Message forwarded in entirety with permission from the original author.
Regards,
Susan E Bragg
Chinook Trading Post
Tullibardine Chinooks
http://chinooktradingpost.com

Custodian of Records
International Seppala Association
http://www.seppalas.org
Is the Diversity Message Being Heard? One Has to Wonder...
Posted by: "Jeffrey Bragg" ditkoofseppala@... ditkoofseppala
Tue Feb 12, 2008 5:51 pm (PST)
"Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak
and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten
lore--
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a
tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber
door.
("The Raven," Edgar Allen Poe)

Actually it was no visitor rapping at the door, it was
only the NYT email headlines arriving on my computer
desktop. The only article that interested me was this,
"Top Dogs Live On and On, in Progeny":

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/11/sports/othersports/11dogs.html?_r=1&ref=sports\
&oref=slogin

The article (by NYT sports reporter Richard Sandomir)
rhapsodises nostalgically over the amorous adventures
of "Mick...a retired elite athlete whose libidinous
talents were once so coveted that well-bred ovulating
females flew to his crib near Sacramento in the
fervent hope that their assignations would make them
pregnant." Mick is a 12-y.o. Kerry Blue Terrier, Ch.
Torums Scarf Michael, BIS at Westminster in 2003, "the
most influential Kerry blue alive, the producer of 61
champions and maybe more in the future, if his sperm,
frozen for artificial insemination, yields puppies
that meet the standards of the breed as closely as he
does."

As can be seen from the above excerpts, this florid
bit of journalism reads like a puff-piece written to
please the dog's owner and his handler (the handler
plays a major part in the article). It is about as far
as one can imagine from what one could call balanced
journalism. And it is this that led me to begin this
post with the depressive "nevermore" poem from Edgar
Allen Poe, because after reading that article, well
past midnight when I was already exhausted from a busy
day, I fell into such a depression myself that I kept
my wife awake for another two hours as I ranted about
an article she hadn't yet even read.

His professional handler, Bill McFadden, raves about
Mick: "my stud of studs" . . . "I've never shown
anyone with that kind of impact on the breed." A
Crufts winner, Mick won the Terrier group in Madison
Square Garden three years running, going BIS the last
time in '03. McFadden says, "in the spring and fall,
when the bitches were in season, he might have two or
three bitches in a day."

The article then meanders through a quick review of
other popular sires in other breeds, along with a
discussion of chilled and frozen semen AI. It finishes
thus:

"Mick, the Kerry blue, is still high spirited, but he
is no longer potent and there is not much of his
frozen semen left. 'I kind of wish we had more,'
McFadden said. 'Mick's owner has opted to keep the
last little bit and put it on hold to breed daughters
and granddaughters back to him.' "

Nowhere in this article is there a single word about
"popular sire syndrome" or any of the rest of the
canine diversity message. As far as I could tell, it
might just as well have been written in the mid-1990s
at the same time as the "Dogs in Canada" article that
I have cited previously on this list, the one in which
Boxer maven Shirley deBoer recommends various "mix and
match" breeding options of breeding back to a popular
sire, doing brother/sister matings, etc.

One has to wonder whether, in the past ten to fifteen
years, the canine diversity message has really made
any impact at all. That anyone on this list would
argue that it "has gone too far" just flabberghasts
me, particularly in the light of this NYT article.
Rather it seems almost as though Dr. Armstrong, Dr.
Wachtel and others had laboured in vain, at least with
respect to making any impact on the zeitgeist of the
dog world. Here on the Canine Genetics list we know
chapter and verse of the entire diversity-breeding
argument; it is our daily meat and drink; we may
perhaps be excused for feeling that we are getting
somewhere. Well, we have not yet made an impression on
Bill McFadden; nor the owner of "Mick"; nor Times
sports reporter Dick Sandomir.

Obviously more needs to be done OFFLIST. (Quoth the
Raven, "Nevermore!" ???)

J. Jeffrey Bragg
The Seppala Siberian Sleddog Project
http://www.seppalasleddogs.com


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