What about removing the mandate on ear/tail cropping/docking for different breeds if you're really concerned about animal welfare? I've never bred dogs, but to my understanding this is still required for some breeds -- correct me if I'm wrong.... If someone can give me a good reason why that poor creature needed to have its tail sliced off by a scalpel in order to lead a healthy life, I would love to hear it.
Depends on the country you are in. Ear cropping/tail docks/declawing is not permitted in Australia.
Nyanko, yes it is a band-aid solution... but you have to start somewhere. It is probably best to, as the video series states start with a group that has some sort of influence and do it somewhat slowly without fully alienating everyone.
BR549, some of the problems with breeding are that animals are bred to young to fully be able to determine the affects of not only their physical attributes, but also the affect of congenital diseases that don't present themselves until later in life (talking 3-4 years of age) or in the case of Boxers (as an example) a deadly arrhythmia that may not appear until 7 or 8 years of age. There are breeders that care and -try- to do all that they can, or all that they know to do, but dog breeding is essentially an unregulated industry and we are there to pick up the pieces. I'd personally rather pick up less pieces than I half to and would like to see healthier animals overall.
The holisitic (sorry to generalise) folks talk about how we are seeing higher and higher incidences of illness/cancer in our companion animals... how much of that might be attributed to genetic components and not because of environment? Golden retrievers and boxers are two breeds that come to mind (and I think were mentioned in the video) as well as labs.
I realise it was in there for some shock value, but when the video talks about having a population of 10,000 individuals who's genetic code basically only represents about 50 distinct individuals it might be time to pause and think about our actions. Perhaps we need to do some cross breeding... you know toss an Australian terrier or two into the West Highland White Terrier line and see what you can do with it.
And to echo Pandacinny, there has been drastic conformational changes in specific breeds over just the past half-century, both in dogs and in cats (persian comes to mind for cats)
I didn't realize I had run the two ideas together! My bad!
I didn't mean to! Lol.
