Breeding philosophy - Page 8

Perhaps I am just too dumb to wrap my mind around what you are saying, but it really does not make sense to me.  I see the point you're trying to make, I just don't see it that way. 

Ok, Let's clear this up.

You gave the definition of temperament, but you are not using it to defend your arguments.  So I have to ask you... are dogs born with a unique level of hardness, biddability, resiliency and nerve or are they all born with the exact same level and it is only their environment that shapes it?  If they are born with a genetically predetermined level and it is not equal across the board, how is it then not a part of their very nature that will affect their behavior, thereby falling neatly under the definition of temperament as you gave it?  Just because you can support or crush what is already there genetically does not make it no longer a part of their nature that affects their behavior.

You use hardness, biddability, resiliency and nerve in this post and stated in your earlier post that,

Hardness, biddability, resiliency and nerve are set from birth.  They cannot be changed.  There is no environmental factor to these things.

You are incorrect and I gave you examples of this that you don't believe.  So let's go further along this trail.  Let's look at a scientific study.  They took dogs and they put them in tiny enclosures and they shocked them into submission.  All nondescript breeds (mutts).  They shocked the dogs until they gave up and layed there and took the shocks.  They destroyed their hardness and their ability to withstand stress.  Then they took these dogs and along with the control group, they put them in the same type of enclosures that they were shocked in only this time the enclosures had an easily observed opening.  When the dogs were shocked again, NONE of the experimental dogs would leave.  They all layed there and took the shocks.  The control group ALL left the enclosure.  They used the environment and destroyed the dogs hardness, and resiliency.

Ah, you (and others) will say, that's just environment, it won't change who they are genetically.  Step a little further down the path to the next study.  This one was done with mice.  They put them in an enclosure and exposed them to the chemical that is responsible for the smell of cherries. They shocked them as they exposed them to the chemical smell.  They did this until the point of saturation, meaning that eventually all them mice would show signs of fear at just the smell of the chemical.  Here's the relevant part everybody misses.  They bred these mice together and the next generation (the F1 generation) showed 100 % fear response to the chemical smell even though they were never shocked.  The mice inherited the fear from their parents.  THE ENVIRONMENT AFFECTED THEIR GENETICS!!!!   The F2 Generation was the same results.  The Controls did not exhibit a fear reaction to the smell.  The study was ended at the F2 generation.  Whether the change continues is open for debate but the researcher believe that it would continue on. 

There is an environmental factor to these things. 

In every example you gave, you talked about destroying each trait.  If these traits can be changed environmentally, it should work the opposite way as well.  A soft dog should be able to be made hard, a weak nerved dog should be able to be made strong, a dog unwilling to work with his master should be able to be made biddable, an unresilient dog made resilient. 

We'll pause here and examine this point.  First I also stated in my post that All of these traits can also be enhanced through their environment (training).

That is what training is.  It is the manipulation of drives toward a performance goal.  I can teach any soft dog with drive how to handle a prong collar correction.  We know (thanks to the mice) that if we do this completely, the next generation has the potential to be harder under a correction as we activate the genes through training.  (read the study, it's fascinating).  Each and every dog is born unique on his levels of whatever you would like to label them.  They can be accentuated or destroyed through environment.  On a practical note, through training, you can teach a soft dog how to deal with stress in a more constructive fashion.  As helpers, we do it all the time in teaching the counter for example.  Weak nerved dogs we will often times teach to "buck" the helper down to the ground because it is a prey move.  In doing that we can lower the stress that the dog feels in conflict with the person and channel it to a behavior that the dog understands more readily.  If the dog is capable, then they will start to aggress to the helper because the buck down taught them how to win.  We took weak and showed the dog how to win which made him stronger.  There are many more examples that could fill a different thread.

 

It just isn't possible.  If I take a dog that is genetically hard that has been beaten into submission and nurture him and gain his trust and give him the necessary support, that dog is able to overcome his past abuse.  I've seen it time and time again when I've worked with dogs that have come from these very situations.  That's why I don't buy the stories of rescue organizations that claim all of their adoptable dogs come from abusive situations and that's why they act the way they do.  No... they have a weakness in their temperaments. 

Let's examine this section.  We have shown through the mice study that it is possible.  Now what you are discussing is recovery of the original trait.  Using your example, if you nurture this dog, you MAY be able to overcome his past abuse with you, but you didn't erase it (back to the mice and the dog studies).  You have COUNTER CONDITIONED him to the abuse.  A different person will be able to bring the abuse back to the surface under the same stimuli.  You don't erase it.  They are not blank slates to be rewiped after a mistake.  They have to live with them.  They have a weakness, a hole that was created.  Which leads us to your next statements.

Why can one dog be exposed to the same abusive environment and one be able to overcome it and another not?  Different temperaments.  Why do littermates exposed to the same stressor during a "fear period" come out of it with completely different results.  Different temperaments.  I totally understand how environment plays a role in the upbringing of pups.  It may affect the outward manifestation of the traits, but it hasn't changed what is there genetically.  Otherwise, we wouldn't have to worry about ever getting a soft, weak nerved, unwilling, unresilient puppy ever again.  We could just raise it the "right way" and fix all of those problems. 

This happens because in your real life examples, the stressors are not equal.  Abuse is not equal,  It is dependant on many variables which is why researches use shocks.  They are quantifiable in time and intensity.  Beating a dog or choking or starving or not watering, etc etc have many different levels and are perceived differently by the animals.  One animal may be resilient enough to bounce back from a beating but starving him pushes him into submission as just an example.  As many losers out there as there are, there are that many ways to torture and abuse an animal.  Anyone who has been in the Schutzhund world long enough has seen the promising young dog who leaves the club and comes back a year later with no or little drive.  It has been taken out of them through improper handling (environment) and no matter what we do as helpers, we can never get that dog back to what his full potential once was.  Raising them right helps, raising them wrong is a recipe for failure.

No matter how many times someone looks at the spinning ballerina, one person will insist that it is spinning to the right and the other will insist that it is spinning to the left. 

I have a ton of work to do, so I won't be able to continue this wonderful discussion.  I do hope that I've given you enough information that you can see my point of view.  If not, I apologize for not expressing myself better.

THis all drifted way off the topic of temperament as a subset of working ability.  You use them interchangably.  I do not, because I do not believe it is a correct interpretation of the animal.  I've made this comment several times and it's been ignored every time.  I believe it's been ignored because it can't be answered. 

There are plenty of good tempered dogs who have no working ability.

This precludes the terms from being used interchangably and forces thru the logic construct that temperament is a subset of working ability.  Especially when you consider that working ability can only be judged AFTER it has been manipulated by the environment.

 

We really can go back and forth on this forever.  The scientific study on the dogs doesn't help our discussion.  We have no idea what the temperament of those dogs was to begin with.  How do we know that they weren't all unstable, weak nerved dogs with no resilience to begin with?  Besides that, I have already stated that I know the outward manifestation of certain traits can be changed based on environment.  I just do not believe that changes the genetic level of that trait.  I do not agree that conditioning through training is changing the genetic traits the dog is born with.  A soft dog that is coddled in training to make them appear strong, will fold under the pressures of a strange new helper on a new field.  You did not change the dog's level of hardness at all. 

As far as the mice study, I would have to look at the actaul study before I can comment on it.  I would be interested to see these results duplicated in dogs or people.  

As far as no one addressing your comment about using working ability and temperament interchangeably vs. temperament as a subset of working ability... I'm not sure what answer you are looking for.  We just disagree.  I've given the reasons I believe what I do and there really isn't anything more to say about it.  Honestly, from your comments, I don't even think we're talking about the same thing when you use the term "working ability", so to continue debating it is futile.

 

They will never do that study on people and you know better than that. Shock people into a fear posture?

They won't repeat it on dogs either for lack of funding and lack of value.  It takes too long to get to an F2 generation in dogs and people and the study was designed to study the expression of genes through manipulation which it did.

The whole field of study is epigenetics.  It's why I said your position seems well thought out but it isn't. No slight intended on you at all, you've done a lot of thinking on this stuff I can tell. But you have done it as an island without the information that research is unlocking. 

There is a book written by the pioneer of the field that I will try and find the title of tonight and post it so that you can read it if you would like.  It's not an easy read though.  I'll also look for the mouse study and post a link. 

Many of the things that were once thought to be true, are not.  It is the way of research and science.

 

My breeding goals:

1. What's hot
2. How can I make the most money
3. Without following the standard, what do most people want.

Link to Mice study,

http://www.nature.com/neuro/journal/v17/n1/full/nn.3594.html

Links to explain it in friendlier terms

http://www.livescience.com/41717-mice-inherit-fear-scents-genes.html

http://www.geneticliteracyproject.org/2013/12/10/can-mice-inherit-fear-of-a-smell-the-latest-on-transgenerational-epigenetics/

What we thought we know, we don't.  If we don't stay current with research, we will fall behind.

I looked for my book last night and couldn't find it.  I'll keep looking.

 

 

"What we thought we know, we don't." .........therefore call me names when I talked about learned behavior being inherited, evidenced in breeds of dogs and cutting horses and bulls who are taught to buck, and you told me I was stupid. I called it race memory, because that's what it was called fifty years ago. The concept and proof of it's existence is not new, but some people are slower in accepting that which they don't understand. Glad to see you are evolving in your acceptance of things you couldn't before.

Honestly I can not swallow it. learned/environmental fear becomes genetic and passes to next generation is against known science

Oh god, let's open that can of worms back up on a different thread.  You were wrong, you still are and you still don't understand it. It's not learned behavior,  It's the activation of genes through saturation.  A bull bucking is not necessarily saturation.  And you always ignored that only 3 out of the 5 clones repeated the donors ability.  That's a 60% rate.  I also told you then to read up on epigenetics.

Read the study, ( I bet you haven't yet).  Understand what it is and isn't.

Ibrahim, who's known science?

Ibrahim,

It was.  Science grows.  You keep up or you fall behind.  Read the study and the links.  It's very thorough. 

Just as man couldn't fly because known science said you couldn't overcome gravity.