Pawsitive IDEAS

04/18/2025

04/18/2025

Corgi butt!!! 💛💛💛

04/18/2025

Of course puppies need time to be hooligans too!

04/18/2025

Working on default sit when someone walks up to her or when she walks up to someone. Corgi's are awesome! 💛🐾

04/17/2025

Sunsets with Luna💜🐾🌅

04/13/2025

Loving the sun this weekend! ☀️💛🐾

03/30/2025

03/26/2025

Life!😀💛

03/14/2025

03/14/2025

Humans are primarily visual creatures, and it can be odd to think of using our noses or ears instead. Cats experience the world through all their senses, but their eyes aren’t primary. Eyes are more like extremely important support. Today, we want to go over just what your cat sees!

03/14/2025

Help ! We are still recruiting dogs of all ages, all breeds, all sizes, all across the United States (one per household)... but we would especially love to meet more big dogs in these areas:
🐶We need older dogs, age 7+
🐕Weigh between 44 and 120 lbs
🐾Dogs from key regions

! Have a friend in one of the purple areas on the map? Does your play with an older doggo?
➡Post about the Dog Aging Project on your social media with a link to dogagingproject.org/triad
➡Share our posts on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn
➡Join the Dog Aging Pack if you haven’t already!

02/22/2025

02/17/2025

"What if we, with this movement, put them out of business? What if we bred to THIS standard: Moderate exercise needs. No resource guarding. No dog aggression. No separation issues. No digestive issues. No hip, elbow, or spinal issues that will cause pain. No heart, eye, skin, or genetic diseases. Must tolerate veterinary care and grooming without the need for sedation. Must be highly trainable and able to live with a busy modern family. All parent dogs must be pets, not kennel dogs. All puppies must be raised in a home environment, not a cage or pen. What if they went home crate trained, clicker trained, potty trained? What if we bred them with the job of COMPANIONSHIP, rather than trying to put hunting, herding, mushing, and guard dogs into companionship roles that don't suit them? What if we paired individual dogs based on health and temperament, instead of the current method of closed gene pools (only breeding dogs that came from the same ancestors)? What if we used modern science, veterinary medicine, and the information we can obtain from genetic testing, to better understand exactly what will be produced when we do this? What if that's what most modern dog homes need? What if we bred dogs for today's families? ".

love this! 💜💜💜 Exact reason I want to breed! To create amazing pets for families that NEVER need to go to a shelter or back to the breeder, that never need to be sedated to have routine vet procedures or grooming care, to not hear the horror stories of dogs biting kids or being agressive with other dogs, the list is endless. I'm not saying bothere arent ethical breeders who dont know about COI but i am saying its time to start learning about it and normalize it in our conversations with breeders.

Amy Townsend of Mandala Dogs writes passionately about her inspiration for breeding modern pet dogs

02/17/2025

Doodle lovers! Watch this! My doodle is 75% poodle. I've never had a conversation with any breeder (besides Scotti Harvey) who has shared the COI (coefficient of inbreeding) and why it's important to know when considering purchasing a $4,000.00 puppy!

As a responsible dog owner and advocate for healthy, temptmentally sound puppies, I promise to never again purchase a dog without knowing the COI of the breeding pair!

Thank you for creating this video! 💜💜💜🐾🐾

839 likes, 151 comments. “PART 4: sorry this video is so long, there was a lot to cover! This video explains why purebred dogs are so prone to disease, why outcrossing is beneficial, and why crossbreed dogs do not end up with “twice the disease”.”

02/17/2025

How many breeders have you met who have shared the COI (coefficient of inbreeding) with you when you were looking at purchasing a puppy?

COI is not neutral – it is quite literally an expression of risk. Higher COI equals higher risk of an individual inheriting 2 copies of a recessive deleterious mutation. This risk is at the population level, meaning that not every high COI individual will be sick, but overall they have a higher probability of being sick than low COI individuals.

When you linebreed, any shared recessive deleterious mutations from the common ancestor are likely to show up in the offspring. Breeders often believe that they can use this as a strategy to “purify” their breeding stock of bad genes. But there are two flaws in this way of thinking. One, you have to produce sick puppies in order to even identify what genetic diseases your breeding stock is carrying. I don’t know about you, but I don’t see how intentionally creating puppies with potentially painful, terminal, or lifelong illnesses can be considered ethical. Second, animals simply have too many recessive mutations for us to eliminate them all using this method. The number of recessive genetic diseases that any one dog carries is estimated to be between 50 and 100. Most of these diseases will never show up in offspring due to their recessive nature, UNLESS linebreeding is done.

Many breeds end up playing whack-a-mole with recessive genetic diseases: as they inbreed to eliminate one disease, more pop up due to the increase in COI (and therefore risk). Our breeds with the highest average COIs, such as cavalier King Charles spaniels, Doberman pinschers, bull terriers, and Norwegian lundehunds, are riddled with severe genetic diseases, and the breeds now lack enough internal genetic diversity to select away from these issues.

Consistency absolutely CAN be achieved without inbreeding. Many guide dog breeding programs are now producing Golden x Lab crosses that have a higher success rate than either purebred. The key is to select breeding individuals who are highly similar in the areas you want to reproduce, but heterozygous in other areas. The clone-like sameness that seems to be expected in the show ring may not be possible without inbreeding, but there are many better paths to producing consistent, reliable dogs who perform their intended function.