Purpose of This Site

This wiki site has been established to serve as an international resource for current essays and articles on the science and art of breeding healthy and vigorous dogs. During the last 40 years, the science of genetics has been greatly transformed by our increased knowledge of DNA functionality, population genetics, and the genetics of the immune system.

Pertinent information on these topics has not been readily accessible to the average dog breeder; meanwhile, outdated models for producing “purebred” dogs have persisted, and many breeders remain unaware of the pitfalls of linebreeding and inbreeding, for their own dogs and for the breed as a whole. As the public's attitude towards pets has become increasingly humanized, breeders of purebred dogs shoulder an increasingly heavy burden to produce animals that will not only look beautiful, not only become beloved family members, but also remain healthy and live a long life. As a result, many purebred dog fanciers today find themselves between a rock and several very hard places: they want to produce beautiful dogs that will win in the show ring, that will be instantly identifiable, that can perform the function for which they were developed, and even win in performance trials. No mean task!

Different breeds of purebred dogs have greatly varying population sizes and historical backgrounds.

Most breeds that are registered with the AKC (why is this limited to the USA?) are relatively rare, and are generally bred by serious hobbyists. For some breeds, especially the popular small companion dogs, a significant proportion of the annual puppy production occurs at large-scale breeding facilities.

In the modern situation of closed stud books registraties ???? that do not mutually recognize each other's studbooks essentially create separate breeds and reduce diversity within the gene pool. For example in the United States the movement of many of the large scale puppy producers to newly created registries has removed their dogs from being bred within the AKC gene pool. The AKC and the US may be disproportionally important in dog population matters because the US human population is 31% of the total population of what I think of as dog show/dog hobby countries. Table of dog hobby countries, human population numbers. [BD this list probably needs expanding]

[note by BD - I think the FCI policy is only to recognize one registry per breed in other countries but I do not know for sure. Wll FCI recognize a UKC registered dog so that at a later date its descentents SPELLING! can come back to the AKC? This itself is a topic for an article]

[Another set of data we need is actual comparisons of number of purebred dogs registered in different countries like Canada, Great Britain, FCI, Russia, Japan etc. My feeling is that standard of living, human population size and availability of space influences pure bred dog population size, especially for large breeds.]

(Sue) I would delete the previous sentence, or make it less US-centric–but also it is not clear how it relates to the rest of the para

“A question that needs to be answered: What does the existence of a large population of mass-produced puppies do to the genetic health of a breed? ” (sue)again, this seems out of place. Mass production is not the only or even the largest problem for most breeds, is it? Moving this and the other questions to the FAQ.

Beginning notes by Bonnie Dalzell, MA

(hopefully others will add to and modify these)

editor's comments