*How a Pedigreed Dog is Made* Many of us look for dogs as pets. Unfortunately, most people go in for pedigreed pups - not because they know anything about them but because they think that their own status will be enhanced! This must be the only country in the world where the owner of a Pomeranian or Alsatian thinks that he is a superior being - instead of through his own achievements!
What is a pedigreed dog? It is an invented species- take a perfectly natural dog, what you would refer to as jungli, and then work on it for 20 years of selective breeding to make the end product into a bizarre shape, size and colour and there you have a pedigreed dog. Suppose you want a short black longhaired dog. You keep breeding black dogs and killing those that are tall. Keep intermating brother and sister of the shorter dogs till the size becomes short. Then kill the ones that have short hair and keep mating the ones that have longer hair till, after so many years you will get the short, black, longhaired dog. Along the way you will have killed at least 5000 or more dogs which did not fit your vision. The Indian contribution to the pedigreed field is the Rampur Hound, the ultimate joke played by the Nawab of Rampur on dog breeders. He kept experimenting with strays until he achieved a uniform size and then entered them as breeds in dog shows where they won awards due more to his status than theirs. And the Rampur Hound was born. Breeding pure dogs is the ultimate cruelty. Their size, their structure, their self-defence systems are all tampered with to suit somebody's strange notion of beauty. As a result they suffer from all sorts of genetic diseases. Dalmatians and Pomeranians are prone to deafness - in fact all white coloured dogs are partially deaf and some are completely deaf , poodles to epilepsy, Lhasa Aphsos to fatal kidney failure and cataracts, Alsatians to hip dysplasia (in fact they have stopped breeding them all over the world because every alsatian has this problem of hind legs collapsing), and bull dogs to heart disease. As a result of inbreeding to create and maintain their characteristic appearance, each breed has many genetic defects. The Basset Hound's short and thick forelegs have chronic elbow dislocation. The standard that demands their eyes to be soft, sad and sunken creates a large gap between the lower eyelid and eye which catches dust and debris. Similarly the Dachshund's short legs are inadequate supports for the dog's long straight back, so spine dislocations are common causing enormous pain when they move. No engineer would design a bridge with so many roadways between its support legs and expect it to stand. Take the bulldog. Its wrinkles and huge skin folds become the site of infection. Its nose is required to be set back deeply between the eyes causing severe breathing problems. A bull dog lives a short life and one that is a constant struggle against suffocation. Then there is the breeder's cruelty to deal with. Every city has a slum area where these dogs who have usually been stolen are kept in the most wretched conditions, repeatedly inbred and sold for fantastic prices. Thousands are killed because they are born with deformities due to inbreeding or else they have become either shy or aggressive. So they are killed even before they turn One year old. Is it their fault or that of those who have turned beautifully made living creatures into toys? Nor do pedigree certificates count for much. Most breeders and dog shows hand out C-Class certificates (which means that they think the dog is pedigreed but they don't know who the parents are) because the owners want to own a paper that says that the dog is pedigreed. Of such foolishness is a pure bred made? It is specially wrong to support breeding in India because millions of natural Indian dogs better suited emotionally and physically to the climate and country are killed by municipalities or die of starvation or cruelty. Only because they are homeless. If even one in 50 people were to adopt a beautiful Indian dog from the road, there would be no more homeless dogs at the mercy of dogcatchers and death squads. Do not keep pedigreed dogs. Be Indian. Keep Indian. It is kinder on both the pedigrees as well as our own dogs to discourage breeding. If you already have a pedigreed pet, feed the dog on the street and put a collar on it. If you are looking for a dog, you need go no further than your own street corner. I have 15 in my house and they are intelligent, clean and very faithful. Once upon a time it used to be very fashionable to wear Japanese and Swiss nylon - even though it was hot and sticky and made you itch. Now, Indian cotton is so fashionable and the really rich people wear designer khadi! The same thing with dogs. So many fashionable people I know only keep Indian dogs in their house: from government ministers and top industrialists, singers, dancers, fashion designers and trendsetters like Rohit Bal, Shaan and Shiamak Davar, Cyrus Broacha, Aamir Khan, Kajol, Om Puri, Nagarjuna, John Abraham, Bipasha Basu, Mahesh Manjrekar... every day my shelter has so many people coming to adopt dogs that we have taken from the streets, cleaned up and vaccinated. Be fashionable: Adopt an Indian Dog and you will be rewarded with a loving loyal best friend forever. Smt Maneka Gandhi [Courtesy: pfa website] --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "English Learner's Cafe" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/english_learners?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
