[nagdu] Chocolate labs as guides?

[lindagwizdak at peoplepc.com]

Hi Brent,
The White German Shepherd is recognised by the United Kennel Club (UKC) as a 
seperate breed from the German Shepherd. Kind of like the real big shepherds 
whose breed name escapes me! I found a book about the White German shepherd 
at a second hand bookstore back in the early '90s.  I also found a book 
about the history of Leader Dogs for the Blind in a book stall at a local 
dog show.  Thier early dogs were Dobies. There is a picture in the book 
taken around the 1970s of a Leader class and a student had a White Shepherd 
Dog!  I haven't heard of any schools issuing a White Shepherd dog.  Anyone 
else know of any?

Linda and Landon
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Brent Reynolds" <burddawg at bellsouth.net>
To: <sbgreenlaw at gmail.com>; <nagdu at nfbnet.org>; 
<gdui-friends at yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Friday, March 06, 2009 5:56 PM
Subject: Re: [nagdu] Chocolate labs as guides?


>
> I don't think there really are any issues with chocolate Labs when it 
> comes
> to what does or does not make for good guide dog work, vis-a-vis Labs of 
> any
> other color.
>
> To say that it makes sense that chocolates may suffer from skin conditions
> and allergy type things more than other Labs, and to confirm it based on a
> sampling of two out of a population of three is quite a stretch.
>
> The chocolate Labrador from The Seeing Eye that I had shed less and had
> fewer skin problems and less dry skin problems, and less scratching than
> most of my other Labs, all of whom were black.  My current dog is a Lab /
> Golden crossbreed and the Lab component of that cross was most likely a 
> very
> dilute yellow, since this dog's coloration has been described as, light 
> tan,
> beige, creamy vanila, and even white.
>
> While it may be possible that a goodly number of chocolate Labs may carry
> other genes that predispose them to certain skin conditions, it is still
> true that the genes that influence color in Labradors have no effect on
> anything other than coloration.  To extrapolate a supposition or
> unscientifically derived comparison across unrelated species, such as
> squirrels compared to dogs, is not, well, is not good science.
>
> I would be more willing to speculate that you don't see very many
> chocolate-colored Labs as guide dogs for the simple reason that the 
> schools
> just don't usually have very many of them in proportion to the other two
> major colorations.
>
> Color is one of the easiest traits to breed into or out of a line of dogs
> when several different colors are possible.  Now, that might take a good 
> bit
> longer in a breed such as the Rottweiler which comes overwhelmingly in
> black.
>
> If you read the writings of Konrad Lorenz, who's work was considerably 
> more
> popular in the 1950's and 1960's than it is today, you can read that in
> Germany, white was considered enough of a serious defect in the German
> Shepherd Dog breed that white pups were routinely eliminated from the
> populations, usually by unceremoniously drowning the newborn  white pups.
> Yet, in the good old USA, fanciers of White German Shepherds have been
> lobbying for years to get kennel clubs to recognize them as a separate 
> breed
> to be known as the American White Shepherd.
>
> Among the old-time duck hunters fifty or more years ago, it was a commonly
> held conventional wisdom that among Labradors, blacks were the best,
> smartest, and easiest to train.  Yellows were said to be somewhat stupid,
> and chocolates, which they called "livers", were said to be somewhat
> stubborn and harder to train.  Nobody ever produced any measurable or
> otherwise verifyable proof for those gems of conventional wisdom.
>
>
>
> Brent Reynolds, Atlanta, GA  USA
> Email: burddawg at bellsouth.net  Phone: 1-404-814-0768
>
>
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