Parti politics keeps some dogs out of poodle gene pool
Breeders debate end to colour segregation
There’s dissent in the world of standard poodles over whether to allow two-coloured “parti” poodles to mix with the single-colour show dogs.
The measure is intended to widen the gene pool of an inbred dog. But the Canadian Poodle Club (breeders and owners) has voted it down.
Parti poodles (it’s short for particolour) are exactly the same breed, but they will now remain segregated along colour lines.
Since the 1800s, the rule has said that whether you can show a poodle that’s black or white or café-au-lait or even blue, it must be all one colour.
That’s a good rule in the eyes of many breeders, who favour tradition.
At the same time, the leadership of the club says standard poodles are among the most inbred of dogs, with beautiful looks but too often short lives.
Poodles need to preserve the fullest gene pool possible, they argue. They say that cutting out some purebred animals for their colour is “madness.”
The result is parti politics, with the added tradition of packing a meeting when it’s time to vote. The membership of the Canadian Poodle Club nearly doubled, to more than 100, before its vote in September. The parti party won a majority, but by too narrow a margin to change the rule.
One voice for tradition is Donna Wilson, a veteran poodle breeder near Prescott. She breeds single-coloured poodles, and says the push to allow partis is a marketing move by breeders of those dogs.
“Some countries allow them but most do not,” she said. “They’re a money-maker. Money is the motivation for a lot of this particolour breeding. (It’s) like flavour of the month, and it’s the same thing with doodles, but we won’t even go there.” But why ban them? If the breed standard changes and parti-coloured poodles breed with the traditional dogs, then two-colour poodles will start popping up unexpectedly when breeders want a solid-colour animal, she believes. And those dogs will be automatically disqualified from international competition.
She also rejects the health argument, because “there are health issues in particolour standard poodles as well, so it doesn’t make sense.”
Meanwhile the president of the Canadian Poodle Club says inbreeding is damaging all dog breeds, with poodles among the most inbred types.
With standard poodles, most top dogs today can trace at least part of their ancestry to just five dogs from one kennel in the mid-1900s, Mary Jane Weir of Shelburne, Ont., says.
“All you do is lose variations of gene rather than adding them. You get problems with fertility, you get much higher disease rates,” she said.