Written by Margi Bragg, Summer DQ, 1999

Reprinted with permission obtained by Marj Brooks

One of my "sub-hobbies" in Dobermans has been tracing pedigrees back as far as possible. I'll admit that I didn't initially undertake this educate myself; I just like to know where the pedigrees lead and I find it enjoyable, in itself.

However, there came a point when I realized that I was acquiring some profound insights into the history of the breed, and these insights apply to today's Doberman in ways that affect us all.

Most students of the breed know that Dobermans are just now one hundred years old. We are very lucky in one sense because we are one of the very few breeds that know our whole history. On the other hand, we cannot assume that our breed is "finished" at such a young age. Many of the so called "ancient" breeds such as Pharaoh Hounds have far fewer genetic syndromes, probably because the breeders of long ago wouldn't support a dog that was non-functional. Within the entire history of the Doberman, he has been a pet and show-dog far more than he has been a true working dog. To a large extent, we have not only circumvented the process of functional selection (at least as far as the ability to perform the breed's work, as originally conceived) for more than fifty percent of our breed's entire history. As a direct result, I believe that we are now facing a genetic crossroads in the Doberman that will determine if our breed survives another hundred years.

About ten years ago I began to wonder if my knowledge of old pedigrees could help me understand what has happened in the Doberman. How did we arrive at such a point of gene saturation in a mere one hundred years? Most Doberman pedigrees go less than 20 generations deep to end up at the first registered dogs. In comparison with "older" breeds, this seems barely enough time to create a breed at all and definitely not enough time to arrive at the kind of consistency we take for granted, but certainly expect, of our show litters. This gave me a clue that I was looking for: A very small gene pool in the origins of our breed. I began to look at the old pedigrees with new eyes. And what I found was even worse than I expected.

One of the prerequisites of a gene pool, be it Dobermans or Cheetahs, is that it must have enough genetic variability to allow some members of the group to survive even if most of the group acquires a genetic defect.  Now this is oversimplification to be sure, but the ultimate enemy of isolated natural populations is inbreeding.  As inbreeding rises, genetic variability falls, eventually allowing the group as a whole to become afflicted with some genetic defect that precludes reproduction or survival of the offspring ... Hello extinction!  This class defect must be mentally separated from the diseases of old age which only affect the organism after it has reproduced.  Every gene pool has its share of genetic detritus which affects (reduces) longevity, but if an organism carrying such genes has produced viable offspring before the genes' lethality/morbidity becomes active, then the offspring, too, will have acquired - and will pass along - those genes.

Now, when I began looking into the history of Dobermans, it was at once apparent to me that the "breed" began to be consistent and show dramatic improvements in type almost immediately.  Within 50 years we begin to see in photographs a dog very similar to today's dog.  We don't know the exact numbers of foundation stock, as some were unregistered, but we do know that the breed was begun with very few specimens.  Between 1900 and the first world war (1914), the breed proliferated greatly and the gene pool was even enlarged with the influx of new genetic material (e.g. the black Greyhound-cross Stella, whelped in 1908 and two crosses with the Manchester Terriers - first about 1902 and then again in 1908).  World War l greatly reduced this gene pool and the remnants again proliferated until just before World War ll.

In America, the first recorded Doberman arrived in 1908 and the breed also sailed along here.  However, the really pivotal occurrence came along almost fifty years into the Doberman’s history, and it is from the point of World War ll (1939-1945) that we have been heading for a crisis with the Doberman.  In Europe, the crisis is more understandable, because the breed and breeders had to pick up the pieces of a life and a gene pool.  In America what happened can't be explained so easily because the crisis was precipitated not by the war but by the exact same decision making process that we, as breeders, are still using today - Success breeds Success.

Prior to WW II, America had a huge population of Dobermans and after the war, that population came to represent almost the entire gene pool of Dobermans.  Since the number of individuals was relatively large, the effects of decreased genetic variability might seem remote.  However, the produce of a mere three breedings - represented by only five dogs - came to dominate the breed over the next ten years to the degree that it truly can be said that these five dogs, all born in the 1930's, are virtually all there is in a modern pedigree.

I have observed that when one traces a pedigree back far enough today, nearly every line of every pedigree will end up at one of the following three breedings:

Blank vd Domstadt x Ossi v Stahlhelm
Kurt vd Rheinperle-Rhinegold x Jessy vd Sonnenhoehe
Kurt vd Rheinperle-Rhinegold x Gretl v Kienlesberg

Occasionally we can also find Pericles of Westphalia (Kurt's son) x Jessy.  Only in the rarest of circumstances do we find a cross out to any other (unrelated) bloodline that predated these dogs.  When one considers that in a 15 generation pedigree there are possibly 16,384 distinct individuals in the 15th generation alone, to accept that the above handful of matings may appear repeated upwards of 8000 times is usually more than anyone can believe.

In fact, when I discuss this with people, I always have a very hard time making them understand the gravity of the situation.  At first, the mind simply can not take it in.  And also, it sounds like ancient history to most people.  After all, the breed has survived another 50 years, hasn't it?  Aren't our dogs great *because* of this concentration of greatness?

Let's look at the facts:  Blank to Ossi was a second generation line breeding, one of the first done on their ancestral stock.  At least one of their offspring (Domossi) died of a "heart attack".  Domossi's son Emperor, the product of another generation of line breeding, also died of a "heart attack". (From Ilena and the Seven Sires, by Peggy Adamson).  Alcor, the third of the "seven sires" to die of a heart attack was related maternally.  Jessy's critiques from Germany clearly state that her temperament was not good, and people who knew Pericles of Westphalia have stated that he could not be shown because he was so fearful.  Gretl v Kienlesberg (who was, incidentally, Jessy's half sister) died of distemper, along with most of her litter.  Although distemper claimed the life of many dogs in those days, normal dogs' immune systems are at an all time high while pregnant and lactating.  One of Gretl's famous grand get is said to have had no immune system of all.

Now, these were incredibly significant dogs - these matings are behind virtually all of our breed's most acclaimed specimens over the past fifty years.  But their tremendous genetic impact has a dark side as well.  We tend to beat ourselves up today-or worse, beat up each other-for the genetic frailty of our breed.  But how can we defend ourselves against some thing(s) that were instilled into them fifty or more years back?  Our generation has inherited a gene pool that is too small.  The worst problem we face is that of Cardiomyopathy, and that is a defect that in most cases, occurs *after* the dogs have reproduced.  Line/inbreeding has created vast improvements in type and structure and has made our breed stand out among its peers as a pillar of consistency but, at the same time, it has so concentrated the "bad" genes that there may be no way out, particularly in the areas that relate to problems of the immune system (e.g. thyroid disease, allergies, vaccine titers, autoimmune syndromes) and our heart-related diseases.  Cardiomyopathy, arguably, could and should be relegated to the classification of diseases of old age, from which there is no escape.  However, we see this scourge even affecting our young dogs.

Recently, I was involved in a conversation similar to many that one hears at dog shows, involving finger pointing and blame for the breeds downhill slide. I told the individual that no breed of animal is ruined in great leaps, but in tiny increments.  Every time a breeder makes a bad or self-serving decision a tiny step is taken towards the end of the breed.  We can't even see these steps most of the time because the course of breed history changes rapidly.  A dog that is used sparingly in his lifetime may produce one overused son and a dog that is used too much may find very little of his contribution around ten years later.  A breeder sometimes justifies introducing genetic garbage into their line with the old saw "I'll breed that out later".  One thing you can be sure about breeding is that the second you breed flawed individuals, you breed those characteristics IN.  This is the one similarity I can think of between computers and genetics - GIGO - or (for those of us not computer literate) "Garbage In ... Garbage Out".

Now, I don't want to bring out this information without a solution being offered - but I'm not sure there is one.  People have suggested using only older dogs for breeding but I'm not sure that is enough.  Honesty between breeders would be a vast help but since we typically *attack* the very people who try to be the most honest, you can't really blame them for "going underground" the next time.  What *is* needed is a general awareness that the Doberman breed is not here to serve anyone's personal aggrandizement but that we are here to serve the breed.  We need to begin to make even the tiniest decisions with the breed's future in mind, and not our kennel name, or the next show season, or the next National.  We need to give our pride away and live to serve the breed.  We need to talk, to really communicate about the dogs, to make informed decisions.  And we need to own our mistakes with the same grace we bring to our successes.

ADDENDUM:

In order to illustrate my pedigree observations, the editor of the DQ suggested that I compile the stats on his own dog as a specific random example.  This dog's standard pedigree appears to contain a great number of apparently unrelated animals.  Both of his parents were line bred, but from different lines.  He also seems to contain within his genealogy many unique individuals; apparently from some wellspring of obscure kennel names (this is true of most American pedigrees).  However, the computer makes it possible to understand that, in Dobermans, all roads inexorably lead to just one place, one time, and one set of uniquely related dogs.  Now, time constraints made it impossible to fill in some blanks in the pedigree, after the 9th generation.  So additional paths to these omnipresent ancestors may not have been counted.  Computer considerations, also - the pedigree analysis program I'm using cuts off at twenty-three generations and these dogs continue to occur deeper than that - meaning that the counts I obtained are certainly underestimates.

Even so, in the first 23 generations, Blank appears a minimum of 1500 times.  Ossi appears over 1400 times.  Kurt and his son Pericles are found 3235 and 1156 times, respectively.  Jessy shows up a whopping 3046 times and would show up many, many more times deeper in the pedigree.  Poor Gretl only appears a meager 461 times (but note that she had only two puppies in the US before she died, apart from her imported daughter, Assy v Illerblick.)

These counts certainly illustrate that many, or most, of the pedigree's branches coalesce and converge at these few, singularly unique matings and dogs.  Past this point, the roads again diverge (deceptively), only to come together again at the unique set of dogs in the breed's foundation.  American Doberman history is shaped exactly like an hourglass (or two, placed end to end), and we of this new millennium must learn to work with both the good and the bad residue of the 1930's and '40's.

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