Kennel Club registers cross-bred Dalmation

The Kennel Club is striving to address the issues of the health problems of pedigree dogs. Many of these issues are caused by inbreeding. In the Dalmatian many dogs suffer from a disease associated with their uric acid metabolism, resulting in increased urinary excretion of uric acid.

In the USA the Dalmations problem also exists. To address this, some years ago, they cross-bred a Dalmatian and a Pointer with the intention of producing offspring that were low uric acid (LUA) excretors, (ie healthy) because the Pointer used in the cross would not have carried the mutant gene. The offspring from this mating and their descendants have subsequently been back-crossed with purebred Dalmatians over many successive generations and they look just like the "proper" Dalmations.

Now the Kennel Club has agreed to import and register these healthy Dalmations in the UK. I assume the breeders are happy if they look like any other Dalmations. This is a good step forward.

It is a huge issue that many breeders prefer a dog with problems, that looks "right" to a healthy dog that might be a bit different in appearance. Most people find this logic difficult to understand. Hopefully the UK Dalmations will soon all be free of the uric acid problem and the advances in genetics and a more purposeful Kennel Club will mean less and less congenital problems in pedigree dogs.

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Good for the KC! Putting the dogs welbeing first, there's a start!

That's good news! I hope that some of the Dally people will accept these dogs. I'm sure some of them will, it would be nice to see them in the show ring.

I would be very interested to see a photograph of the dogs.

Having owned pointers I wonder what the temperaments etc are like, my pointers had wonderful temperaments but were total loonies and I've heard that dalmatians can be that way too...I wonder which breed traits have developed in the resulting offspring.

I shall keep an eye on this, its really interesting

Will also be interested in this, having got a Pointer, would love to see a photo of the cross and hearing of the traits of these offspring.

there was a thread on these dogs a coupke of months ago, i think they look very alike, heres the link to the thread with pics of these dogs on

http://www.dogsey.com/showthread.php...88#post1754688

I think it is a step in the right direction xxxx

I remember reading not long ago how the Otterhound Packs used to outcross to either Welsh Foxhounds or a French breed of hound to bring in fresh blood - so using a different breed to widen a gene pool is nothing new.

I think it's a shame the KC changed the rule that an unregistered dog could be registered if it was assessed by several judges as being a typical example of the breed.

I think it depends how many were crossed in the first place.
and how much inbreeding was done to fix the look again
In theory its a good idea but it could be causing a genetic bottleneck if a v few dogs are used to produce too many litter

An excellent idea to combat an extremely painful condition. I was under the impression that Dallies were HPR dogs originally, so probably had a common ancestor with the Pointers?