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Chapter XI - How much do we use Genetics Writing on the breeding of top Labradors it always amazes me how little practical use genetics is to us and how very few top breeders even attempt to use it. We look at our breeding stock and at their pedigrees, matching both of those to the various stud dogs we are considering, but except for colour and occasionally a medical aspect e.g. whether PRA or HC are recessive or dominant, we never give a thought to further genetical aspects. And even in colour, apart from knowing that while two blacks, if both carriers of the yellow gene, can throw a proportion of yellows and that two yellows only produce yellows, most breeders do not even bother about that, not minding whether they get yellows from their blacks, indeed in nearly every case preferring to do so, yellows being easier to sell. The liver breeders would indeed like to go further into the genetics of the colour, which are extremely complicated as I found when I got an American geneticist to work out the liver colour-factor for me. Granted that what we do know and use about color is that a pure dominant black parent can never produce yellow, that two blacks, provided they both carry the yellow gene, can produce yellow, that two yellows never produce black and further that two livers mated together never produce black puppies; also that in livers the chocolate gene must be carried by both parents, whether black or yellow, in order to produce a proportion of chocolates puppies in the litter, that is as far as we go and even then we don't fully understand the related aspects of eye-colour or even the shades of coat-colour in blacks, yellows and liver. And if the fact that this statement includes black surprises you then I can assure you that I can tell a Mansergh black from say a Mardas or a Ballyduff black from the colour alone. So even in colour, when we do dabble in genetics it is for most breeders in an extremely amateurish half-hearted manner. We just don't know what we are talking about if we get any deeper than that, an example being that even the older, more experienced breeders will talk about a thing being dominant when they meant it commonly appears in the breed. I heard one of our top breeders say that her bitch was 'dominant for yellow' just because the bitch had happened to produce more yellows in a litter than blacks and carried a lot of yellow in her ancestry. Another very common idea is that if one of the bad hereditary faults turns up in a litter 'they' often say that neither parent should ever be bred again, without ever considering for a moment that the fault may be dominant and that one parent actually has it, even if sometimes totally concealed from the outside eye, but that the other parent is completely blameless. I am quite sure that the few geneticists we do have in the Labrador breed must feel their hair stand on end as we talk knowledgeable rubbish about dominants and recessives, much in the same way that our blood freezes when a layman talks to us about a Labrador being 'Too highly bred'. We have not the faintest idea what he is talking about or what he means and neither I am sure does the geneticist when listening to us. Long before genes were discovered the old breeders used them in a rudimentary fashion without knowing it. The famous Dame Juliana Berners must have understood the principles of the dominant even circa 1486 because her hounds were recorded as being black as the mouth of hell. As Whippet breeders know, a totally black dog is extremely difficult to breed without white markings. We Labrador breeders do not find this difficult ourselves, but that is only because some good breeders in an earlier century had already done that work for us and established a breed of totally black dogs. This is one of the reasons why I find Lord George Scott and Sir John Middleton's theory in their book The Labrador Dog, Its Home and History very difficult to swallow. They came to the conclusion that the Labrador was a result of a conglomeration of various breeds probably imported into Newfoundland by the fishermen of Devon and Dorset. I myself would defy anyone to produce a strain of whole-colored dogs breeding true from such a haphazard method and by such busy men as the Newfoundland fisherfolk trying to scrape a living from barren land and hostile seas. Surely someone somewhere had put a lot of thought into producing such a result, because our earliest mentions of the St. John's Newfoundland speak of it as a black, although perhaps with the odd white toe or paw. The St. Hubert Hound of the Middle Ages was coal black, so perhaps the genetical work had unwittingly already been done by then. To be quite honest we breeders don't know the first thing about genetics and I doubt if we would use them if we did. We follow, if anything, the ancient precept that 'Like breeds like' which curdles the blood of the geneticists because he knows that very often it doesn't. However the middle-range breeder on Path Two doesn't even bother with 'Like breeding like' because he depends on the judges of the day to select the current top-dog for him and is not seriously considering anything else. However this book is about top breeding and Path Three to the top and here 'Like breeding like' must be considered and kept in its place. When you have a recognizable strain with certain carefully built-in virtues and your own brand of faults you can look at things two ways. You will prefer to use a stud dog of the same strain, i.e. bloodlines, as your own with a slight outcross in his pedigree so as to stamp in the virtues and will also try to get the dog that at least is not actually showing the fault and you hope may not be carrying it (and here is a case in point when it is useful to know whether that particular fault is dominant or recessive). Having used this selected dog of your own bloodlines as far as wise, you produce a virtual replica of your own kennel type. This is presumably what you wanted because you would not keep and reproduce that type if you disliked it. But when someone said to me they couldn't see how I managed to come out year after year with dogs so like each other and I replied proudly that I found it difficult to tell my present day dogs from their ancestors in photos unless they were labelled with the dog's name, my Golden Retriever friend said 'What, no progress in thirty years?' The difficulty is to progress towards your ideal, rubbing out faults without losing the virtues or altering your precious type. There are more difficulties than ever the geneticists realise, unless they are practical breeders. I remember a top scientist coming to a tea at Lilymore and going to the rounds of our various stock, dogs of about six breeds, hens, bantams, goats, rabbits,and guinea-pigs and even enquiring about the trout in the lake. He was deeply interested and said if we wanted he could turn the trout in the lake into pink-fleshed fish, and turn our blue rabbits into a brown strain and purify the goats and the bantams and the guinea pigs. When it came to the dogs he said that he couldn't see our difficulties and that if he had the 'gen' he could tell us how to breed the perfect dog, which would breed true in I think it was four generations. Once again he sat down at the table and wrote out the recipe for this perfect dog. It started off by mating Dog A to Dog B and so on in logical genetic succession. When I said what happened if Dog A steadfastly refused to mate Bitch B he snapped angrily 'Oh well, if you are going to mess about like that', and went home, leaving the pink trout pink and the white goat white, and the perfect dog unbred. But to be serious he was right in his way and we do blunder about in the dark, partly because we have to . I try only to breed black labs because I like blacks myself and wish to be able to pick the puppy I like best in each litter I breed, because I am breeding entirely to produce nice Manserghs for myself with no thought for profit or sales. Therefore it is most annoying for me when the obvious pick of the litter is a yellow. Now, I know exactly how to breed blacks by mating pure dominant black to a pure dominant black, when not only will all blacks result but every puppy in the litter will be pure dominant black. But pure dominant blacks outside one's own kennel are hard to find, because nearly all the available black stud-dogs in the country are impure dominants, so to get the dog you want and need for your bitch in other ways, then you may have to introduce yellow genes even though you are mating black to black. And then of course some of the litter are 'impure' blacks and without test mating, which is impracticable because you have sold some of the puppies and anyhow it takes a couple of years or more to test-mate, then you now have impure dominants in your kennel and are back to square one, producing occasional yellows. Only if you are selecting for colour alone can you keep your kennel to pure dominant blacks. Therefore I find that even after 49 years of entirely black to black matings I still very occasionally produce a couple of yellows in a litter. So in a way the only genetical knowledge that is of any practical use in colour breeding is that if you want blacks in your litter you must not mate yellow to yellow or chocolate to chocolate. |
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