One of the things that struck me from seeing some coverage around this recently is that Balto died at age 14 and Togo, another prominent dog in that sled run, died at age 16.
After having a couple German Shepherds as a kid those numbers were striking for large working dogs. Looks like Huskies still have pretty good life expectancy (12-14 years in the US from the AKC), Malamutes a bit less, but both stronger than GSD, which are like <10 years in the US these days.
Hopefully things swing away from the fascination with "purebred" before those breeds see further declines.
From the article it seems like the working dogs, vs the breeding-for-sale dogs, are still pretty healthy: “What we found is that Balto is more genetically diverse and genetically healthier than your breed dog of today but similar to those working Alaskan dogs that we have now—which is what you expect from a group that is still bred for work rather than the aesthetic phenotype that breed dogs are now held to,”
The issue is not purebred dogs. It’s breeding purely for conformation (how the dog looks) rather than for health, longevity, and performance.
A good counterpoint to the idea that most purebred dogs have health issues are gundog breeds that are still judged based on hunting and retrieving field trials, or other dogs with real jobs like police/military dogs, herding dogs, etc.
Athletic breeds with real jobs typically have much longer life spans. Even AKC Border Collies and German Shorthaired Pointers have average lifespans of 12-15 years, with it not unusual to see dogs that are 16-18 years old and still healthy. My own dog is a GSP, and I not only met his father and mother but also his grandmother, who was perfectly healthy.
German Shepherds were epically screwed up as a breed in the 20th century by intentionally breeding heavier dogs with unhealthy body structures that looked aesthetically pleasing. This is a big part of why Belgian Shepherds (Malinois) replaced GSDs and Dobermanns as military and police dogs in many countries. The extreme form of this aesthetics problem is the French Bulldog, which is an abomination that shouldn’t exist according to the laws of nature, because it typically can’t reproduce without caesarians and/or artificial insemination.
Me too. Since my grandmother was a child, we've always had German Shepherds in our family. When I was a kid for the first time our dogs started getting hip dysplasia. My mother and grandmother had never seen before, despite being involved in the dog training community.
I’ve had 2 purebreds in a row with major health issues, even though I searched for working line breeders. I’ve given up on purebreds, and now have a GSD mix. He’s a gorgeous animal, going on 11 without any hip issues or health issues.
The AKC in their pursuit of the perfect look and willful ignorance of genetics has destroyed the German Shepard breed.
> Hopefully things swing away from the fascination with "purebred" before those breeds see further declines.
I doubt the large working dogs of the past were less purebred (or that their descendants today are less purebred). Breeding is an important way -- in fact, the only known way -- to produce dogs that are suited to work you need them to do.
There are two things that have notably changed in the present day:
1. Dogs aren't expected to work, which removes the pressure to be fit to work. This is the effect you've noted, but I suspect it's not as significant as...
2. The effective population size ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effective_population_size ) has crashed as the first rule of responsible pet ownership became "make sure your pet never reproduces". When 10% of the population gets to reproduce, you're going to see a lot more inbreeding than you do when 90% of the population gets to reproduce.
Note also that Togo was 12 years old when he led the 261 mile journey. Most of his community who knew, expected Togo would die during or immediately as a result of completing the trip.
I share your views on many purebreeds being immoral, but the "wild-type" breeds with more genetic variability are often much, much more challenging for human owners. I'm personally a huge fan of Australian Cattle Dogs and Australian Shepherds, both of which are very "blended" breeds. But they take soooo much time and energy to raise, they're nearly incompatible with a 9-5 job for the first year or so of their lives.
Modern 'huskies' bred and sold in the US48 states as domestic pets are considerably different and smaller than what you might find in Alaska/Yukon 50 years ago. I've seen some extremely small huskies that technically still qualify as AKC registered purebreeds.
The idea of purebred dogs is a fairly recent concept and a pretty terrible one. We understand the ramifications of inbreeding in humans, so I don’t know why it seems to be such a cognitive leap for folks to understand why inbred dogs are less healthy and often develop undesirable traits (alongside some inbred desirable ones).
I have had many dogs over the years a number of mutts and a number of pure bred dogs and the pure bred dogs have almost always had both personality and health issues to varying degrees. The mutts tend to have a more even disposition and are longer lived.
The "idea of purebred dogs" is maximization of desirable phenotypic traits, and is identical to the idea of artificial selection throughout agriculture and animal husbandry, which has underpinned the sustenance of our civilization for many thousands of years.
The idea that artificial selection is a terrible idea, on the other hand, is a fairly recent one, and it is entirely informed by its political dimension of eugenics as a peculiar form of totalitarian intervention into human life. Inasmuch as it's terrible to preserve purity of dog breeds, this is entirely explained by a problematic breed standard, usually because it emphasizes some aesthetic feature over generic vitality and ability.
There's another terrible (and wrong) idea here, namely that the best way to maximize those generically good traits is through random interbreeding and preferring crosses with high phenotypic and genotypic divergence; that "mutts are the smartest and healthiest dogs" and so on. This, too, is overwhelmingly informed by a misguided generalization of opposition to a certain abhorrent political project. But reversed stupidity is not intelligence, and misguided anti-nazism is not a good rule of thumb for animal husbandry. In reality, it's not a surprise that e.g. the best, kindest and smartest assistance dogs come from breeds we know as reliably helpful.[1]
It's also not a surprise that Labrador Retriever dogs have unreasonable appetite and high obesity rate: we know the exact specific gene that's broken which explains it. I hope we fix it one day, that's the least they deserve. We easily can fix it, too. And this is the state of health issues with most non-decorative breeds.
> We understand the ramifications of inbreeding in humans
When we understand something, we usually can quantify its effects. As it happens, we do understand inbreeding and why it's bad, both in humans and in the general case. It's mostly explained by increased occurrence of homozygous-recessive phenotypes. Basically, most deviations from evolutionarily optimized alleles are suboptimal, recessive, and in the limit, get weeded out by selective pressure (purifying selection). But a very limited gene pool can become saturated with recessive alleles, leading to many specimens who are homozygous-recessive and get the suboptimal trait; and in bad cases, a recessive allele reaches fixation.
Accordingly we have different relevant metrics and notions, e.g. of effective population size [2] (number of effectively distinct breeding units in the mathematical model of this population; more relevant than census size when you have technically large but highly inbred populations – corn, dairy cattle, pugs, Austrian monarchs…) and of minimal viable population [3] (number of specimens sufficient to ward off the drive to homozygosity and eventual inbreeding depression). The typically given safe number is about 500.
Even very small natural human populations (on the scale of tens of thousands of people, a minor ethnicity or tribe) do not have any inbreeding problems, nor get any heterosis aka "hybrid vigor" i.e. benefit from interbreeding and canceling the accumulated inbreeding depression. Observations to the contrary come from extremely bad cases, like people from isolated premodern villages with some 5-10 families moving to the city for the first time in centuries/ever, and their children being markedly healthier in all sorts of ways (that said, even in such cases, improvements in nutrition, education etc. can explain an obscene share of the effect). But these children do not get more (or less) fit grandchildren after they marry even more genetically distant people from another country – they're already free from the curse of inbreeding depression their ancestral populations carried. What drives these effects is heterozygosity, not total diversity.
This is true for reasonably maintained (i.e. without severe recent bottlenecks) non-decorative dog breeds as well. They don't produce super-great mutts. They're fine as they are.
>The idea of purebred dogs is a fairly recent concept and a pretty terrible one.
It's just that the inbred traits are so desirable. I've had many mutts, and loved them very much. But when you want a dog, and you want to know exactly what you're getting, it's hard to beat a pure bred. Yes they will have problems, but it's a known quantity. And what you get in return is a dog who needs minimal training to behave exactly as you wish.
If you need a dog to perform any kind of specific function, you're 95% of the time vastly better off with a purpose-bred dog than some random mixture.
Plus, a huge fraction of the dogs up for adoption in the US have strong admixture with breeds with specifically undesirable behavior (e.g. biting children or other dogs), which is often causally related to why they're up for adoption in the first place. Adverse selection, yo.
To be fair, this entirely depends on the breed in question. There are some breeds that are known to have weak bloodlines, and some breeds that are better.
It is also dependent on the breeder. Breeders that "cheap" out will be more likely to have inbred dogs since it can cost money for a good stud.
The article goes on and on for many paragraphs about the claim that Balto was inherently healthier on the basis of genetic diversity, with no actual assessment of whether today's dogs are healthy, before dropping this sentence:
> Today’s sled dogs are even “faster and more durable” than those of Balto’s era, Moon says.
Breed health was one of the reasons I ended up with a working line dog (Dutch Shepherd). Most dogs are bred for appearance these days, even in some working breeds like the German Shepherd.
Anecdotally, I always felt like 'muts' were some of the healthiest dogs I've been around. They seem invincible, and the genetic diversity probably helps explain that.
I've found many "pure" breeds to be regrettably diminished, they look like the books say but they pay for it in some way. Shorter lifespans, health problems, mental problems, etc.
Out-crossing a purebred with something from a different style of dog can often produce much healthier pups than either parent. Great Danes and Collie make 3/4 sized, slightly skinny dane-like dogs that are shockingly robust and energetic and can live to 16+ in my experience (and that's as active working outdoor dogs).
We have an offspring of central american feral dogs, whom we DNA tested via Cornell vet school’s embarkvet.com database.
Interestingly, the notion of breed changed meanings, for me, when they published the results. The only modern breed in her is a great grandparent chihuahua and otherwise she’s genetically varied as feral dogs are, something like an asymptote for the various blends called mutts.
Of the 161 (i think) tracked recessive disorders, she’s a carrier for only two.
i've got a 12 year old 35 pound mutt and he's literally never had a health problem. i take him in every 12 months for shots. he did get kennel cough one time from dog daycare but he just... got better on his own after a few days, or something. he just slept it off. at this point i'm only half joking when i wonder if he'll outlive me.
There are diminishing returns to exogeny, especially in species with a high degree of genetic redundancy (like dogs, cf https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17437958/), whereas with guided endogeny you can achieve better outcomes than you would via random cross-breeding (on task performance, health, or whatever else the breeders are optimizing for).
To expand for those who don't know: Togo and Balto were both lead dogs owned/raised/trained by the same man (Leonhard Seppala) but they ran different sleds. Togo led the "A" team and Balto, being a lesser sled-dog, led the "bench" or "B" team.
For the famous "serum run", Togo's team ran 261 miles, including the most dangerous section: 42 miles over frozen body of water. Whereas Balto's team only ran the final 55 miles. However, Balto got the credit because he carried the medicine into the town while Togo's team was still out in the wilderness.
Seppala wrote: “I hope I shall never be the man to take away credit from any dog or driver who participated in that run. We all did our best. But when the country was roused to enthusiasm over the serum run driver, I resented the statue to Balto, for if any dog deserved special mention it was Togo.”
There is a Disney movie named "Togo", which does a fantastic job of telling the story. According to comparison with best-available primary and secondary sources, the movie has astounding historic accuracy -- even though many, many times it seems like it "jumps the shark". The "true" story of Togo's life is so unbelievable that Disney's inaccuracies are more leaving things out that audiences would never be able to believe rather than putting in exaggerated over-the-top things.
I'm about to receive a service puppy. They have been selectively raised from different stock for awareness, bravery, and intelligent non-reactivity. They're unlike work, guard, or companion dogs. They have to be to serve people who have disabilities as their last line of defense in risky and dangerous situations.
is this an “old wives tale” (for lack of a better term atm) that turned out to be true? i swear my parents used this as a reason to get a mutt for me as a kid in the 90s..
today’s pure breed dogs are sometimes sad to see..
Working dogs were bred, historically, for character traits. Breeders didn’t care if the parents were one breed or another. It was about getting the desired size, intelligence, disposition for a job.
We've been breeders for at least 10s of thousands of years, not just with dogs, but endless work animals, livestock, plants.
Empirically one can go a long way, into understanding that inbreeding is bad, that diversity is good. I wouldn't be surprised to see Greek, or Sumerian texts on breeding...
Togo is actually a direct ancestor of the vast majority of Siberian Huskies in the United States today. He had a very, uh, fulfilling retirement and as a consequence he’s part of almost every modern day husky’s genetic line. The dog that played him in the movie was something like his twelfth generation descendant.
[+] [-] majormajor|2 years ago|reply
After having a couple German Shepherds as a kid those numbers were striking for large working dogs. Looks like Huskies still have pretty good life expectancy (12-14 years in the US from the AKC), Malamutes a bit less, but both stronger than GSD, which are like <10 years in the US these days.
Hopefully things swing away from the fascination with "purebred" before those breeds see further declines.
From the article it seems like the working dogs, vs the breeding-for-sale dogs, are still pretty healthy: “What we found is that Balto is more genetically diverse and genetically healthier than your breed dog of today but similar to those working Alaskan dogs that we have now—which is what you expect from a group that is still bred for work rather than the aesthetic phenotype that breed dogs are now held to,”
[+] [-] swalling|2 years ago|reply
A good counterpoint to the idea that most purebred dogs have health issues are gundog breeds that are still judged based on hunting and retrieving field trials, or other dogs with real jobs like police/military dogs, herding dogs, etc.
Athletic breeds with real jobs typically have much longer life spans. Even AKC Border Collies and German Shorthaired Pointers have average lifespans of 12-15 years, with it not unusual to see dogs that are 16-18 years old and still healthy. My own dog is a GSP, and I not only met his father and mother but also his grandmother, who was perfectly healthy.
German Shepherds were epically screwed up as a breed in the 20th century by intentionally breeding heavier dogs with unhealthy body structures that looked aesthetically pleasing. This is a big part of why Belgian Shepherds (Malinois) replaced GSDs and Dobermanns as military and police dogs in many countries. The extreme form of this aesthetics problem is the French Bulldog, which is an abomination that shouldn’t exist according to the laws of nature, because it typically can’t reproduce without caesarians and/or artificial insemination.
[+] [-] lbenes|2 years ago|reply
I’ve had 2 purebreds in a row with major health issues, even though I searched for working line breeders. I’ve given up on purebreds, and now have a GSD mix. He’s a gorgeous animal, going on 11 without any hip issues or health issues.
The AKC in their pursuit of the perfect look and willful ignorance of genetics has destroyed the German Shepard breed.
https://www.handicappedpets.com/blog/german-shepherd-back-le....
[+] [-] thaumasiotes|2 years ago|reply
I doubt the large working dogs of the past were less purebred (or that their descendants today are less purebred). Breeding is an important way -- in fact, the only known way -- to produce dogs that are suited to work you need them to do.
There are two things that have notably changed in the present day:
1. Dogs aren't expected to work, which removes the pressure to be fit to work. This is the effect you've noted, but I suspect it's not as significant as...
2. The effective population size ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effective_population_size ) has crashed as the first rule of responsible pet ownership became "make sure your pet never reproduces". When 10% of the population gets to reproduce, you're going to see a lot more inbreeding than you do when 90% of the population gets to reproduce.
[+] [-] runnerup|2 years ago|reply
I share your views on many purebreeds being immoral, but the "wild-type" breeds with more genetic variability are often much, much more challenging for human owners. I'm personally a huge fan of Australian Cattle Dogs and Australian Shepherds, both of which are very "blended" breeds. But they take soooo much time and energy to raise, they're nearly incompatible with a 9-5 job for the first year or so of their lives.
[+] [-] WalterBright|2 years ago|reply
Those destructive breeding practices are shameful. How people can profess to be dog lovers and do such things is beyond my ken.
[+] [-] walrus01|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kevin_thibedeau|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] canadianfella|2 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] etempleton|2 years ago|reply
I have had many dogs over the years a number of mutts and a number of pure bred dogs and the pure bred dogs have almost always had both personality and health issues to varying degrees. The mutts tend to have a more even disposition and are longer lived.
[+] [-] airgapstopgap|2 years ago|reply
The idea that artificial selection is a terrible idea, on the other hand, is a fairly recent one, and it is entirely informed by its political dimension of eugenics as a peculiar form of totalitarian intervention into human life. Inasmuch as it's terrible to preserve purity of dog breeds, this is entirely explained by a problematic breed standard, usually because it emphasizes some aesthetic feature over generic vitality and ability.
There's another terrible (and wrong) idea here, namely that the best way to maximize those generically good traits is through random interbreeding and preferring crosses with high phenotypic and genotypic divergence; that "mutts are the smartest and healthiest dogs" and so on. This, too, is overwhelmingly informed by a misguided generalization of opposition to a certain abhorrent political project. But reversed stupidity is not intelligence, and misguided anti-nazism is not a good rule of thumb for animal husbandry. In reality, it's not a surprise that e.g. the best, kindest and smartest assistance dogs come from breeds we know as reliably helpful.[1]
It's also not a surprise that Labrador Retriever dogs have unreasonable appetite and high obesity rate: we know the exact specific gene that's broken which explains it. I hope we fix it one day, that's the least they deserve. We easily can fix it, too. And this is the state of health issues with most non-decorative breeds.
> We understand the ramifications of inbreeding in humans
When we understand something, we usually can quantify its effects. As it happens, we do understand inbreeding and why it's bad, both in humans and in the general case. It's mostly explained by increased occurrence of homozygous-recessive phenotypes. Basically, most deviations from evolutionarily optimized alleles are suboptimal, recessive, and in the limit, get weeded out by selective pressure (purifying selection). But a very limited gene pool can become saturated with recessive alleles, leading to many specimens who are homozygous-recessive and get the suboptimal trait; and in bad cases, a recessive allele reaches fixation.
Accordingly we have different relevant metrics and notions, e.g. of effective population size [2] (number of effectively distinct breeding units in the mathematical model of this population; more relevant than census size when you have technically large but highly inbred populations – corn, dairy cattle, pugs, Austrian monarchs…) and of minimal viable population [3] (number of specimens sufficient to ward off the drive to homozygosity and eventual inbreeding depression). The typically given safe number is about 500.
Even very small natural human populations (on the scale of tens of thousands of people, a minor ethnicity or tribe) do not have any inbreeding problems, nor get any heterosis aka "hybrid vigor" i.e. benefit from interbreeding and canceling the accumulated inbreeding depression. Observations to the contrary come from extremely bad cases, like people from isolated premodern villages with some 5-10 families moving to the city for the first time in centuries/ever, and their children being markedly healthier in all sorts of ways (that said, even in such cases, improvements in nutrition, education etc. can explain an obscene share of the effect). But these children do not get more (or less) fit grandchildren after they marry even more genetically distant people from another country – they're already free from the curse of inbreeding depression their ancestral populations carried. What drives these effects is heterozygosity, not total diversity.
This is true for reasonably maintained (i.e. without severe recent bottlenecks) non-decorative dog breeds as well. They don't produce super-great mutts. They're fine as they are.
1. https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2018/12/18/griffin... 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effective_population_size 3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimum_viable_population
[+] [-] ramesh31|2 years ago|reply
It's just that the inbred traits are so desirable. I've had many mutts, and loved them very much. But when you want a dog, and you want to know exactly what you're getting, it's hard to beat a pure bred. Yes they will have problems, but it's a known quantity. And what you get in return is a dog who needs minimal training to behave exactly as you wish.
[+] [-] wyager|2 years ago|reply
Plus, a huge fraction of the dogs up for adoption in the US have strong admixture with breeds with specifically undesirable behavior (e.g. biting children or other dogs), which is often causally related to why they're up for adoption in the first place. Adverse selection, yo.
[+] [-] data-abuse|2 years ago|reply
It is also dependent on the breeder. Breeders that "cheap" out will be more likely to have inbred dogs since it can cost money for a good stud.
[+] [-] suzzer99|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tedunangst|2 years ago|reply
> Today’s sled dogs are even “faster and more durable” than those of Balto’s era, Moon says.
[+] [-] paleotrope|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] oldstrangers|2 years ago|reply
Anecdotally, I always felt like 'muts' were some of the healthiest dogs I've been around. They seem invincible, and the genetic diversity probably helps explain that.
[+] [-] h2odragon|2 years ago|reply
Out-crossing a purebred with something from a different style of dog can often produce much healthier pups than either parent. Great Danes and Collie make 3/4 sized, slightly skinny dane-like dogs that are shockingly robust and energetic and can live to 16+ in my experience (and that's as active working outdoor dogs).
[+] [-] jjtheblunt|2 years ago|reply
Interestingly, the notion of breed changed meanings, for me, when they published the results. The only modern breed in her is a great grandparent chihuahua and otherwise she’s genetically varied as feral dogs are, something like an asymptote for the various blends called mutts.
Of the 161 (i think) tracked recessive disorders, she’s a carrier for only two.
[+] [-] inconceivable|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] explaininjs|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ljf|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thriftwy|2 years ago|reply
How is it still possible to give this as a suggestion rather than a rock solid fact? Every piece of evidence and theory screams of it.
[+] [-] wyager|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nocoiner|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] runnerup|2 years ago|reply
For the famous "serum run", Togo's team ran 261 miles, including the most dangerous section: 42 miles over frozen body of water. Whereas Balto's team only ran the final 55 miles. However, Balto got the credit because he carried the medicine into the town while Togo's team was still out in the wilderness.
Seppala wrote: “I hope I shall never be the man to take away credit from any dog or driver who participated in that run. We all did our best. But when the country was roused to enthusiasm over the serum run driver, I resented the statue to Balto, for if any dog deserved special mention it was Togo.”
There is a Disney movie named "Togo", which does a fantastic job of telling the story. According to comparison with best-available primary and secondary sources, the movie has astounding historic accuracy -- even though many, many times it seems like it "jumps the shark". The "true" story of Togo's life is so unbelievable that Disney's inaccuracies are more leaving things out that audiences would never be able to believe rather than putting in exaggerated over-the-top things.
[+] [-] bee_rider|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] esaym|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 1letterunixname|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|2 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] 27fingies|2 years ago|reply
today’s pure breed dogs are sometimes sad to see..
[+] [-] etempleton|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] b112|2 years ago|reply
Empirically one can go a long way, into understanding that inbreeding is bad, that diversity is good. I wouldn't be surprised to see Greek, or Sumerian texts on breeding...
[+] [-] kept3k|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] iancmceachern|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] conorcleary|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nocoiner|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mavu|2 years ago|reply
Wow. Really? Never would have guessed.