Harwell, Didcot, Oxon OX11 0RD, UK

 Post #1

OK folks! I have been looking in on your thoughts upon my article. There seems to have been a lot of knee jerk reactions but then I suppose this surprise reproduction of only Part 4 of the series on bobtails must have been a bit of a shock. Most of your questions and criticisms would have been answered if you had had access to the earlier more detailed parts of the story, or if you knew of me.

First, Henning Lund and others have said some complimentary things about me and my Boxers but let me add a little background. Following the famous C.C. Little, I am a mouse geneticist. My specialty has been the causation and analysis of genetic defects. I started in an Edinburgh lab (1959), which provided the first evidence that chemicals could cause such effects in fruit flies. I got the evidence in the mouse, took this to Oak Ridge Tenn. (1962-64) where equivalent work with radiation was in progress. Later was invited to a post in California to continue (1966-69), but then returned to work in Oak Ridge's sister lab in the UK at Harwell, where I ultimately finished up as Director of the Medical Research Council Mammalian Genetics Unit. I "retired" a few days ago, although I work on.

Before leaving California where I had attended a number of shows, I visited Cherokee Oaks Boxers and brought a bitch back to the UK where she was to found the present generation of Steynmeres. The beginning of Steymere started back in 1945 when my parents bought a bitch for breeding and showing. I took over in 1949 until I left home for University and working in the States. In the recent generation I have made up 9 champions and had several other CC winners. Throughout, I have intermixed American, British and Continental lines.

Showing rather gave way to dog defect genetics starting with Boxer PA in 1982, and I have since been involved with problems in other breeds. Showing has become increasingly half hearted in recent years, although I have been trying, unsuccessfully I'm afraid, to breed my own idea of a stunning Boxer, rather than someone else's.

So much for my CV. Now to bobtails and the first few answers. I recognize that cross breeding is an anathema to many present day dog breeders but I have always envied the pioneer dog breeders who created all our different breeds - usually by cross breeding! Many, many forms of livestock were created in this way, the narrowing down by selection, inbreeding just adding the refinements and reducing the variability. So when I saw the writing on the wall concerning docking some 10 years ago I thought the time was ripe to reintroduce some creative breeding. I had always hated docking anyway and had actually tried many years earlier to breed on from screwtail dogs that occurred within the breed. Bred together these only produced normal tail pups - as typically happens in mice too. There was no viable option there.

Why Corgis? The reason was that I knew something about the genetics of this tail type already having been asked by enthusiasts within the breed to ascertain this for them. The Corgi bobtail was clearly inherited as a single dominant gene. Therefore I knew that it would be possible to transfer it into the Boxer. But I also knew that I would have a hard time convincing the modern day purist dog breeder who has forgotten his routes that this would be acceptable.

Question: Why not Bostons or some other similar breed? Answer: I knew nothing of the inheritance of the screw tails and all the old literature is pretty thin. Moreover from my early days in Boxers in the '40s and '50s, screw tails commonly occurred, possibly from the Bulldog ancestry. (Editor’s note: We had a screw tailed pup in our second litter, back in the 70s.) Altogether a messy inheritance was likely. I preferred to try something I knew about in the Corgis where the gene was segregating, normal and bob, and able to show the inheritance.

In the light of the results which suggest few major genes differentiate the Corgi and Boxer (they are both dogs, after all), it has not mattered that I used the very different Corgi. From 16 pups bred in the second generation, first backcross, I got my white Jane. She looked like a Boxer and bred like one, although getting the head right is clearly the hardest part - always is, even within the breed, in my experience. The big asset was that virtually all the features that I did not want were effectively dominant. Therefore once lost, they are gone forever. There will be no short legs, for example, turning up in later generations, even with inbreeding. (Just like breeding together two reds which have brindle parents; no brindle pups can be produced.