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Comment by weavie | Hacker News Reader

Not just Pugs. I had a German Shepherd. Beautiful dog, but everyone who I met who had had a German Shepherd in the past told me their dog had to be put down around 10 years of age due to their back legs failing.

Our dog didn't even make it to 10. She died of heart failure at 7. According to the vet this is another common problem with the breed.

I well never get a pure breed again.

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We got two spaniels (years apart) from the same breeder. Both died suffering of a number of abnormalities that became pronounced when they got older.

Later we found that the breeder was forced to stop altogether because the dogs were so consistently damned.

I can still hear what I can only describe as "screaming" by our first spaniel the night she came home after an emergency operation. She had to be let go that night. Nothing in my life has haunted me the same way. That was it for dogs for me. I have two wonderful cuddly cats and I'm delighted by how genetically unremarkable they are.

We had a cocker when I was in college that, at about age 8, became aggressive toward my mom and brother, biting them both on the neck hard enough to draw blood. Obviously we had to euthanize him. The vet told us that the tan-colored cocker spaniels were especially prone to problems, as their light color was a result of very close breeding.

I had English cockers growing up. Check out rage syndrome [0]. I only first heard about it a couple of years ago and it very accurately describes the behavior I saw in our dogs. FWIW, not all of our dogs were from the same breeder.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rage_syndrome

What kind of spaniels? I've got a working English Springer, healthy so far, from healthy working stock, but reading things like this makes me worry.

American cocker

Your "German Shepherd" today is nothing like the purebreeds from the WWII era. They were bred afterwards for looks, nothing else. The inherent intelligence remained and was left unchanged, everything else was selectively bred, so you get to enjoy cardiac failure and hip dysplasia as a result.

Is there some connection between the breeding of the German Shepherd and WWII? My impression is that the breed dates back at least fifty years before that.

German Shepherds were the dog of choice on both sides in WWII, and capture the public's emotion.

Disney made a historical drama "Chips, the War Dog" in the 90s. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0099262/ (Though FYI, Chips was actually a Sherperd-Collie-Husky mix.)

Germans extensively used Giant Schnauzers as well. In WWI as medic dogs, WWII as guard dogs. The breed was annihilated by the Russians as they extinguished almost every kennel and took home prime specimens to breed for size. This is why Giants have two types: German soft coats and Russian hard coats which are also physically larger.

I have it on good authority from a couple Giant breeders in the USA that the Russians went on this kennel extermination campaign because the German soldiers were feeding dead Russians to the dogs. I have not seen this specifically documented anywhere though. It would be nice to know the true motivations behind the ruthless killing of these dogs by the Russians.

For a long time, as a German Shepherd owner and enthusiast, I believed the old adage about white German Shepherd's being "awful." Granted, in some cases this holds true - pink skin, pink noses - typical of melanin deficiencies in the skin (and often in the eyes & brain) buuuuuut that's not where the bias started.

Some of the founding Shepherd's were white! The foundation stud, Grief, was white. The creator of the breed is on record saying that white dogs have no less working capacity than any other color... So what happened?

Turns out, this was due largely to nazi influence, too. The WWII era really transformed the German Shepherd. From a pastoral sheep-herding companion came a military machine. White dogs, while good at blending in with the flock and being spotted by a Shepherd in the field, were not so good on the battlefield, unfortunately for the same reasons. You can see them coming at night, they are easy targets on a black mountainside.

In other words, the ideas of the time have an ENORMOUS impact on the dogs we create. I don't doubt the Giant Schnauzer story for a second. Breeds evolve to suit the government, the people, and the culture that they are born into...

It does, but Nazi control over Germany shaped and changed the kennels significantly. The Verein fur Deutsche Schaferhunde (the breed organization for the GSD at the time) was relinquished to Nazi control a few years before the founder of the breed, Von Stephanitz', death.

Nazi influence on breeding and the use of dogs for experiments (Hitler's "beloved" German Shepherd, Blondi, was famously fed a cyanide pill to test its effectiveness) had quite an impact. Many of the best bloodlines have vanished because of this (in Blondi's case, her puppies were shot and killed after her death) but because of the dogs military value, this was of course not the fate of all of them.

The ancestry of the "working line" dogs we have today can be traced back to these same dogs that fought alongside soldiers in WWII. What's left of them, anyway.

Depends on the line and the particular confirmation of the dog. For German Shepherd's specifically, dogs from "working lines," tend to be absent of these issues because their breeders focused more on the dogs temperament and behavior than confirmation. Ergo, you have a sturdy, intelligent, willing dog with minimal health problems.

I am a professional trainer. I have 2 German Shepherds, one is a "show line" and the other is a "working line." The showline dog has congenital health issues and grew up with terrible confirmation. The working line dog last weekend rolled about 150 feet down a mountain while chasing his ball and just walked it off.

Having a mixed breed dog can be a great thing, but it is no more a guarantee against confirmation and health issues than any other dog. The real issue, IMO, is that clients/buyers don't know nearly enough about dog breeding to know if what is being advertised is actually a good thing.

Do you mean "conformation"?

Probably.

I'm glad you used the phrase "get a pure breed" as opposed to "purchase a pure breed". There are far to many amazing dogs that need a home to spend money buying a dog.

If you want a rough story, look at the Bernese Mountain Dog. Twenty years ago the life expectancy of the breed was only 7 years due to congenital heart problems. Breeders have been working to breed it out of them and introduce more variety in the genome of the breed for some time and their life expectancy has been going up.

The key is to at least get a diverse line, though I don't think there's any reason to get a pure bred dog unless you want to show or breed it yourself.

My father recently purchased a Sharpei. It's father was also it's grandfather because it was basically the product of two kennels interbreeding. In humans go as far as to outlaw that in many countries. In dog breeding it's a matter of course.

Be honest - "in dogs, its a matter of course". Lets not paste human social constructs on an animal.

Maybe I'm ignorant but my understanding was it's not really a social construct for us, it's often rooted in the understanding of genetics that makes inbreeding a bad idea.

Mostly myth. The first million years nobody cared. Inbreeding over time is a bad idea, if the gene pool is too small. But line breeding(?) like done with dogs (and cattle and pigs and ...) is not a death sentence, nor even a very bad idea unless taken to extremes.

> I don't think there's any reason to get a pure bred dog unless you want to show or breed it yourself

There is one other reason - working dogs. Livestock guardian for example is a job that's very poorly suited for mutts due to the genetic personality traits involved. An LGD with chasing, shepherding, or tracking instincts would be at best worthless, and at worst a danger to your animals.

Yes, but a working breed is vastly different to a domestic breed. Working dogs need to be intelligent, obedient, and free from health problems.

There are acknowledged problems with pure breeds of all kinds, but not all pure breeds suffer from such extreme problems. It's possible to find a breeder with a strong bloodline free of many defects but it is not going to be cheap.

There are also many thousands of mutts in need of a good home for free.

and mutts, by their very nature, are far more genetically healthy than pure breeds.

Not sure why this was downvoted. "Free" isn't quite right, there are usually still nominal fees associated with adopting from a shelter, but compared to purchasing a purebred it might as well be free.

I've owned mutts my whole life, mostly medium-large dogs that you'd expect would suffer from hip dysplasia and so on, but they've all lived to ripe old ages and they've all been smart as a tack. Hybrid vigor is awesome.

I have a mutt and a purebreed (Anatolian Shepherd).

The Shepherd isn't even a year old yet and she looks like she has trouble standing up when she's been laying down a while. Maybe her legs just fell asleep, I don't know.

She was free. Some family has them to keep with the livestock, and they bred them--I took the runt.

The mutt looks mostly boxer to me, the pound said boxer/shepherd mix. She's beautiful, very smart, and loyal, and just incredibly quick outdoors--best dog I've ever met.

Anyway, just my one data point.

Virtually all pure bred dogs have have genetic issues.

A "pure" gene pool can only get smaller, never larger.

This is why the Whitehouse and a lot of security companies are switching to the slightly smaller Belgian Malinoise:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2014/09/2...

And because of that, many pet owners now want Malinois* instead of Shepherds...because they saw one on TV and it looked super obedient and they think, well if the police are using them, it's probably just what I need to complete my apartment..!

You'll see the same problems in Malinois in - my guess - 3-5 years from now. Let a couple generations go by. Keep an eye out for phrases like "old world" and "large-boned" when you start seeing super-sized Mal's walking around Petsmart.

eternally SMH

Well they've been used as service dogs in place of german shephards for > 10 years. Not sure why you picked 3-5 years arbitrarily. They're bred for their actual talent as working dogs (and holy hell are they fast!).

German shepherds frequently carry the gene for Degenerative Myelopathy. Genetic testing for it has only become available in the past 5-7ish years. A reputable breeder will test their dogs for this prior to breeding now that the test is available.

You can get things like hip replacements for dogs now, but it isn't cheap. We had a knee replacement for our rottweiler that cost about $10K all up, but he was only 4 when it happened, had he been 8 we probably wouldn't have paid.

Holy cow! As a Rotty owner myself (beautiful Ruby),and shes had plenty of damn problems, but 10k, holy shmoly man, I can afford it too, but ahhh, thats so killer. For the record, I probably woulda done it too.

List of problems: suffered from Panosteitis until she was 2, tore ACL when 1.5 years old, had eye entropy surgery. The toughest was the ACL. Shes 7 now, suffers from pretty terrible arthritis which I combat with different stuff.

Tomorrow, my brother is taking his doberman shipped to the US from Serbia 3 hours away to the doggie dentist, where he has the most fucked up teeth you have ever seen. They are made of glass. My brother is already in over 7g's on the teeth, the dog is about to turn 2...

Anyways, you are a great human being and I am glad rottys are getting love like that.

This particular dog made himself an inside one and never quite realized he was too big to be a lapdog. We never had to ask him to do something, when the car was going out the gate for instance, he would wander up the stairs where he knew he was supposed to be without prompting. Later after I moved away he would play passive aggressive when I visited, ignoring me but betrayed by his waging tail banging on the ground.

I can't say we would have done the same for most other dogs we've had, but this one was special and we got another 8 years out of him.

Not all pure bred dogs have health problems. If you take the time to find a breeder who cares about the dogs more than money then you can find dogs that are healthy and well cared for. This takes effort though and research.

Very thorough research as many breeders will hide genetic inbreeding through confusing naming of sires and bitches.

Source: My father breeds GSDs for maximum diversity. Very few of his dogs suffer hip dysplasia or congenital heart defects.

My oldest is 12 and still runs around like the energizer bunny. She's a pure bred shepherd.

Be more careful when you buy.

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