MITHUISCINT

Misunderstanding.

A very wet couple of weeks it has been.



However Misty's litter turned 8 weeks on Saturday. One blue bitch pup is in Belfast, another in Dublin. Banphrionsa Bui is staying with us.



Bailielands Danny has gone out to Pat & Shirley Mc Sweeney, hopefully to become a fitting stud dog for their two glens.



Sandybanks Daniel has come out to us in return, Siobhan's big strapping brother, we'll possibly run him on & see what happens.



Summer is fading away & Autumn aproaching. I hope to get out with Wolfie & Dubhie good & often this season as i now have my Bellman & Flint terrier locator, a really fascinating bit of kit, adapted from equipment for finding people lost in avalanches! Had to be really careful last season with an old Deben 1 & completely mute dogs. Divorce would have been unavoidable if anything happened to Wolfie & Dubhie.



Such excitement here in Ireland & UK regarding the BBC programme 'Pedigree Dogs Exposed' shown last tuesday night. i didn't see it but wish i had. Certainly didn't miss the articles in Our Dogs, the Irish Times, most of the papers & of course online articles and comments.



So i googled 'Inbreeding In Pedigree Dogs' & after trawling through a heap of 'poor little doggy woggy articles' found some very interesting scientific articles as follows....

Population Structure and Inbreeding From Pedigree Analysis Of Purebred Dogs

Federico C.F. Calboli, Jeff Sampson, Neale Fretwell and David J. Baldy

(Genetics. 2008 May; 179(1):593-601)

http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?tool=pmcentrez&artid=2390636





A New Direction For Kennel Club Regulations and Breed Standards

Koharik Arman

(Can Vet J. 2007 September; 48(9):953-965)



http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?tool=pmcentrez&artid=1950109



Inherited Structural & Functional Abnormalities In The Dog

M W Fox

(Can Vet J. 1970 January; 11(1):5-12)



http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?tool=pmcentrez&artid=1695057



Indirect Exclusion Of Four Candidate Genes For Generalised Progressive Retinal Atrophy In Several Breeds Of Dogs

Tanja Lippman, Sandra M Pasternack, Britta Kraczyk, Sabine E Dudeck, Gabriele Dekomien.

(J Negat Results Biomed. 2006; 5:19)


http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?tool=pmcentrez&artid=1716180

Some of you may read Terrierman's Daily Dose a blog at http://terriermandotcom.blogspot.com
where the author posts on his working dogs and many many other issues. Though the author has a very low view on Glens & mere occasional diggers like myself i enjoy his blog very much and am challenged & educated by it. He's had a lot to say on this BBC programme and has already posted many times on the travesties made out of many breeds by showbreeding, healthwise, temperament wise and appearance wise. If you read the above scientific articles especially Population Structure & Inbreeding.... and A New Direction... you'll be in for an education.

Worrying me a lot lately is the growing lack of genetic diversity in our Irish Glens, some of the papers explain the Inbreeding Co-efficient values quite well and looking at pedigrees now, most of the dogs around are all more of the same. But to most Irish Glen breeders, breeding to non-Irish bloodlines is a perilous option.

So what to do? Some working strains of patterdale & fell terrer are closely inbred at present, unhealthy, unsound or non-workers are removed from the gene pool by culling or neutering. Breeding only from good gene dogs increases the probability of good gene dogs in each subsequent litter and removes bad genes as they occur. But what to do about faults that show later in life such as PRA turning up at 4 and 5 yrs of age, after breeding as usually occurred and the bad genes passed on...

It is so difficult to get PRA screening done here with 1 vet available for the entire country and he based in Dublin. Do hope the club might arrange a clinic.

For though here in Ireland, the Glen seems mostly a very hardy healthy dog with no dogs i can think of going blind early among the many i know or have known, internationally the breed appears rife with it.

Time for testing, i think...