Great Dane a labradoodle?

[Wolfiefan]

I met a lady who was enthusing about her new puppy. A Great Dane labradoodle cross. Surely this is a nightmare waiting to happen?
When will the KC step up or the law be changed to properly licence breeders. Not just a tick box exercise.
All potential parents should be health tested. A recent owner I met said "oh yes health testing? The puppy was checked by a vet!" That's not what it means.
I'm not against cross breeds. But putting two animals together as their offspring will be cute and make you money is irresponsible and just damn wrong.
What can we do? How do we educate people?

Why doesn't breeding between dog breeds reduce the risk of genetic conditions? That would make sense from the perspective that the parents come from very different gene pools. Obviously this isn't the case or you wouldn't be posting about it, but I hope you don't object to the question. I don't have any dogs or want any, so I'm not asking because I have any agenda.

Awful pics on FB recently of sight hounds in the show ring. Look half starved.

I saw those and I gather all the extremely thin ones belonged to the same chap. It's incomprehensible that they weren't asked to leave the ring but then I see much worse over here. At least skinny dogs can regain some weight with proper care (and I'm pretty sure the original breeder of the Sloughi has got involved in that particular situation from what I hear), for the poor brachycephalic dogs panting and wheezing their way round the ring it's either surgery or continuing to live a life massively limited by the fact they can't actually breathe properly.

The KC won't change as long as the majority of people giving them money don't care about function over form/breed inbreeding levels/overall breed health/etc.

@QuackDuckQuack
I don't object at all!! It can reduce problems. Or it can make them worse. You can end up with a dog that has the health problems of both pedigrees. Hence the health testing.
@CornflakeHomunculus
And it's not getting any better. Poor dogs.

Ylvamoon

Everything you've listed sums up what is so backward and screwed up about showing dogs.

I have a working lab. She has a Dudley nose and a zipper so would have been destroyed as a puppy if she was born to a show breeder.

But she has perfect confirmation, hips, elbows. She can clear a 5 bar gate and work all day in the field. She can cold retrieve from 500m - hence living exactly up to the breed standard of being 'extremely agile, having a good nose and soft mouth'
She is exactly what a lab should be and should look like. Her nose colour doesn't make a jot of difference!

Yet you see obese, stumpy legged barrels being paraded around show rings as the pinacle specimens of labradors despite them not being able to get in a car boot unaided.

And yet people see the nose colour as a fault and not the disgraceful confirmation of these show dogs.

It's outrageous and the showing world has got blood on it's hands for the suffering it is directly causing to animals. How people can take part in those freak shows is beyond me

(Sorry, also in a bad mood. Blame the weather)

Why doesn't breeding between dog breeds reduce the risk of genetic conditions?

It can do when done carefully. The LUA Dalmatians are a great example of an outcross being used to eradicate a defective gene responsible for a specific condition.

Without making use of adequate health testing you can also end up introducing a condition into a population where it previously wasn't present.

Sensible outcrossing urgently needs to be sanctioned by the KC both to eradicate specific health issues and widen the gene pools of all breeds. Genetic diversity is reaching crisis point in a worryingly high number of breeds, unless that can be addressed we're going to see ever higher numbers of new genetic conditions popping up as well as a steadily lowering rate of general health and fertility.

I'd also love to see some kind of working test/minimum fitness test required for all breeds before they can be made up into show champions. There's far too big a split in many breeds between the show type and working type.

Labs are a great example of where working and show are poles apart.
I do take my dog to shows. We have a lovely day out together. I get cuddles and she gets liver cake. I am not a breeder. I will never breed from my dog. She's a pet.

We are getting a puppy soon. It's a cross breed. Both parents have been health tested with certificates to prove this as well as the dad being on a well known champdogs site with the relevant health checksfor him too.

We've tried a rescue and I've not found one that will re home when we have kids younger than 8. And I've looked around believe me!

I didn't want a cavalier due to the health problems they can have. So we are getting a cross from a breeder to try and reduce the chances of that. I've seen mum's health tests and her own mum's health test.

Breeder wants to meet all my family prior to us getting the pup and has also said she will take the pup back should anything happen.

Not every breeder is an irresponsible puppy farmer.

Unfortunately people will willingly take a puppy without having seen any of the above or even the parents!!!

TBH many people don't know what health checks should be done.
Many puppy farmers place the litter with a "mum" that isn't the actual mother. They sometimes rent a house to make it look like the pups have been raised in a house.
Champdogs doesn't provide checks.
And no with cats and kids I couldn't find a rescue either. But I did my research and waited over two years for a dog from a fantastic breeder. She's my dream dog.

I didn't want a cavalier due to the health problems they can have. So we are getting a cross from a breeder to try and reduce the chances of that.

Apologies if I'm preaching to the converted but if you're getting a CKCS it's vital that the CKCS parent has still had an MRI to check for signs of Chiari Malformation/Syringomyelia. Although CM/SM is less common in other breed it's certainly not unknown in most of the breeds used for CKCS crosses. Given the severity and extent of it in the CKCS it's still necessary to do the MRI even when crossing to something else.

Cornflake I've see the mum's mum's certificates too. Champdogs do list the health checks that the dogs have had.

Our breeder is also keeping one of the pups as her own so I'm sure she'd also want a healthy dog for her own family.

We've been waiting ages too and still need to wait till October.

Wolfe I can't believe someone would go to that much effort to dupe people. Poor dogs.

I don't know why some people don't do more research though. I read a story about someone buying a puppy in a layby!! They met the seller half way due to distance apparently.

I'm happy with our choice and feel I've given it a lot of thought.

It's great that you've found someone who bothers with the MRI, so few breeders (even of pedigree CKCSs) actually bother and recent studies have shown that an even higher proportion of the breed are affected by SM than previously thought

Ylvamoon

I have said nothing at all about KC - I think rather than KC we need a regulatory body (like the ones you get for doctors, nurses, vets, pharmacists & pharmacy technicians, etc), which are not profit making but charge fees that enable them to log and store details and regulate the industry.

Loon that is the kind of breeding that needs doing.

Passmethewine question - why not a CKCS if you are looking to get a puppy with fully health tested parents? Good CKCS breeders are eliminating the health problems of the lines they are breeding. The breeder my CKCS came from had clear heart tests on all his dogs (even on his 10yr olds), didn't have a single dog in his lines that was even a carrier of the genetic health conditions that used to be a big problem (cannot remember off the top of my head what they are now), most dogs had MRI. So a well tested line of CKCS will be as healthy as any cross that has been health tested to the same standard (and it would be incredibly unusual to find a breeder of Cavalier crosses who does any of those tests).

On the showing aspect my CKCS isn't show worthy for the sole reason that he is an 'outcross' of solid (Ruby or black & tan) colour CKCS to a particoloured (Blenheim or Tri-colour) CKCS meaning he is a ruby with a small amount of white on his chest (solids aren't allowed any white whatsoever). The breeder had done it to lower his inbreeding coefficient (was well below breed average due to this) but he said it then takes a few generations to get back to show quality solids.

Urgh, I absolutely hate all the ridiculousness over colours when it comes to showing.

Great Danes are an absolutely perfect example of this. There are only six colours/patterns named by the KC which are acceptable in the show ring but dogs of those colours can produce around thirty different phenotypes. So breeding is unnecessarily restricted because breeders don't want to risk producing "Colour Not Recognised" puppies.

Obviously care needs to be taken when breeding with certain colours/patterns (like merle) but on the whole colour should mean bugger all.

Speaking of merle though, the KC is happy to allow the registration of GD litters from a merle x harlequin (merle with a modifier) mating despite each puppy from such a cross having a 25% chance of being a colour which comes with a very high risk of eye and ear defects

Thankfully our breeder puts health and fit for purpose first. It's madness. And there's no one to oversee the KC and no desire to stop the more mad decisions.
Health and confirmation should be the driving force behind breeding.

Whippets are allowed to be any colour aren't they? Why not other breeds?

There is a breed of horse/pony called a haflinger. In order to breed from a haflinger and register the offspring as a haflinger, the parents have to have been assessed, once they were fully grown, for confirmation, health and temperament and passed the standard in all 3 areas.

Sorry posted too soon. That's what they need to do with dogs too.

Nobody should be breeding any dog that isn't adult and isn't a good standard of confirmation, health and temperament.
But who stops the puppy farmers? Who decides what the ideal confirmation is? The pics of GSD with weird spinal confirmation were horrid. Yet some people in the breed clearly think that's desirable.

Whippets are allowed to be any colour aren't they?

Yep, the breed standard says "Any colour or mixture of colours." though there are a couple (like black and tan or merle) which would probably raise some eyebrows if they suddenly appeared, although certainly with B&T there's a slim chance it could be lurking in the breed given it's ancestry.

I'd love to see some sort of system whereby puppies are registered in a "puppy book" and can only go into the adult stud book and produce registrable offspring when they've been health tested/proven they have the inclination and aptitude to do the job the breed was originally intended to/etc. This would also allow easier outcrossing as the puppies could be registered back into either parent breed (or potentially both) depending on how they turned out.

I vote to put cornflake in charge!
Surely colour is about the least important feature of a dog?!

For the haflinger the standard was set by the working ancestors - any conformation that would impact in any way whatsoever on them being a perfect all round working horse is not allowed. In horses it's the individual breed societies that decide what is and isn't acceptable, so the haflinger society themselves do the checks. They rely on people not wanting an unregistered haflinger to stop people breeding haflingers with others or haflingers who didn't pass the test.

To do it for dogs you would need a regulatory body that ensured any conformation that could cause health problems was not allowed to be bred from, thus brought into the breed.

Haflingers are stunning.
Off topic I know!
My pup was sold to me with certain conditions. She's registered with the KC but no progeny of hers can be registered unless I get breeder permission to breed from her. I have no intention of breeding and the breeder said she would be likely to revoke the condition if we asked. But a way to see how the dog turns out before deciding to breed. Don't know how common this is.

I'd love to see some sort of system whereby puppies are registered in a "puppy book" and can only go into the adult stud book and produce registrable offspring when they've been health tested/proven they have the inclination and aptitude to do the job the breed was originally intended to/etc. This would also allow easier outcrossing as the puppies could be registered back into either parent breed (or potentially both) depending on how they turned out.

That's pretty much what I was getting at with the haflingers - only they can't be outcrossed. I love the idea of out crossing and being able to register a healthy dog based on conformation and temperament. I think crosses and mongrels should have a category too, which would register healthy individuals of sound conformation and a temperament that matched an overall category of dog (for example working dog type, or lap dog type, etc)

My CKCS has the exclusions on his registration, so cannot be bred from. In the puppy purchase contract the breeder makes clear that so long as all health tests have been done (with good outcome obviously) and a vet certified that conformation of the adult dog is good, then the restrictions will be lifted on request. I think all good breeders do it now.

Also yes haflingers are gorgeous - I had one. He died of old age a couple of years ago - he was wonderful.

Sorry that should say
"and a vet certified that conformation of the adult dog is good from a health point of view