Eukanuba AKC show coming up... I saw a....

Neapolitan Mastiff in the commercial and I was surprised. Was my eyes playing tricks on me? Then it I looked it up and yes they've been recognized w/ AKC since July 1, 2004. So now, is it a good thing or a bad thing? Hmmm.

 

I dont know about the registry but teh one I watched on I think it was thanksgiving day had one showing

 

I dont know about the registry is that the one that has the huge jowls hanging almost to the floor? one I watched on I think it was thanksgiving day had one showing but it wasnt for competition

 

There was a beautiful one in the working group that was in the recent 2005 AKC/Eukanuba on 01/15/2005 in Tampa which i think was live.
I was personally going for "Fame" The Great Pyrenees but the Giant Schnauzer won the working group. Fame won the Working Group "Viewers Choice Award" which was good.

Rubeus Hagrid Companion "Fang" in the Harry Potter movies is a Neapolitan Mastiff.

 

Maybe I'm missing something but how can that possibly be a bad thing????????

 

It could possibly be bad for several reasons.

There is a tendency for some breeders of show animals to concentrate on form rather than function, and soundness as well as function is lost. A good example would be the Alaskan Malamute. The dogs seen in shows are beautiful to look at, but hook them up and try pulling something with them. Many of them have bad hips, don't have the frame or musculature their working cousins have, and would probably prefer fighting with other dogs in the team to pulling in unison.

Another bad thing that can happen, especially when you have a breed with a limited gene pool is called Popular Sire Syndrome. In this case, you have a superb animal that wins, wins, wins. Everyone wants to breed to him because he's so outstanding to look at, and has a show record that matches his looks. Sounds good, doesn't it? What harm could there be in that?

But what if he's carrying a gene that spontaneously mutated, and that's recessive? Everyone breeds to him because of his looks and reputation. But since the genetic booboo is of recent origin, it doesn't show up in his get. It only shows up after two or three generations, in linebreedings, when that recessive gene has a chance to pair up with another recessive gene. Because he was so popular, and was used extensively, by the time breeders realize what happened, it's too late.

I know that sounds pretty far fetched, but it's not, really. Spontaneous genetic mutations are pretty common, although most aren't serious and may never even be noticed. But when the gene is a particularly nasty one, like the one responsible for German Short Hair Skeletal Anomoly, the results can be quite spectacular.

But the biggest problem might just be that once a new breed starts showing up in AKC shows, there's a good chance they'll become popular. And once they become popular, unscrupulous people with dollar signs in their eyes start breeding them just for the money. Breed type, temperment, health and soundness go right out the window. Lots of people who shouldn't own any dog end up buying one, and they end up in shelters, rescues, turned out on the street to fend for themselves and die...you know the routine.

Let's hope the breeders of these spectacular dogs keep a tight leash on their breeding stock and use spay/neuter contracts on puppies sold as pets.

 

Well said, ShineIllusion! I know the Toller people are really worried about their dogs taking off in popularity. Even worse, a Toller can be a difficult dog to take care of. People think "Oh cool, a small Golden!" but their personalities are NOT like Goldens at all! So then they end up being too much work and people abandon them, mistreat them, or send them to shelters.

Border Collie people are also against the "show" dogs. Border collies are bred for their herding ability, not their looks. That's why there are so many different-looking ones out there, from coat color to coat length, to the build of their body and size, etc. I think it is a shame when we judge dogs on beauty rather than on functionality or soundness and health.

The mutated gene thing is something I ran into recently when I was looking at buying a horse. I found out that many quarter horses are descended from a sire named Impressive, and he had a mutated gene that causes episodes like seizures. This same gene is probably what caused his tremendous musculature to begin with, so many people purposely breed for this gene while others are trying to get it eliminated for the health of the resulting horses.

 

Wow, shineillusion, great info.

I have a pure yellow lab - show type and he has a severe overbite. the vet said that is caused by a recessive gene. the breeder told us when we got him to make sure and have him fixed, which we did, we had no intentions of breeding.

I wonder if it came the mom, because we did not have the history of the mom but did on the dad and it went back like 15 or more years.

question - then what do you do since yo dont know what side it came from, retire both the male and female from breeding. I mean it sounds like other puppies can be the carrier that didnt show down the line??

just curious,

honeybear

 

I didn't even think to look at it that way. I thought the original poster was somehow insulting the Neo Mastiff.

In a way I hope they become more popular. I would love to own one. I think they are just gorgeous. Of course i have a thing for big mastifftype dogs.

But I get what you are saying about the showing and breeding stuff. I have thought that too. Maybe not in quite as much detail as you but basically the same idea.

 

Jamiya, interestingly, in horses, especially Quarter Horses, Popular Sire Syndrome is often referred to as Impressive Syndrome. It's a shame, really, that people would be so short sighted as to breed for a trait like that.

Honeybears, quick course in genetics; genes occur in pairs, and if one gene is dominant and the other recessive, the only gene that will be 'expressed' is the dominant gene.

A good example of this would be the genes that determine the color brindle and red. Brindle is dominant, red is recessive. If you mate two dogs that are brindle and only have the dominant brindle gene, all puppies will be brindle. If you mate a brindle dog carrying two brindle genes with a red dog, all puppies will be brindle but will carry the recessive red gene.

Now, if you mate two brindle dogs that carry the recessive red gene, you can get a percentage of brindle, brindle carrying red, and red, depending on what genes each pup gets from either parent. But a red dog will never carry the brindle gene, because if it's there, the dog will be brindle.

Now, in your case, it's easy to determine which parent carries the recessive gene. They both do. If they didn't, your dog would only have inherited one recessive gene and one dominant gene, and would have a normal jaw, although it could carry the recessive gene.

All of your dogs litter mates may or may not carry the recessive gene. It's impossible to tell just by looking at them. And there probably won't be a DNA test available at a reasonable fee for some time. That leaves you with three possible options.

1, Be irresponsible and continue breeding the parents and their offspring like there was nothing wrong, and deny the problem exists. Unfortunately, this is a pretty common occurance.

2, Cull all closely related individuals from your breeding program and start over with fresh bloodstock. This would include your dogs parents and all their offspring. Possible the grandparents too. That's a lot of dogs, and probably isn't going to happen unless the gene you're dealing with is a particulary nasty one. Maybe not even then.

3, Select only the most outstanding puppy from the litter, and do a test breeding with a dog that is affected by the condition, knowing that all resulting puppies will be carriers and must be spayed/neutered. But if you get a puppy that also is affected, you know the normal parent is also a carrier, as the puppy inherited one recessive gene from each parent. If all the puppies are normal, you still can't be 100% sure that the normal parent is NOT a carrier, especially if the litter was small. But it increases the likelyhood that the normal parent does not carry the recessive gene.

Ok, did I confuse you past hope of redemption? I hope not. Also, keep in mind that this is a very simple example of a complex issue. Many traits are governed by multiple gene pairs, and some traits inherit differently in different breeds. And then there are those pesky incomplete dominants, which are a law unto themselves.

 

thanks for the genetics lesson. Jake is almost 8 years old now and at the time I didnt give it much thought on the rest of the litter, they told us actually there were only 2 which does soundkind of wierd.

so if I understand if the sire (male)? has the gene it can only be passed along if the dam has it too to possibly come up thru lthe litters but you may not see it until they have pups themselves???


if thats the case, then I understand why you wouldnt want that lineage to continue. Since I have been here I have so much and would never go about the way we got Jake. The other thing the breeder was trusting us to get jake fixed, we could have easily bred him as BYB knowing full well it was a no-no, we wouldnt have but didnt know that

honeybear

honeybear

 

Ok, let me explain further. Let's say, for the sake of discussion, that a trait is governed by one gene pair only. We'll call it the A series, with two possible genes, A as dominant and a as recessive.

We know that genes come in pairs, and when the egg or sperm cell develops, the genes split, so they contain only one of the two possible genes in this series. When an egg is fertilized, the resulting puppy gets one gene from the egg and one from the sperm, thus having a complete set.

Now let's say that each parent is Aa. When the genes split, the egg or sperm will contain A or a, but not both. So roughly half the eggs and sprem will be A and half will be a.

If an egg containing the A gene is fertilized by a sprem also containing an A, the dominant gene will be expressed, and no recessive gene is present, so the puppy will not be a carrier.

If an A egg is fertilized by an a sperm, the dominant A will still be expressed, but the puppy will be a carrier of the recessive a. If the egg and sperm both contain the recessive a, there is no dominant A gene to mask the recessive, and the recessive a will then be expressed.

In the case of your dog, he inherited two recessive genes, so if both parents were normal, both parents had to be Aa. If they were AA, he couldn't have gotten the a gene. If either were aa, that dog would have shown the same trait your dog does.

 

shineillusion has the right answer to why i originally posted a bad thing. a dog as rare as the neo will jump up in sales and popularity if they become a big impact in the show world. a lot of people see and they want without the correct research, time, and goal(s). these dogs are bred for guardian work. when all they are bred for now is the show ring they will lose their original appeal. i remember when 101 dalmations came out. people jumped onto the bandwagon. when that lady was killed by those two presa's in SF the hype and desire for such a dog sky rocketed. all in all these dogs are very impressive. i just hope they don't become a over bred breed in the near future.