Comment to 'Changes to the Neapolitan Mastiff part II'
  • [quote="Nancyk"][quote="Wolf"] [color=blue]The desire to produce "beasts" in the Neo and Caucasian (or Hippos and Bears, respectively) has already seriously messed up the first and is starting to mess up the latter breed. People are impressed with large heads, broad shoulders, great mass and the overall look and vibe of Molossers, but many don't realize that such appearance was (as it should be) reserved for dogs that are fully mature, well over 4 years of age. Up until then, these dogs are supposed to look like normal and visibly functional un-exaggerated animals. The Neo, for instance, used to look nicely balanced, "under-typey" even in the past, at least until 4 years of age, when the size of the head and overall body mass would increase and the wrinkles become more pronounced. But since people are in awe of mature Neos of the past and apparently can't wait for a normal dog to simply grow up, the demand for the "over-typey" (or "old out of the box", as I like to call it) look has forced most breeders into producing non-functional, over-sized and hyper-typical mastini, while perfectly normal and correct dogs which are developing at a more natural rate are being ridiculed. Everyone wants a di Ponzano look, but most people only look at photos of fully mature di Ponzano dogs without realizing that those famous dogs (and most other strains) didn't look like that for the first 2 or 3 years of their lives at all. Same crap is happening in the Caucasian Ovcharka breed, where the new wave of "bear"-obsessed breeders are flooding the market with giant pups who look like, you guessed it - [u]bear cubs[/u], and grow to be ridiculously heavy, with super rich coats and enormous heads before even turning a year old! Who cares that their fat legs are getting shorter and shorter (like in the Neo breed) and their health is worsening (like in the Neo breed) and their lifespans getting shorter and shorter (like in the Neo breed)... So you basically have quite a vicious cycle at play, because when breeding dogs that look old before their time, the dogs interestingly enough don't live very long, so the pressure is on the breeders to produce dogs that look friggin' old at an even earlier age. As if that isn't bad enough, both breeds suffer from the same elitist attitude which demands outrageous prices for these dogs who sometimes die after only 2 years of age or get to live out their miserable handicapped lives until dropping dead at 4 or 5 years. And people pay ridiculous amounts of money for them... Now, if that isn't utterly retarded, I don't know what bloody is then.[/color] :[/quote] This needs repeating - and repeating - and repeating.[/quote] I don't wanna sound overly geeky, but his argument actually has a profound genetic component. It is now scientifically known that the apparent differences that we generally observe in the phenotypes of various dog breeds are based on shifted temporal gene expression patterns during fetal development (and thereafter). Through selection, genes responsible for establishing specific body parts are basically shifted in their timely peak expression as well as maximum level of expression. Simply stated, this is essentially how some muzzles turn out to become long, while others remain short. We are basically messing with the gene regulatory network. The modulating variable here is time. So far so good. Problems however emerge when we inadvertently modify the aging process of a dog itself. By shifting a dogs appearance to attain a more mature looking specimen at a much earlier stage, we likely accelerate the entire aging 'program' rather than single gene patterns. With this global strategy we inherit problems that we never really bargained for. I would go on now with what is fundamentally wrong with this new trend and desire to achieve impressive adolescent dogs with the looks of fully matured ones, but Al already did a superb job there, so......ditto. ;-) Dan