Kennel Club answers back

Following the recent BBC programme Pedigree Dogs Exposed, the Kennel club would like to clear up any negative impressions of pedigree dog breeding and suggestions that the dog community is doing little or nothing to improve the health of UK pedigree dogs.

The majority of pedigree dogs in the UK are healthy and the Kennel Club increasingly has in place checks to monitor health issues going forward. In those dogs where there are problems, including those highlighted in the documentary, they have been and will continue to work with breeders to improve long term health through the development of tests and screening programmes.

If you are a pedigree dog lover and have any concerns or questions, then join our webchat to find out how Kennel Club health initiatives such as the introduction of the Accredited Breeder Scheme and  research funding can help promote healthy breeding across pedigree breeds.

For more information visit www.the-kennel-club.org.uk

H: Jayne Constantinis, host
C: Caroline Kisko, Kennel Club
J: Jeff Sampson, Canine geneticist

H: Hello and welcome to the Pet Care show, I’m Jayne Constantinis.  In a recent BBC documentary on pedigree breeding, many accusations were made about the health of pedigree dogs.  The suggestion is that the dog community is doing little or nothing to improve the health of UK pedigree dogs.  Yet according to the Kennel Club the majority of pedigree dogs in the UK are healthy.  Indeed the club has a number of checks in place to monitor dog health issues. Well to dispel any fears over pedigree dog breeding and discuss the issues on dog health, I’m joined today by Caroline Kisko from the Kennel Club and canine geneticist Dr Jeff Sampson.  Thanks very much for coming in to talk to me. Caroline, you’re pretty cross about this program, and it’s caused a huge amount of upset and controversy and real concern among dog lovers and dog breeders.  What are the main issues that it raised?

C: Well I think our real concern surrounds the lack of responsibility showing something that was so one-sided, and what it’s done, and you can tell that just from reading the questions, is that it has worried a lot of people who have perfectly healthy dogs, and you can understand why they would be worried because they love their pets.  But what it’s done in effect is show one side of an issue where we have already recognised that side, but not bother to show what we’re doing to put it right, both we and pedigree dog breeders

H: Yes because of course you do acknowledge, and you indeed were involved in the research into what we might call rogue elements within the dog breeding world –

C: Yes

H: But they’re isolated cases

C: Well they are and – but there are some very serious health problems out there but they are things that we’ve inherited largely.  They are diseases that came about over the years, as they do with human beings, and they’re also conformational issues, the way that dogs are put together which again the pedigree dog world has inherited but from Victorian times, when many of the breeds were developed.  So what we’ve been trying to do is to work with breeders over the last so many years to try and put these things right, but the other things that’s significant is that obviously technology has offered us huge advances in recent years which is allowing us to help dogs even more

H: Jeff, you’re a geneticist – what’s your perspective on the current state of dog – pedigree dog health in Britain?

J: It – that’s an interesting question.  We, at the Kennel Club, some years ago now actually embarked on a fairly major survey of health within our present breeds, and we received information back on just short of 60,000 dogs.  Now this was information gleaned from members of particular breed clubs, and it’s a very extensive survey which covered all aspects of canine health, and it’s quite clear from that there are some diseases that are breed specific, and therefore that tends to suggest that’s something to do with inheritance, because they’re localised within a breed.  One of the interesting features actually from the results is those inherited diseases don’t actually represent a huge proportion of the sick dogs.  And that’s largely because, even without the clever technology, breeders have been able to identify lines that they shouldn’t be putting together to avoid producing these puppies – effected puppies in the first place.  So a lot of these breed-specific diseases, yes they exist, but what we call the prevalence, how frequently they occur, is actually quite low

H: We’ve – questions are literally flooding in, so I’m going to go in a second to the first one, but just to remind us why the kennel club was set up in the first place?

C: Well the Kennel Club was essentially formed as a registration body, to distinguish between lots of dogs that all had the same name, so if you went to a very early dog show, they would all be Rovers and Spots and Patches and so on.  So the Kennel Club was set up as an organisation, firstly to register dogs, to differentiate and to follow pedigree lines and to record them, but also then to provide a background, a regulation if you like of showing, of the other disciplines that we encourage such as field trials, working trials, agility and so on, and as the years have gone on, and as technology has changed, we have been able then to get far more into health aspects, but also to improve and increase the amount of education that we’re able to offer to dog owners, but also to the general public, to kids, how to stay safe around dogs, and in very recent times to get far more into lobbying to make sure that the rights of dogs and dog owners are protected in parliament

H: Ok.  Let’s take our first question from Pennal who says “what is the Kennel Club doing to adjust breed standards to that exaggerated features are actively discouraged?”  Do you want to tackle this one Jeff?

J: Ok, some years ago now, this has been an ongoing thing – every so often the Kennel Club revisits breed standards, and it has been doing this for decades.  And looks at the breed standard to – so let me say – the breed standard is essentially a blueprint, against which individual dogs the breeder compares.  The breed standards by and large are fairly loose anyway, they’re not totally prescriptive, but in the past they have been certain phrases, certain words that have seen to be less desirable, so as I said every 15, 20 years I guess?

C: Certainly the major revamp of the standards was started about 20 years ago

J: But more recently we’ve actually set up at the Kennel Club, a health and welfare strategy group which comprises members of the Kennel Club, I’m on that committee.  It has veterinary input.  It has judging input.  And the idea there is to identify maybe – well a relatively small number of breeds where clearly they have suffered over the many, many decades of breeding to what we call exaggerated breeding

H: For – give us an example?

J: The example would be the bulldog which you know is often the course example, and today’s bulldog isn’t like the bulldog for which we have paintings painted 200 years ago.  And exaggerated breeding simply is the idea if something is good then more of it should be better, and so we’ve been visiting these breed standards and taking any words out of that breed standard which could be open to misinterpretation in terms of exaggerated breeding.  And we’ve had a very major push on this for the last 8 or 9 years now I guess

C: In conjunction with the breed standards

J: We have regular dialogue with the breed clubs involved and the breed councils involved and interestingly there have been spin-offs, so if we use the bulldog as the example, one of the spin-offs which was actually driven by the bulldog breeds themselves was the concept of having a health certificate which bulldog breeders could submit their potential breeding stock to make sure that they are healthy under this scheme, and now we have – well the bulldog people have recruited something like 40 or 50 vets nationwide to put bulldogs through this scheming program.  So not only are we looking at changing – making sure that breed standards can’t be misinterpreted, but there have been very positive spin-offs in that regard as well

H: Ok

C: Can I just add on that one as well, any further changes that breed clubs request to breed standards, having down this whole exercise and made sure that the opportunity for exaggeration has actually already been removed from breed standards, and I think if anybody reviewed the standards, and they are all on our website so you can go and have a look, I think they would be very surprised to see just how unexaggerated they are, but even now if a breed club comes to us and wants to alter their breed standard, it goes to a committee which includes a vet, so a vet actually has sort of a final word on any changes to the breed standards

H: And what’s your position in terms of competitions and judging, because presumably if these – if these people are breeding for shows

C: Yes

H: Then – yes

C: Well it’s hugely important in that way, now what we – the other thing we have done in quite recent times in the last, I think 3 or 4 years is that we’ve added a clause to all breed standards that basically requires that any – any feature must consider the health of the dog, and that same responsibility has then been placed on the judges as well, so if a judge is in the show ring and they’re judging a dog and they’re thinking of awarding it a very top prize, they must consider the health of that dog.  Now obviously they’re not vets, they can’t discover what’s going on in the inside of the dog, but equally well they can see whether a dog is basically healthy or not, and they should not, by our rules, they should not be awarding top prizes to unhealthy dogs

H: Yes, ok great. And in fact leading on from that Debra Williams has sent a question in; she thinks transparency is important if the Kennel Club is to regain the trust and confidence of the general public – we’re going someway to doing that today

C: Yes

H: What are you going to do to stop dogs with obvious health issues doing well and winning shows?”  - well you’ve covered that  a bit – “in spite of the screening and tests that you’re working so hard to put in place these dogs are still being shown and are still winning” says Debra.  “Is there more that you can do to stop this happening” because if you don’t, she fears that you won’t be seen to be credible despite all of your good work

C: I think the most important thing is actually which dogs are bred from as well as the ones that are winning in the ring.  Now as far as winning in the ring is concerned, yes we are addressing this, we’re addressing it through the breed standards, we’re addressing it through the judges

H: So you acknowledge, you acknowledge that this is happening?

C: Yes there are problems, we absolutely acknowledge it and it’s what we took on 5, 6, 7, 8 years ago to try to resolve those problems, so the whole expose if you like is actually just bringing to light stuff that we’re already doing, it’s not – it isn’t something new

H: Yes

C: But importantly I don’t believe that we should actually be stopping dogs going in the ring because we’re not vets but what we should certainly be doing is saying that those dogs shouldn’t be bred from, and what we are doing is via the accredited breeders scheme, we’re saying if you want to be certain that you are buying a puppy which is healthy, go to an accredited breeder.  We don’t make money out the scheme, the idea that you know this is filling the Kennel Club’s treasure chest is absolute rubbish be4cause it costs £15 to become an accredited breeder and we give an awful lot of material back as a result of that, so it actually costs us money.  But the point is that breeders who take part in the scheme which was actually incidentally set up by Jeff – have to be fulfilling all of the screening programs that are required for their breed

H: Ok, great.  Jeff, this is one for you from Rowan – slightly different subject.  Rowan says “I appreciate the Kennel Club has an established agenda to try to address health problems in certain breeds of pedigree dogs, but one of the main issues is that of direct in-breeding – father to daughter etc.”  Rowan would like to know what your plans are to end this practice

J: Yes.  I don’t think anybody would deny that if you look in most breeds, in fact all breeds, not just dogs but all pure breeds of any species, in order to develop that breed you have to have higher in-breeding co-efficients as we call them.  The in-breeding co-efficient really is just a measure of how related the dogs are to each other

H: Yes

J: And in fact we were party to a media investigation which actually identified the level of the co-efficients of in-breeding within various breeds of dog.  One of the interesting points that came out of that study, which I don’t believe came out of the program was that yes the in-breeding co-efficients are high, but actually they’re not high because of what you call consanguineous matings, or what you and I would call incestuous breeding

H: Right

J: It’s very uncommon to find a pedigree where you have brother / sister matings or father / daughter matings – very uncommon.  They’re out there and I’m sure people can give us examples, but actually most breeders do not breed that closely.  The reason the in-breeding co-efficients are high is really because of the population structures.  The fact that only 20% of our dogs that we register actually become parents in their own right.  The overuse of certain sires, so these are the issues that we need to address, and indeed are discussing ways of addressing that.  So actually this concept of in-breeding – the popular belief of in-breeding being incestuous matings – yes it happens but it’s not very common

H: Ok.  WE talked a minute ago about health checks and so on.  Carol has sent in a question saying she’s not an accredited breeder but she does follow all health checks for her chosen breed.  Rather a blunt question – “why would she want to pay the Kennel Club for another piece of paper?”

C: I think the problem – I mean we recognise this, there are a lot of very good, responsible breeders out there who do all of the things that fit with the Accredited Breeder Schemebut have chosen not to be accredited breeders. They don’t need to be accredited breeders because they can sell puppies without being accredited breeders, but what we’ve been saying to people is that actually while they may not need the accredited breeders scheme, we need them because if we want to be able to continue to run our own dog world if you like, we need everybody to be part of that, and the only way that an outside person, a person whose innocently coming along to buy a puppy, the only way that they can identify one breeder from another is through the accredited breeders scheme.  Now Carol may well have people that will recommend her, and who will say yes she does all of those things, and that’s great, it’s wonderful for her, but what it doesn’t do is actually help the overall population of breeders.  What we want to be able to do – and I know there are a lot of questions here about puppy farming, we want to be able to move out the puppy farmer. Now the way we can do that, the way we can elbow them out – because we can’t refuse to register their puppies-  what we can do is say well if you want to breed, then become an accredited breeder and it’s not going to cost you very much money, particularly if you compare it to the price of a puppy, so if you want to be a good breeder then join the accredited breeder scheme, by the time we have most breeders as accredited breeders, most good breeders will become accredited breeders,  then puppy buyers will only go to accredited breeders for their puppies.  The puppy farmer will be out in the cold

H: Ok.  We’ve got very, very many questions coming in.  Many of them breed specific so we may not be able to tackle those but there’s one here from Nicki Hughes which I think can probably be broadened to cover other breeds too.  “You’ve set a good example with the mandatory health testing for clad for Irish red and white setters. When will this be extended to all other breed with health problems? Your recent survey showed 37.4% of pedigree dogs with health problems which doesn’t tally with the 90% of pedigree dogs do not have health problems that you’ve been claiming in recent publicity.”  So just testing you there on the statistics and the when will you extend the health testing

C: Can I just start this and then I’ll hand over to Jeff on this, because I think just on the statistics, the reason that we are quoting 90% is that if you actually look and actually it’s not just of all dogs and all conditions, because pretty much all of us – all of us – have something wrong with us, even if it’s just short sight

H: Yes

C: And that’s true of dogs as well, they’re all going to have minor ailments, but the difference is between a condition which effects their quality of life and their life expectancy, in other words we believe – and actually it is borne out of both the health survey and by other statistics that we’ve looked into – we believe that 90% of dogs actually can live a happy, healthy long life – can expect to.  Unless they get run down by a car

H: Ok

C: But in terms of disease, that’s the case

H: Right ok

C: Now on the earlier part of the question –

H: Yes, Jeff, what about the health testing – mandatory health testing.  When’s that going to be extended?

J: It’s an interesting question, that, and the problem I think that we’re facing here is that registration is still a voluntary – still voluntary.  Nobody has to register their dog with the Kennel Club.  The point I think that I would like to make is that at the moment most people who are breeding – not all – but most people who are breeding pure-bred dogs, still register their progeny with us at the KC so we know where they are.  We can contact them, we can talk to them, we can try to educate them.  And I believe that in terms of moving this health program, and I’m passionate about health screening, as many people who know me realise, I’m passionate about health screening.  I think in the last 10 years in particular, the sophistication of the test that we can now offer dog breeders has gone up immensely. We can now offer some very sophisticated DNA technology to allow breeders to pre-screen their breeding stock to ensure that they’re not going to be producing affected puppies downstream, and that sophistication can only get better.  And much of that’s come from Kennel Club supported research in the UK, we now have about 20 official testing schemes with different breeds for different conditions.  The point is we want people to use those schemes.  If we were to overly mandate the fear is that actually we’ll push a lot of the people away from us.  It’s naive to think they’ll stop breeding their dogs, they’ll still continue to breed their dogs, but now outside of any control that we can exert, and effectively then we’ve lost that portion, so we may well end up with clean, pure as the driven snow dogs on our register, but increasingly we’ll represent a smaller and smaller proportion of all dogs, and really what we want to try and do is improve the lot of all dogs.  So we’ve gone down, intentionally gone down the route of trying to educate, provide the technology, encourage more technology be developed, and then educate the public as to how the – or the breeders – as to how they use that particular technology moving forward

H: Because I think there are voices that are saying in light of this program – why hasn’t the Kennel Club got more teeth?  Bad analogy obviously but you know, why are you – do you adopt this kind of softly, softly approach?

C: Because we don’t have any legal standing.  People choose to register with us and going on from the point that Jeff was making, what happened in America when they got tougher was they simply encouraged other registries to open up.  They now have, I think it’s 25 competing registers, so the American Kennel Club has lost the ability to reach a large number of dog breeders.  Now what we don’t want to do is to push people who currently register with us into going to a commercial register which is really the only reason why anybody else would open up, is to make money, our money goes back into dogs.  It goes back into health research, it goes into parliamentary work, it goes into educational things like the good citizen dog scheme and so on, so all the money that we make from registrations, and all the many things we do, goes to help dogs.  It doesn’t go anywhere else.  We don’t make profits, we’re not for profit, but we would lose the influence over all those people who would continue to breed dogs

H: Yes I think that influence is the key word there isn’t it?

C: Yes

H: Talking of registration, Pat Boon has sent a question in – “how will you limit registration to only dogs that have proven health records to stop the erosion of health in pure bred?”  I think that’s your bandwagon again isn’t it -

J: Well it is, and really that’s why some years ago now I sat down with some colleagues at the KC to think about this issue and how we might move forward on this, and that’s where the Accredited Breeder Scheme grew from, that initial concept.  And again it’s this question of trying to maximise the benefit of anything we can do for the entire pure bred population. And my view – and I can be wrong, I’m not saying although I am a Yorkshireman, I’m normally right, my view is that what we’re dealing with now has accumulated over many, many decades, if not centuries of breeding.  We are facing up to what we’re – the problems we have today.  We are developing better and better strategies to deal with it, but moving forward it’s not going to happen overnight.  If we want to get every – to maximise their benefit.  To maximise the benefit of this approach, I think we’ve got to keep people within our umbrella.  We’ve got to work with them, we’ve got to show them what should be done and so on and so forth

H: And is your impression that people are receptive to this?  You know is the general feeling out there among breeders that they want to cooperate?

C:  There are people who bury their heads in the sand, and we know that, and that’s why in some cases we have maybe pushed a bit harder, it doesn’t always work and you can lose people quite easily if you push too hard, but what we have found is by taking the approach of bringing them in when Jeff was describing earlier the strategy group that we have, what we’ve done is actually bring people in, breeds in and said now look, you have to recognise we’ve got problems.  We have to deal with them, and we’re doing so alongside the breeds.  Now you will still lose people, but at least we’ll keep the majority on board.  But the important thing is then that we then get more and more people into accredited breeders, so – because those people have actually volunteered, they’ve said we will follow the health screening, we will do all the things that you’re asking of us, and we can therefore pretty much guarantee, you know with certain obviously other possibilities that other diseases might turn up or whatever, but we can pretty much guarantee that people will then be able to buy healthy puppies.  But I think we must then take the whole disease scenario in context.  We’re talking about a very small number of diseases in the dog compared to man, it’s some 10% of that which is in man, so you know we do have a problem, we recognise that, we’re dealing with it, but overall it is a possible problem to resolve because of the size of it

H: You mentioned puppies and you’ve already touched on the issue of puppy farming, but we’ve got a specific question in from Pauline which we should tackle because there are lots of questions coming in on a similar theme.  She says “why won’t the Kennel Club get more involved in the stopping of puppy farms? Why won’t you back the RSPCA in pushing the government into making more laws to help these poor dogs and to stop unscrupulous people?”

C: Well we do.  We do back the RSPCA but actually we also stand in our own right on dog welfare, and with the animal welfare act that came in two years ago, we were very much in there with the rest of the organisation, people like Dogs Trust, the British Veterinary Association, and so on, supporting and all going forward with one idea to try to limit the extent to which puppy farmers are able to work.  Unfortunately the law can’t do everything, and it is for local authorities to go and inspect the premises.  And many puppy farmers actually don’t register with us, they might produce paperwork that looks as if they’re registering with somebody but actually I think new owners can be very naïve.  Sometimes they’ll buy a dog that comes with a piece of paper that looks official, which is a pedigree, and a pedigree is not a Kennel Club registration.  Having said that, even if they get a Kennel Club registration, it is not a guarantee of health of that dog.  The only guarantee can come with going to a good breeder

H: Right well that was  - I was about to ask exactly that question, as an ordinary member of the public, not a breeder – we’ve been talking a lot about breeders – what can you do, you know to make your small contribution to sort of good healthcare for dogs?  What steps should you take when you’re looking to buy a puppy?

C: Go to an accredited breeder

H: Go to an accredited breeder

C: It’s very, very straightforward.  If you don’t go to an accredited breeder then go to a breed club, the breed clubs are the sort of – you know they’re there as well, they’re up there, the breed clubs work with us. They are extremely good, they are – most of them are very, very helpful.  They know about their breeds, they are people that actually know the breed, the health requirements, the care requirements and so on.  They will help new owners to find a good breeder, but if in doubt then go to an accredited breeder

H: Because I think probably a lot of people are quite frightened now that they –

C: Yes of course they are and that’s understandable

J: Yes.  I think the essence is to find a responsible breeder

C: Yes

J: And yes accredited breeders signed up to a code of conduct which is drawn up with a responsibility in mind, breed clubs have puppy lists with requirements, you don’t buy from a pet shop

C: No

J: You don’t buy from an agent

C: You don’t buy over the telephone, mantelpiece of somebody – or go to meet up in a –

H: Pub somewhere

C: In a car park

J: You have to talk to the breeder and very often you will find when you talk to the breeder, if they’re open and honest with you then that probably is a sign they’ve got nothing to hide.  If they’re evasive, if they won’t let you see the mum

C: You must see mum

H: Right, ok

J: They won’t always have dad because dad might be somewhere else, but you should always be able to see mum.  If you look on the Kennel Club website for example you’ll see a lot of issues that potential new owners would like to raise.  Raise those questions, if you don’t get suitable answers from the breeder then

C: Go somewhere else

J: Go away, go elsewhere

H: Great, good advice.  Emma Jolson has raised the issue of gene pools again.  Hot topic. “It’s widely understood that limiting gene pools is unhealthy for the future of that limited group.  What are the KC guidelines and procedures for introducing new genes in the form of a controlled out-cross to another breed” – this is very specific – “to regain quality-type reduced exaggerations in certain breeds, or regain loss of colours?”

C: We actually have a record of doing it – Jeff

J: yes we have.  It’s quite true that as the in-breeding co-efficients increase within a breed then that lack of variability has potential problems, and I think one of the biggest problems facing dog breeders worldwide and kennel clubs worldwide is knowing has responsibly to reinvigorate those gene pools, to broaden the variation.  We have the Kennel Club sanctioned a number in the past for health - larger health reasons, so for example we have a breed called the miniature bull terrier breed, and that had a particular eye disease which was pretty prevalent within the breed.  The bull terrier which is just a slightly larger version of the miniature bull terrier for some reason doesn’t have that disease so 8, 9 years ago now?

C: Yes quite a long time

J: With our help, the breed clubs came together and we developed an inter-breeding program where we would actually allow miniature bull terriers to be bred to bull terriers, but interestingly – and this was supported whole heartedly by the breeders – we realised that we had a real opportunity here to not only allow the inter-breeding to occur, but to implement health checks on the bull terriers and the miniature bull terriers that participated. So for them to actually participate in the program, they have to have an inter-breeding pass, and to get that inter-breeding pass they have to satisfy 3 or 4 serious health screening requirements.  And then the puppies that ensue we then register as miniature bull terriers.  We are taking that model and we’re thinking about other breeds.  There are – there are breeds which are really just varieties basically, the only difference is a one gene difference between various breeds.  And we’re now thinking about ways of broadening that concept to allow those breeds some degree of inter-breeding to perhaps reinvigorate their genetic gene pools

C: But we have done it in other breeds on an individual basis as well

J: Yes we have

C: And also obviously we do allow breeders to bring in artificial insemination, or to bring in semen from abroad in order to bring in new genetics or new genes from abroad

J: And also we have registered dogs within breeds that would otherwise not be registered but clearly are members of that particular breed, so you know we can go to expert judges and say does this dog look like this breed?  We have in the past taken their advice and registered those dogs

H: Thank you for that.  One – we’ve only got time for one final question but it rounds us off nicely because Jayne has sent a comment in that “confidence in the Kennel Club is probably at an all-time low” – I think you’d probably acknowledge that

C: Yes

H: What can you say to people to restore that confidence?

C: I think what we have to do is to recognise that this is a one-off program, it was highly one-sided.  There are very many things that the Kennel Club is already doing and is working with breeds to do.  I don’t think that people actually if they looked into the reality of it would find that there was very much to worry about. What they can do though is very happily we will respond to as many enquiries as we possibly can, but on our website and in particular on the genetic health website, people can find all the very many things that we are doing, which I think will set their minds at rest

H: Great.  Jeff, final word from you?

J: I think I can simply support that and one of the things that has encouraged me over the last few years working with the Kennel Club is a real commitment to address some of these issues, and a lot of people are working very hard, a lot of breeders are working very hard to improve things, and we will continue to do that

H: Great, thank you.  I’m afraid that’s all we’ve got time for.  We’ve had literally hundreds of questions in and I’m sorry that we couldn’t respond to all of them, but what the Kennel Club is going to do to try to answer as many of your questions as they can, is they’re going to tackle all of the issues that you’ve raised.  Many of them were along similar lines, and they’re going to do that on the website in fact that Caroline’s just mentioned, which is doggenetichealth.org. So thank you very much

C: Thank you

H: To my guests for joining me today, thank you for watching, and I’ll see you again soon.  Bye bye