Some progress but not enough PDE sequel - Page 1

‘Some progress but not enough’ – PDE sequel
BRACHYCEPHALICbreeds were held up for scrutiny on Pedigree Dogs Exposed – Three Years On which was broadcast on Monday evening.

A German vet said Pugs and Bulldogs should no longer be bred due to the degree of suffering they experience. And he said that vets had become a ‘repair troop’ for small animal breeders.

Judges were criticised for awarding exaggerated dogs; the Kennel Club was accused of not doing enough; the Dog Advisory Council had no teeth; and other major players such as Prof Sir Patrick Bateson said they were disappointed at the lack of reform since the original programme went out in 2008.

Film-maker Jemima Harrison claimed that the KC’s ‘inextricable link’ to breed clubs and breeders was detrimental to dogs and that a new regulatory body was needed.

The programme went over some of the ground of the previous programme which aired in August 2008; particularly the debilitating problem suffered by Cavaliers –syringomyelia (SM), and featured ‘whistle-blower’ Margaret Carter, now expelled from the Cavalier King Charles Spaniel Club, and campaigner Carol Fowler.

“The programme made everybody – including vets and scientists – sit up and say something must be done or most of these breeds will not survive,” said Mark Evans, who was the RSPCA’s chief vet at the time.

This time writer and director Ms Harrison made the film from her own point of view, saying her initial work had turned her into a campaigner, and that she wanted to see how things had changed.

The fall-out from the programme had shocked the world of pedigree dogs to its foundations, she said, and had triggered three enquiries and the formation of the Dog Advisory Council. It turned inaction into action, she said, and despite the ‘shock horror’ it had done more good than harm.

British Veterinary Association (BVA) past president Harvey Locke said it had been a wake-up call to everybody involved in breeding and had showed the veterinary profession what needed to be done urgently and the key role it had to play.

‘Bred for looks’

The programme showed TV footage screened eight days after the original programme featuring KC secretary Caroline Kisko describing it as a ‘one-off’, highly one-sided and that there was ‘not much for people to be worried about’.
But the KC had felt very wounded, Mr Evans said: “I can’t believe that behind closed doors they didn’t say, ‘She’s (Ms Harrison) got a point. But there’s no way they’d admit it.”

In this week’s film, Ms Harrison again stressed that genetic pools in some breeds were so diminished that it was putting them at risk. The KC had banned close matings since the first programme, but a second major reason for health problems in pedigree dogs was the fact that they were bred for looks and success in the show ring, which led to them being burdened with disabling physical exaggerations.

Mr Evans’ quotation from the previous programme – calling some show dogs ‘freakish mutants taking part in a beauty pageant’ – was reprised, as was the fact that at the time some ridgeless Rhodesian Ridgeback puppies were put to sleep because the breed Standard stated that only ridged dogs were acceptable.

Ms Harrison explained that three weeks after the first programme the KC issued a new code of ethics which forbade the culling of puppies on purely cosmetic grounds.

The KC also reviewed all the Standards and then banned close matings, such as father to daughter or brother to sister.

Other measures followed which were all welcome, she said.
“But I think there is much more fundamental problem which inhibits progress,” she said. “That is the way the dog world is run and regulated. It is the KC’s stated goal to promote in every way the general improvement of dogs. But it is a registry which records lineage and runs most dog shows. Breeders who run the clubs show each others’ dogs and sit on rule-making KC committees.

“The KC’s progress has been slow and at worse ineffective.”
In the context of Cavaliers and SM, Prof Sir Patrick Bateson, who chaired one of the enquiries into dog breeding, said some breeders had their heads stuck in the sand and were not listening. Unless they could produce dogs without health problems they should not be breeding, he said.

Quite recently, Ms Harrison explained, the KC and the BVA had launched a new MRI scanning scheme to tackle SM, but new research now suggested that by the age of six 70 per cent of Cavaliers will have the condition, although some may be asymptomatic.

Ms Fowler said that without support from the breed and the KC it was no longer justifiable to continue breeding Cavaliers as the incidence of SM was too high. Ms Harrison said that the Cavalier was founded in the 1920s. “From creation to ruination in less than 100 years,” she said.

But it was not too late for Dalmatians, with the KC registering a low uric acid bitch from America with Pointer in her pedigree, 14 generations removed, despite resistance from breeders. This move would counter the breed’s propensity for the breed to suffer from bladder stones. Breeder and exhibitor Julie Evans – who has now bred from the low uric acid bitch Fiacres First And Foremost (Fiona) – said she was grateful to the KC for registering Fiona, described by Ms Harrison as the ‘healthier alternative Dalmatian’.

The British Dalmatian Club had resisted the bid to register Fiona. Breed club hierarchy and the KC were inextricably linked, Ms Harrison claimed, and those in charge of breed clubs could be putting their breeds at risk. It was hard for individuals to make themselves heard.

She moved onto the condition juvenile kidney disorder (JKD) which can strike Boxers among other breeds, and showed distressing footage of a young bitch who eventually had to be put to sleep. Her owner discovered that this bitch and another she owned were sired by the Mair family’s Ch Designer Game at Glenauld (Gucci), top sire in 2007, who, the programme said, at the time of filming had sired 894 puppies.

Geneticist and Boxer expert Dr Bruce Cattanach explained that kidney disease was inherited and was a recessive condition which meant that puppies were at risk if both parents carried the faulty gene and that close inbreeding created a higher risk of the problem emerging.

Dr Cattanach said he had found 30 cases of juvenile kidney disease between 2007-10; most of the dogs involved now dead, he said, and all were closely related. Gucci was either father or grandfather of half of them, he alleged.
“Because this dog has been used so many times at stud it means gene responsible is all over the country,” he said.
But Gucci was not the entire problem, he stressed.

“As the picture got clearer I realised a bigger family group had hit right to the heart of the current Boxer show population,” he said, and cited Yvonne and Walker Miller’s Walkon kennel of Boxers. He claimed that some of the dogs identified by Dr Cattanach were connected to the Walkon kennel in some way, although he added that there was no definitive proof.

Dr Cattanach decided to get blood samples from as many Boxers as possible to allow him to look closer at the problem, but told Ms Harrison he had not received much co-operation at a meeting of the breed council. Some breeders had provided samples but not the Walkers or the Mairs, he said.

In the programme Mrs Miller was quoted as saying she had offered samples but that they had been dismissed as being of no use. Mrs Mair said she would be willing to give samples from Gucci but that Dr Cattanach had told her he had enough samples. There had been no cases of JKD in her kennel, she said. Dr Cattanach denied these statements.

Geneticist Prof Steve Jones from University College London, who featured in the first programme, returned for this one, warning that if breeders kept on the way they were there would be a ‘universe of suffering’ waiting for many of these breeds. Prof Bateson said that inbreeding caused problems – not just inherited diseases but also cancer. But there had been a change in the public’s mood he said; before the first programme people had been unaware of such canine health matters – as he had, he said, although 20 years before he had been part of a group which highlighted the problem and it had just been ‘ignored’.

Ms Harrison said that after her first programme the KC had donated £1.2m to the Animal Health Trust to create a genetics centre in its name and set up its online tool Mate Select so breeders could breed away from problems by working out the inbreeding coefficient. A father to daughter mating would produce a coefficient of 25 per cent, and close matings were now banned. And yet, Ms Harrison said, a Cesky Terrier had appeared on Mate Select with a coefficient of 45.7 per cent.

Prof Jones said that sometimes mating cousin to cousin could be ‘just as bad’ as the closer ones.
“If it goes on for a long time the problem just builds up,” he said.

The KC’s measure so far had been tentative he believed and ‘to a degree cosmetic’.
“We should stand back from the problem and say, ‘Why are you doing this?’. If people want a dog as a companion who has a decent lifestyle and length of life you must stop this inbreeding.”

The KC prefers education to regulation, Ms Harrison said, but she believes the situation is now so urgent that it must do more – such as introducing a maximum level of inbreeding, like the Swedish Kennel Club and others.
“You need to look at the bigger problem,” Prof Jones said, adding that the Boxer was a good example of how quickly damage could be caused.

Ms Harrison turned her attention to the Bulldog, showing how the breed and skull shape had changed over the years and describing the problems it had giving birth naturally. She said that after the first programme the KC had said it wanted fewer exaggerations in breeds. This was followed by footage of previous KC secretary Bill Edmond, talking on TV in 1986 on the KC’s recent review of the breed Standards which had taken place then in a bid to rid the show ring of exaggerated breeds.

“It didn’t work then and it hasn’t worked this time either,” Ms Harrison said, “at least, not in terms of the show ring.”
She showed Prof Sheila Crispin, chairman of the Dog Advisory Council, a picture of a Bulldog who won the group at a championship show last year, and asked her if dogs like that should be bred. Prof Crispin replied: “No. The shape of the face is such that the dog can’t breathe normally.”

“It was one of the top Bulldogs in 2011,” Ms Harrison said. “I’ve spoken to the owner who doesn’t think anything is wrong.”

That dog was Ch Pringham’s Éclair Glace and the owner Paul Harding who declined to comment when approached by DW.

“We keep trying to educate people, but it is most important that no judge places a dog with this morphology and shape,” Prof Crispin said. “This dog has been shown and someone has placed it and they shouldn’t have done.”
Prof Bateson said he found it disappointing that three years on, and after all the enquiries, and this was still going on. “It’s a great shame,” he said.

BVA past President Mr Locke suggested that the Standards should be looked at again, and that the Bulldog Standard should say a long face, not a relatively short one.

Old photographs were shown of some of the breeds to illustrate how they had changed over the years, including a Leavitt Bulldog, an Albany Basset, an original Shar-Pei in China and a working Neapolitan Mastiff.

The film moved to Pugs – who had a ‘holy host of health problems’, Ms Harrison said – and showed Dr Gerhard Oechtering, an expert in brachycephalia in Germany, operating on Pug Cissy whose owner had driven her 600 kilometres for the pioneering operation.

“Struggling to breath is one of the most frightening feelings for animals and humans,” Dr Oechtering said. Cissy’s airways were badly restricted, the film explained; her tongue was too big for her mouth and she had too many teeth for her mouth.

“Many owners don’t realise how much their dogs are suffering,” Dr Oechtering said.

Noses are important in controlling body temperature and flat-faced dogs are robbed of the ability to cool themselves, he explained. Pugs will fall asleep standing or sitting up because it is the only way they can keep their airways open.
The two-hour operation on Cissy was filmed.

“It is unbelievable that there is a need for such invasive surgery just to repair the basic needs of a dog, and it’s in no way acceptable from any ethical point of view today,” the doctor said.

“It is no longer acceptable to breed from the most extreme brachycephalic breeds, the Pug and the Bulldog. The whole veterinary profession is faced more and more with the situation that we’re becoming a repair troop for small animal breeders. We can say today that one should stop, totally stop breeding brachycephalic dogs.”

He said breeders of short-faced breeds worldwide had proved that they were not able to breed healthy animals.
“They proved that they created one disease after the other,” he said. It is time to call a halt to the suffering, Ms Harrison said, and the KC should no longer tolerate human whim which has led to dogs that can’t run, breathe or see freely.

The KC refused to take part in the programme, she said, but if it had it would probably had said it was doing what it could while keeping breeders on board. “Therein lays the problem,” she said. “The KC has a conflict of interest and is juggling its commitment to breeders and to dogs. It should be one and the same but too often it’s not, and when it’s not the dogs lose.”
The Dog Advisory Council was full of good people with good intentions but it was under-funded and had no real teeth, Ms Harrison said.

Prof Crispin agreed. “There is nothing we can use to hit people over the head,” she said. “We are there to examine the evidence and make recommendation based on facts. I hope people will regard our recommendations as important, but we can’t get tough as we have no legislative powers. I would love to get tough but we can’t.”

Ms Harrison concluded saying a new regulatory body was needed which would drive through meaningful reform for dogs backed by the Government. This could be funded by a new registration scheme for all dogs and this could also help deal with other issues such as stray and dangerous dogs and puppy farms.

“We as consumers also need to examine our attraction to dogs that would not look out of place in a Victorian freak show and just say no to those suffering from unacceptable levels of disease,” she said. “We’re supposed to be a nation of dog lovers so now let’s prove it.