The Ostrich Syndrome

The Ostrich Syndrome can damage dogs in a number of ways. The ignorance, denial and fear it fosters in breeders can prevent genetic diseases from being identified and studied early enough to keep them from becoming widespread. Breeds which develop a reputation for being disease-ridden risk rejection by the public – including that part of…

Breeding The Big Picture

In the canine world, inbreeding is defined as breeding closely related dogs to each other, i.e. parent to offspring (vertically) or brother to sister or half-brother to half-sister (horizontally). Let me stress right away that inbreeding in itself can be a valuable tool to ‘fix’ certain desired genes and should not be quickly