[gracielove]

Originally Posted by Belle Noir

I agree, and it happens every day in the dog show world. Look at double merles being produced to breed all merle liters, with each dog having a 1 in 4 chance of being defective. But they produce show winners, so it's all good.
Look at the Great Danes Clubs Code of Ethics. Oh look, they allow Harlequin to Harlequin breeding. This is the dane club code of ETHICS. Let me explain, if you didn't know. A harlequin is a MERLE. So merle to merle breedings are promoted by the Grate Dane Club. Harlequin is a second LETHAL gene that is only visible on merles. When a dog embryo gets two harlequin genes, it dies. Top Harlequin breeders are breeding together dogs that have two semi lethal genes, and being rewarded for it.
They then adopt out their defective blind and deaf dogs to people who feel good about their rescue of a dog that should have never been born in the first place had the breeder been a decent person, and boast that their blind and deaf dog is from champion bloodlines as if the dog cares.
Along those same lines, boxers typically don't win in the show ring unless they're flashy with a lot of chrome. Thing is, you breed two flashy dogs together, you have another 1:4 chance of a white boxer.. who typically is deaf. Not always, admittedly, but hey, can't let a white potentially deaf dog get in the way of "right marked" flashy dogs being born to get those ribbons.
Oh, and shall we talk about some of the grossly malformed dogs being produced by show breeders who are then rewarded for their efforts? GSDs are now a joke with their broke back frog hopping walk, English Bulldogs can't breathe, can't breed, Neapolitan Mastiffs that look like they're the amazing melting dog, Pugs with their double screw tail caused by hemivertebrae, which can also cause paralysis. But that double screw tail is soo prized, that even though there's no way to be sure that the hemivertebrae is going to present in the correct place, it's STILL bred for.
Yes I agree, it's VERY sick and disgusting that people are openly being rewarded for poor breeding practices. But I'm not going to throw stones, because none of us knows the circumstances under which this puppy was born and bred.
But we know the circumstances under which a number of top show dogs are being born and yet people pretend it's not happening, or if you're a top breeder and have X number of years breeding, somehow you are exempt from the laws of averages, and it's OK for you to make a litter in which you know a number of puppies have a chance to be born defective.
And these people are being rewarded every day with praises and accolades from their show circles, from other breeders, from their club and by the AKC. Imagine that.

Several years back I bred/showed Himalayan Cats. They were beautiful but I had to get out of the business. Everyone was going toward more and more extreme looks in the various breeds. They ruined the Siamese by breeding toward a triangular head. They were allowing "new breeds" that were actually the result of mutations. So many beautiful breeds were being ruined by this "extreme" breeding not to mention the other bad breeding practices. When they decided the Himalayan and Persian breeds needed to have the "no nose" look to win I said I was out of there. The poor cats they put in the ring that won ended up with terrible respiratory problems. The cat show world had become a show case for so many "freakish" looks. It was very sad.
It sounds as though the same mania for different looks is happening in the dog show world. I know they have given the Collie some very serious issues by giving it such an angular pointed head. Sad, sad, sad.
But most of these tiny dogs are coming from an entirely different market. The breeders of these tinies are not show breeders. They are simply people trying to cash in on the fashionable trend of having a little dog that you can stick in a bag and show off with. If the Hollywood set would like a new cause to preach about they might stop shoving their little puppies into their bags for a photo op.