When I was a kid some things were mindblowing for me too but than I learned that asking questions and doing research on stuff that is/was mindblowing for me takes away the blowing part in the mind and than suddenly became very clear and that means to have an open mind to everything people say and do research and ask questions and trying not to get stuck in my own thoughts ?
Theo
That you perfectly answered on the chicken / egg problem and the phenomenology is what I liked of you.
I am deeply impressed you was able to answer those questions right away and be satisfied about. As far as I know scientist still find those questions 'mindblowing'.
To me and many scientist the answer on chicken / egg problem is evolution. And evolution is the key in what Jan and other people working on proper research on BSD are doing. Evolution is the only logical way of getting from a simple state to a complicated state.
Said a different way which might be easier to understand: you need a little bit of imperfect dog, a little bit of imperfect genes, or a bloodline with at least part of a person in it, and a whole heap of patience and resolve.
Then we have jump into the phenomenology which studies structures of conscious experience as experienced from the first-person point of view, along with relevant conditions of experience. The central structure of an experience is its intentionality, the way it is directed through its content or meaning toward a certain object in the world. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/phenomenology/#1
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In other words: the more research I do, the more I know and in contrary the more questions I get. All reflections about the world and his or her place in it I have been asking throughout the ages with answers getting more complex causing me to ask more questions about those reflections. And here again the chicken / egg problem arises. Which is evolution.
What I see is that you, Theo, found answers you got satisfactorily and that, to me, is 'mind blowing'. But if so, so be it.
That you perfectly answered on the chicken / egg problem and the phenomenology is what I liked of you.
I am deeply impressed you was able to answer those questions right away and be satisfied about. As far as I know scientist still find those questions 'mindblowing'.
Well I guess than I'm not that stupid as some people think I am . Yes scientists still think it's mindblowing when they discover something new about evolution and so do I especially when it's something from millions of years ago. It is mindblowing because they have to assume how things happened and suddenly because of a discovery that assumption is blown to pieces and than the assumption starts all over again and it is mindblowing because it takes sometimes decades before a new discovery is made on how animals, plants and humans have evolved.
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To me and many scientist the answer on chicken / egg problem is evolution. And evolution is the key in what Jan and other people working on proper research on BSD are doing. Evolution is the only logical way of getting from a simple state to a complicated state.
Said a different way which might be easier to understand: you need a little bit of imperfect dog, a little bit of imperfect genes, or a bloodline with at least part of a person in it, and a whole heap of patience and resolve.
Yes the chicken/egg problem is evolution. What Jan ( you can correct me Jan if I'm wrong here) and other people doing through research has in my opinion nothing to do with evolution. We (humans) decide what is good and bad and we decide what are good breeding prospects in dogs, nature has nothing to say in this anymore and evolution won't stop but we can direct it in any which way we want. Evolution didn't decide 10 years ago that tervueren should have narrow heads with almost no stop but we humans decided that and this happens in any domestic animal. If we (humans) do the right breedings with the BSD's the BSD's will still look the same in 100 or 200 years from now but knowing humans they will make them look different.
In the last part of the quote you are right, that is called evolution but if we want to do that than we can't intervene anymore and let the dogs just do what they want to do and than see what happens to the breed without any medical checks what so ever and than record everything that is happening even the very small details but it will take ages before you can see some very small differences between the old and new dog.
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What I see is that you, Theo, found answers you got satisfactorily and that, to me, is 'mind blowing'. But if so, so be it.
Well now you're completely wrong Teus but I won't blame you for that cause you don't really know me
Since you are so much in the open source I have a question for you.
Everything I said in this whole thread you don't agree with, well I have no problem with that and it's just a matter of difference in opinion but could you explain to me and the others in just plain english how it should be done and how you try to avoid how to get genetic diseases in your bloodline or how you make sure that the female that is bred to one of your males is healthy and what you do with your breedingstock be it males or females when you find out that in a certain litter is a genetic disorder?
You or I cant tell exactly how much inheritancy which health problem has. But if we gather all the information we can get for a long time, from big amount of dogs ( not just rumours, but vets exact diagnoses and reports directly from breeder or owners ). We could come to conclusions that some line / litter / stud dogs decendants etc. has much more of some illnes than others. We can also see which illneses go from generation to second, which can be proof of some certain problems inheritancy. And then we have more tools for breeding healthy dogs in future.
Yes I agree with this 100%
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For example if we know that we have a very good top quality female, and we know that her family ( not female herself ) has some certain health problem ( all dogs have inheritable illeneses more or less ), we can lesser those bad genes in future by makeing outcross to line that we know is free from the same problem.
Little point of discussion here. Why would I breed a female with a certain disease to a male that doesn't have that disease and make sure that there are now more dogs walking around with the possibility of being a carrier of that disease? I do agree that it is a way to make sure that the pups out of that combination won't get the disease.
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You know that Inbreeding cant continue for ever, it is a good tool, but bad master. Because strongest inbreeding allways doubles also bad genes, and as I told _not a single dog_ is totally free from inhetiable deceases. Marks of inbreeding depression are small litters, smaller dogs, serious lethal illneses in early age etc. Naturaly line- and inbreeding are needed, when building a line, but that should be done with a lot of thinking.
I can agree with this too but I don't think inbreeding is needed. Inbreeding is a very nice tool to get somewhere in your breeding program really fast but with linebreeding you will get to the same spot eventually it will only take 4 or 5 generations before you are there.
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Most dog races are still very young, only about n100 years old, when we compare it to dogs whole history, and even then we allready can see what has happened for many many breeds health, mainly because of bad inbreeding.
I belive, that working malinois is what it is now because there are many different lines in world and other registers like nvbk, kcb etc. which lines has often been mixed to more common fci- lines. Because some outcross gives more power for tired blood lines whose gene pool has gone too thin.
I can agree with this too although we could have a small discussion about the many different lines
Well we pretty much think the same about things except some points for discussion but what is life without a good discussion
I think you got me a bit wrong here, so I try to clear what I tryed to say before.
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Little point of discussion here. Why would I breed a female with a certain disease to a male that doesn't have that disease and make sure that there are now more dogs walking around with the possibility of being a carrier of that disease? I do agree that it is a way to make sure that the pups out of that combination won't get the disease.
What I meant was, that if we know that females _family_ = for example great grand parent or so on, has given for example bad hips, or bad back. Then we could avoid and lesser those bad genes to half if we find line that is free from those problems. So I'm not the one who suggests people to use sick animals for breeding, I just face the fact that _all_ dogs have also bad genes in their inheritancy, more or less. And more of those we find out when we study our dogs relatives / what sisters and parents siblings and so on, have left. Its not an easy task, since people often like to hide those things. I have asked several breeders of their lines health problems, 90% of them say that, not any in their lines. People easily block their minds when bad things come to near. Usual response is that this thing comes from males side... Naturaly it can be so if its dominatingly inheritable, but usually they are resessive and need bad genes from both sides, and many deceases need combinations of different genes to show up. So I think that best we can do is just to collect information, so maybe later some viser can make right conclusions, if we dont.
I understood perfectly what you meant but maybe I should have explained it a bit more what I meant and I know that every self respecting breeder would never make a sugestion to breed to sick dogs.
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What I meant was, that if we know that females _family_ = for example great grand parent or so on, has given for example bad hips, or bad back. Then we could avoid and lesser those bad genes to half if we find line that is free from those problems.
First I want to say that everything I write now is how I think about this and it's not about good or bad, it's my opinion but opinions can be changed if it turns out to be a completely wrong opinion.
A female that has lots of dogs in the bloodline with bad hips has the genetics to give those bad hips to her offspring eventhough the female herself has A or B hips and when she's bred to a male that has only A hips in the bloodline the chances of HD in dogs from this combination or not that high but at the same time the dogs out of this combination could become carrier of the gene that is responsible for HD and chances for this are pretty high 50% or more. All this works perfect if people keep track of every breeding they do or keep searching for dogs that have bloodlines with only HD A in it. The downside of breeding like this is that ,when breeders don't keep importing dogs from other countries , maybe 50 % of the dog population is carrier of the gene that is responsible for HD after a certain ammount of years and the trouble with carriers is that you can't see it and the only time you can see it is when two dogs are bred and there are lots of HD in the dogs from that breeding and than you know these dogs are carriers and all this means that you have to look for a needle in a haystack to find the right dogs to breed and it has to be done with trial and error and for me that's not a good base to work with in breeding.
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And more of those we find out when we study our dogs relatives / what sisters and parents siblings and so on, have left. Its not an easy task, since people often like to hide those things. I have asked several breeders of their lines health problems, 90% of them say that, not any in their lines. People easily block their minds when bad things come to near. Usual response is that this thing comes from males side... Naturaly it can be so if its dominatingly inheritable, but usually they are resessive and need bad genes from both sides, and many deceases need combinations of different genes to show up. So I think that best we can do is just to collect information, so maybe later some viser can make right conclusions, if we dont.
Yes I agree with this but it's not only family members that have to be checked out but also all the pups born out of these combination and pups out of the pups again that need to be checked for HD so all the dogs have to be checked for HD or at least somewhere between 75 and 90 % before you can say something about HD in a certain bloodline. The male thingy well that's why I'm carefull to which kind of female my male is bred. People need to come with very good statement why they want to use my male and so far I have said to 4 people that my male is not available for breeding to their dogs.
Back home from a visit at veterinarian for shots and other stuff needed for the pet passports. It also was X-ray time for the dogs who needed it. (all x-rayed dogs showed to have good hips ...yippiieee... waiting for the official values now.)
That moment it was a good moment to talk with the old but respectable veterinarian of mine about HD and how big the percentage is to blame to genetics and how much to food and correct treatment of the dog.
I told him the idea of Theo and JVG on this, showing him the hard copy of the posting. His answer was a wave with his hand and back to work. #D*NG# Not an answer which will makes us wiser but a strong answer indeed. I managed to have him to give an answer on the statement of JVG and Theo.
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I just have to make a comment on HD. If the mum and dad of a litter has for example B and C hips, or even C and D hips, still it is genetics that make that some puppies can get A and B hips, but there is a higher probability that most puppies get bad hips.
Hoppsan was very correct here. In addition the veterinarian said puppies born with genetic bad hips (HD C) can turn out HD B or HD B+ with correct treatment and balanced food and such. But then you talk about symptome killing: the genetic gen still is there. When talking about %, the veterinarian even would say it's the opposite of what was written thus: 80% genetic.
I asked for a similar example: take people with genetic defect on nightvision. When those people never does get the correct vitamins like can be found in carrots and tomatoes, they indeed will turn out blind in the darkness (nachtblind). But with correct and balanced diet they can prevent themselves of this defect coming in effect. But prevention doesn't mean it's not an genetic defect.
Very nice answer we all can understand I guess.
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Teus
oh BTW...let me answer this question:
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how you try to avoid how to get genetic diseases in your bloodline or how you make sure that the female that is bred to one of your males is healthy and what you do with your breedingstock be it males or females when you find out that in a certain litter is a genetic disorder?
Very simple: correct study of pedigree, build database, make open source alive and kicking and have the guts to pull plug in the breedstock (eliminate the started line from breeding) if needed.
There are enough BSD in the world so us, mine or yours bloodline is of no value if genetic disorder pops out and has proven to exist.
I see that you missed my point. It was that every dog has also bad genes your and mine, and if we know what could be even a small risk in our line, we could act better when searching stud dog for our females.
Naturaly its not vise to use dogs for breeding from lines that have major health risks, I wasnt talking about them, I was talking about how can we prevent small risks to become big problems.
So far we have bred 2 working line litters that are now adults 11 and 8 pups (+2 litters that are too young to x-ray yet). All of these pups are x-rayed officially by hips and elbows and unofficially shoulders and most by back also. So far there hasnt been problems with bones. But I know that some relatives of my female, sisters and some of their pups have had spondylos. So, if we would know more of this problem and there would be more dogs examined we would know which lines could have better backs.
You said before that allmost all dogs have some sort of disformations in back bones. Well I dont singn that at all, because all pups that we so far have x-rayed from our breedings, have been free of any disformations. And also its not good to generalize that most back problems are caused by trauma, because that we dont know. When more dogs are x-rayed by longer period of time we will know more about inheritancy of this problem.
Here have back x-rays been getting more popular in last couple of years, before that we thought that there is only one or two cases of bad backs with malinois. These cases that shoved up later dont usually give any kind of symptomses, dog were just x-rayed same time when taking hip x-rays and it showed up.
About hip x-rays. I belive that no where is examined so big % of dogs, especially working malinois, than in scandinavia. And here (Finland, Sweden, Norway) has official record of A or B hips been term to use belgian shepherds for breeding for tens of year. So in this matter Belgia and Holland etc. are coming really late.
Good to hear that the x-ray's showed that the dogs have good hips now it's only a 2 to 4 week wait before the official reasults. I once waited 6 weeks for the official results and the last time, june last year, I took a dog for hip and elbow x-rays on thursday and the x-rays were send to the panel the same day and after paying the money on friday I got the results back on wednesday the next week so it took them only 2 days so I was pretty stunned by that but than the vet where I go sends the x-rays already digitalised to the panel so all they have to do is download it into the computer and let the computer do it's work.
now about the % of HD in a dog. I stated that HD is not 100% genetic and JVG said that it is gentetic for 20-25%. That 20-25% is when you talk about breeding dogs with HD A that have bloodlines with only HD A in it and than when there a pup born from that bloodline and it turns out to have HD C or worse than you can't say it's only genetics that do this but than you also have to look at other things like the skeleton structure of the dog and how the dog was raised. It is very obvious that when two dogs with HD C are bred that the chance of HD C in off spring of these dogs is very high because the dogs with HD C have already proven that , especially when the bloodlines of these dogs show lots of dogs with HD , they carry the genes for HD.
After a few hours of searching for recent research on HD and ED in dogs, that is also reasonably understandable for people like us, I found this one. It's a reseach that was published in April 2004 so about a year ago and it was done by the university of Helsinki in conjunction with the university of Wageningen in Holland, it's about 25 pages of reading but it's worth to do that
I really do know what you mean and that's why I took your example of that female with a bloodline that is known for hip or back problems and to show you what in my opinion could happen to the breed. I also know that it is common breeding practice to breed a dog that is known to be a carrier of a certain genetic disease but right now I haven't seen good results from that kind of breeding because I know a BC breeder that now has to go to the USA for breeding her females or import dogs from other countries to make sure that she gets the blood that is needed to make sure that she can breed healthy dogs and all this because it is common practice to breed BC's that are known to be carrier of an eye disease in the breed to dogs that are known to be free of that disease and now they are basicely stuck because the dogs that are free of this disease is family of her dogs or the dogs she can breed her female too is carrier of that disease.
Yes every dog , in fact every animal, has it's bad genes but we don't know what the bad genes are and than when a dog that has had all the medical checks possible and is considered healthy is bred to a dog that is known for a certain genetic disease you can end up with carriers or even dogs that have that certain disease but because of the strong genetics in the male it didn't effect the male. the only good thing out of this is that you now know that the male has that bad gene too so you can take it out of the breeding program but you still have to deal with the pups and everything that comes with it. That's why I will not breed dogs that way, way to much variables. When breeding with dogs that are not known for genetic diseases you still have variables and you still need a good portion of luck but the strong genes are there and than all we can do is hope and pray that the strong genes connect.
It's good that the results of the x-rays you did with the litters are very good. It means that you haven't done anything wrong there. I can't tell you either where the spondylosis is some of your dogs is coming from all I know is, and I told that in an earlier post also, that it can also be the result of bad structure like to long in the back or the hips are higher than the shoulder or a chest that's not deep enough so that the muscles that are attached to the chest and support the back can't develop enough and than the backbone gets twisted to much when the dog walks, runs or jumps and than there's abnormal wearing of the vertibrea and the disks in between them and than it's possible to get abnormal growing of the bone so for me the structure of the dog is very important too in the endevour in try to breed as healthy dogs as possible.
X-rays are a very nice tool to show the bone deformations that are severe enough to show up on the x-ray, you would be surprised what kind of things you would see when you do a MRI with your dog, than you see all kinds of things you can't see on a x-ray. When a pup is born everything is smooth but as soon as they start to walk,play and run they bump into all kinds of things and since the bone is not calcified and still very flexible it will absorb all the impacts but those impacts will leave marks on the non calcified bones and some will just stay as they are and others start to do abnormal growing. I don't generalize when I say that trauma could also be the thing that causes backproblems because I also said that when I dog has back problems at an early age between 1 and 3 or at a later age it shows so much spondylosis that there is no other option than to say that it is genetic and when this is the case there's no other option than to withdraw those dogs from the breeding program.
To make x-rays of the back is not commen yet for the breeders but I know , and that's because I'm in KNPV and sold a few dogs already, that when a dog is sold to the police, army or abroad x-rays of hips, elbow, neck and backbone and eyes have to be done and this is already done for more than a few years and even when you can show them the official results for the hips and elbow they will do it again and if I sell or buy a dog than I will do the same.
I don't know how many dogs are examined in Scandinavia and I don't know how many are done in Holland but I do know that it is mandatory by the BSD club and soon also by the kennelclub to do hips for a long time already and soon I hope elbows too. Before we adopted the FCI grading for hips we had our own system which had a few grades more than what it is now, the grading was: - , tc , +/- , + , ++ . +++ and I think there was even a ++++ . The first two can be qualified as A and B and the rest C , D and E
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