Shouting at the Telly

[bunn]

I just rewound the Crufts that was vaguely playing on the TV in the background to see if it said what I thought it did, and it did.

1) Labradoodles, what great hypoallergenic dogs they are and shortly to be recognised as a breed*

but dwarfed by:

2) Loon presenter1 : 'you do a lot of work for dog charities don't you'
Loon presenter2 : 'yes, I bred my collie and gave 1 of the pups to Mountain Rescue and 1 to hearing dogs for the deaf'*


*hang on, that's a crossbreed. They don't breed true do they? And the allergenic thing is a bit of a gamble because of that. Also it's not the fur that people are allergic to, it's the dander. So if people are breeding crossbreeds hoping they might not shed, it's because they don't like the hoovering.

* because, obviously, there is a huge shortage of border collies. Collies are *never* put to sleep ALL OVER THE BLOODY COUNTRY EVERY DAMN YEAR BECAUSE THERE ARE NOT ENOUGH HOMES FOR THEM!

Now to try to write a polite and reasoned email to the BBC...

Comments

[pellegrina.livejournal.com]

Some of the presenters are doing a particularly poor job this year, I've felt. Not that I miss the idiotic girlie presenters' Crufts shopathon of yesteryear, but this year's lot keep flubbing the names of the dogs and the breeds, and Ben Fogle seems to change his mind about whether it's a he or a she several times in a sentence.

[bunn.livejournal.com]

I don't mind them ballsing up the TV show (well, I do, that's quite annoying), but giving the impression that there is a shortage of border collies and that charities need more dogs for their important work is just so criminally stupid and irresponsible that I just want to explode. Or cry.

God knows how many calls Mountain Rescue and Hearing Dogs are going to get from people with collies who have realised they are more dog than they can handle. :-( It's not like collies even make good hearing dogs as a general rule: I am reliably informed that most need more stimulation than the job offers.

[pellegrina.livejournal.com]

I can imagine. I must have missed that segment while cooking dinner or entertaining roleplayers. That's not the kind of support those charities need!

On an aside, one of my big gripes with the PDSA during the three years I volunteered with them is their policy of not providing spay/neuter services. Presumably this was because it was considered non-elective and they want to focus on sick animals rather than healthy ones, but it felt misguided.

[bunn.livejournal.com]

I hadn't realised the PDSA didn't spay / neuter - wow, that's an omission!

I went and had a look at their website to find out if there was any justification given - and it looks like they have just recently seen the light, which is cheering!

http://www.pdsa.org.uk/pages/page01_11_8.cfm

[parrot-knight.livejournal.com]

I haven't been watching the coverage, but have been paging through BBC Birmingham's Crufts picture gallery. Lots and lots of bored dogs so far, and one preparing to eat a microphone, perhaps before moving on to devour the presenter?

[bunn.livejournal.com]

Someone on a forum I frequent posted a photo of some of the sloughis: I know they are supposed to be thin, but should you really be able to see every detail of the poor animal's pelvis? They looked like abuse cases. :-(

[parrot-knight.livejournal.com]

I hadn't heard of sloughis before, but looking at some pictures it looks as if some people find their gauntness appealing. It would be worrying if this lead to dogs being starved to fit into some human idea of canine beauty.

[chainmailmaiden]

Labradoodle

My first thought was 'Why on earth did someone decide to saddle a dog with such a stupid name?'. So I googled it and found out it was a labrador/poodle cross. Aha, at least I now know how they got the idea for the name, however...

My second thought was still 'So why on earth did someone decide to saddle a dog with such a stupid name?'. My conclusion was probably the same person who doesn't understand the genetics of cross breeding or the principles of probability *sigh*

[(Anonymous)]

Hm, well having googled, it does seem that a lot of genetics expertise is going into breeding a non-allergenic service dog with the temperament of a labrador and the shedding properties of a poodle, which sounds like a sensible thing to aim for. I don't know if it's dander or what, but apparently people find poodles less allergenic. And it must be possible in principle to get cross-breeds to breed true eventually, over many generations of back-crossing, or how could we have got all the true-breeding breeds that we've created over the centuries?

Also re the collie pups: just because there are lots of unwanted any-old collies doesn't mean there can't be a demand for high-quality animals. My shepherd friend sells pups bred from his working dogs for lots of money because of their bloodlines. Presumably shepherds would just pick up collies for free from shelters if they were all equivalent, but they aren't. So if this guy was being interviewed on Crufts, I assume his animals were rather superior, and thus it seems at least possible that they were valuable gifts for the charities concerned...

Neuromancer

[bunn.livejournal.com]

a) possibly, but they are a long way from achieving it stably - and the big question a lot of people are asking is why not breed a slightly calmer strain of poodle, rather than breeding a cross which will take many years to stabilise? The answer seems to be that people think poodles look wussy, and the name 'labradoodle' is considered cute.

The labrador is a gundog: so is the poodle. In theory they should have similar temperaments, so why the crossing?

I would have had no objection to a well informed article on the breeding of the labradoodle, but this was very, very misleading. Only one presenter even used the word 'dander' and she got it wrong (dandy, she said) - the main presenter said that it was the shedding of hair that was the problem, which is just not true.

b) yes, there is a demand for excellent working collies, but it is a small and specialised demand, and as with most breeding for a specific use (eg greyhound racing) produces a lot of duds for each top quality working dog.

We really need collie pet homes to accommodate those 'duds', and there is a significant shortage of homes, because the very attributes that make a collie an excellent worker are the attributes that make a dog a difficult and demanding (and extremely rewarding and intelligent) pet. The same attributes mean that that sort of dog can really suffer mental anguish if it has to be kept in kennels for any length of time. (My Mum's dog Ronnie is one of those. You can still see the marks on his face where he smashed himself against the Dogs Trust wire over and over, when he was surrendered at the age of 8 months by his owners because he kept trying to round things up).

The chap I mentioned is *not* an expert collie breeder: he is a Blue Peter presenter who just happens to have a collie. No mention was made of the collie's bloodlines, and the overall impression given was 'hey, if you have a collie and you breed it but can't find homes for the pups, there are charities that need them'.

This is simply not true, and it is the kind of thing that encourages people to breed dogs when they have no idea what they are doing. Like the farmer who bred my mum's other dog, Smudge, as a sheepdog. He then chained her in a barn for a year - no exercise - no training - when she proved not to be interested in working sheep.

Seriously, the fact that a dog is of excellent pedigree does not mean it is a valuable animal. It means it has an increased chance of being a good one, but it could still be a complete whittle. If you go on bloodlines, Mollydog should be a prizewinning racer: she ain't. She has about 4500 half-brothers and sisters, all of them bred in the hopeful search for a champion racer, and most of them dead already because they weren't.

I believe that if the TV is going to talk about something like dog breeding, which is a problem area in this country, it should make some sort of effort to explain the realities and not encourage idiots: this coverage did the exact opposite, by portraying back yard dog breeding as easy and normal.

[bunn.livejournal.com]

Oh, I forgot to mention that the other thing that alarmed me about the Labradoodle thing was the 'these dogs are worth a lot of money' element. In my view that is a very dangerous thing to say on TV without quite a lot of explanation and disclaimers.

[chainmailmaiden]

I got the impression from what was said that it would encourage stupid people to go 'Hey I've got a Labrador, you've got a Poodle, we should breed them and make lots of money from all the special puppies'. Not realising that they probably end up with a load of puppies no-one wants and just adding to the already huge numbers of unwanted animals. They should have definitely told people not to try this at home!

[bunn.livejournal.com]

do not try this at home

That's the phase I was trying to think of! yes, that's just what I meant with my long and circumlocutory post above!