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Date Posted: 09:43:08 03/20/10 Sat
Author: Norman Epstein
Subject: Re: Fixing Poor Physical Structure
In reply to: Nikki Pamplin 's message, "Fixing Poor Physical Structure" on 12:03:47 03/19/10 Fri

Whether you want such an answer it is imperative you first know how these (physical/skeletal) problems came to be, and they came to be when a committee and or market place decided what a breed should look like. There is one historic fact that a show community will not accept and that is, CORRECT *form follow function*. If our community would put this simple formula into affect, in time the plethora of physical maladies we see in our modern pure breeds would, for the most part, disappear. No judge can determine if a dog is orthopedically sound or if its ligaments are strong enough to support it during STRENOUS work by just having it trot around a small ring i.e., up and back. Because of this selection process structurally unsound dogs are breeding with high appraisal scores raising the probabilities of producing dogs with sub-standard structure. Another breeding maxim that has been overlooked by our community is *you get what you select for* and we have been selecting unsound dogs therefore have been getting them. You can’t x-ray physical problems away, you have to first work them away and until that happens they can’t be corrected.

To that end the working German Shepherd Dog world has been enforcing for 40 years mandatory hip x-rays on all breed stock and yet hip their hip scores have not significantly improved. Why, because the test of Schutzhund (their breed specific test) has been weakened to accommodate their show community. The result has been a mentally and physically weakened breed. On the other had the working Belgian Malinois working community has retained a strenuous test as a part of their selection process and because of that has almost no HD in their breed and the preponderance of that community do not x-ray.

So to answer your question given our selection process you won’t live long enough to see improvement because in order to breed out, you first must know what to breed in.

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