, zombies, time-wasters, nuts, puppy-millers, dirt bags, crazy broads, loin cloth Tarzan wannabes, sticky tapes, dick heads, and numbskulls.’ It’s also really classy when he basically tells a woman to go %&$#?@! herself with a break stick.

Patrick must have missed the day of kindergarten when three year olds learned how to disagree without being disagreeable.  Jesus would not be proud.

How come "improvement" in dog breeds always seems to mean taking physical features to the extreme while minimizing health and longevity?

If the highest and best goal of eugenics is to improve the genetic composition of a breed, what–if anything–can we say has been improved in the pedigree dog in the last 100 years?

What breed lives longer today than a century ago?  Where do we find evidence of larger litter sizes and increased vitality? Has any insurance company lowered their rates for coverage of any breed because the breeding community has successfully created a healthier animal?  What breed has fewer total health problems in number and incidence today versus the past?

What breed is more capable?  What breed does its job better now than in the past?  What new job can dogs do well now that they couldn’t do before?  Has anyone founded a breed that meets a new working or sporting need driven by demand?

Do our dogs even look better on the most shallow of aesthetic measures?  Are consumers flocking to buy more dogs with excessive hair, excessive skin, or insufficient length of limb or depth of face?  Do the dogs that win in the show ring really win in the open market?  Are people more nostalgic for the dog of their childhood that no longer exists due to changing show fads or are they more impressed with the improved models and wonder how they ever got along with the less improved versions?

If there are tens of thousands of breeders creating millions of dogs every year in this country, where are the results?

100 years ago the human life expectancy was 50 years and in those five short decades you were likely to have lived without anything electronic or digital, no drip coffee or band-aids, no animation motion pictures, no quartz clocks, no disposable diapers or electric guitars, no internet, no TV, no bras.

We’ve lifted and separated humans in the last century, have we elevated and distinguished our dog breeds?

You can't walk on water if you can barely walk.

Dogs forgive us for they know not what we’ve done.

It is a blessing that our dogs don’t know how sick they have become at our hands and thus don’t blame us for mess we’ve made of their genetics.  Right now there’s probably a blind double merle puppy licking the hand of the callous breeder who brought it about and a French Mastiff who is taking its last breath at only 5 years old totally unaware that a community who knew better cared more about type and ribbons and breed purity than about robbing this dog of two thirds of its potential life.

Our dogs don’t ask us where their vision and hearing went; or who robbed them of their tails, their ear tips, their gonads, their hair or their coloration; they don’t lecture us like human teenagers do about ruining their lives when we make decisions for them; and after we strip them of their natural gifts we so rarely ask them to go and get a job even though they are ever more eager to do so than the children we raise.

And it is because our dogs are so blissfully unaware of their own mortality and the blows to its quality and quantity that we have inflicted due to our own vanity that we must now also act on their behalf to rectify the wrongs we have done to them and begin atoning for our sins.

Dogs are certainly Man’s best friend, but what sort of friend have we been to dogs?

Many dogs are alarmed when the Sheepdog card is drawn. They mistakenly think they have to work for a living. Don't worry dogs, these days job cards are more metaphorical than literal.

Read the following blurb, determine who the critic writer/journalist/filmmaker in question is, and make an educated guess on when the article describing this critic’s efforts was written.

An institution founded to defend the integrity of canine pedigrees has become, a critic contends, unreasonable in its measure of “excellence” and complicit in rewarding close breeding for suspect qualities resulting in breeds that are now unable to perform their historical functions and which suffer from debilitating diseases.

Don’t bother using google, the blurb has been anonymized so you won’t find the article searching for the quote.  Multiple guesses are allowed as long as you pair a critic with a year.

Bonus points if you can name which country and institution is being discussed.

For example:

The blurb describes Christopher Landauer’s article “Border Collie War: AKC vs. ABCA” published 9/10/2007 which critcises both the American Kennel Club and the American Border Collie Association in the USA.

Of course that’s not the right answer, and there are perhaps numerous critics that this could apply to, let’s see how many you can name and I’ll bring you a follow-up article featuring at least one of them I don’t think too many of you know about.