incest

There are reasons to scrap dog shows. Not just that they lead people to breed dogs that win shows instead of breeding dogs that are good with children, or good in the house.

But also that dog shows are competitive events. It is not good enough to do well, you have to do best.

Only one male and one female of each breed win points in that breed event. The others are losers.

People who compete want to win. To win, you breed to the winners, or buy puppies from the winners. This leads to many fine house dogs, who a great with children, never having any puppies of their own. Their genes are lost forever.

We don't even know what genes were lost when all those pet dogs were spayed- neutered, and the show dogs were overbred.

Meanwhile, the winners have lots of puppies. In male dogs this is called "The Popular Sire Syndrome".

Breeders wanting dogs that look like the winning dog, often breed him to his relatives.

The Imperial College of London tells how inbred dogs have become. Many breeds, even very popular breeds, are really like less that 100 DIFFERENT dogs, the rest are just copies.

http://www3.imperial.ac.uk
search: inbreeding.