To B, or not to B, should not BE the question…

Once upon a time in Hungary there were Mudis roaming the countryside with shepherds.  These selectively bred working partners did not have pedigrees, the shepherds had no need for such modern inventions.  So the MEOE (Hungarian Kennel Club) invented a system that allowed these valuable National Treasure dogs to be brought into the fold and used to expand the available breeding pool of non-shepherd owned Mudis.  This intelligent processing was called the B pedigree.  Dogs that looked like a Mudi could be taken to a breeding examination held in varied locales in Hungary, several times a year.  If the dog had enough Mudi characteristics and no serious faults, it was given permission to apply for the B pedigree to become an official Mudi and have official Mudi offspring.  No parents would be listed on the dogs pedigree and the B would be included as part of its pedigree number (MEOE Mu. 141/B/88 for example). While this may seem like the perfect Cinderella fairytale with the usual happy ending, the plot eventually thickens and the ending twists.

As the years went by, there were less and less Mudis roaming the countryside, same as the shepherds also roamed less and less and more Mudis were being bred with pedigrees, so the need of the B pedigree has become a not so widely used or needed mechanism in this century.

This noble invention would still serve a divine purpose, even if only used sporadically, if it were not for the abuse that has also become part and parcel of the system.  But as in any good fairytale, there is always the inevitable evil plan of the villains to foil the happy ever after story line.

Time passes and the B pedigree changes to the R pedigree in the mid 2000’s, just as the little princess grows to adulthood in the fairytales.  The maturation process should have been far more inclusive than just the letter, but that’s the unalterable past, let’s cut to the gory details of the present.

The B/R pedigree system is almost exclusively used today to “recycle” Mudis that breeders have neglected to pedigree or have purposely not acquired a pedigree for.  Now before you get down with the green scene and think that recycling a Mudi is a good idea, keep in mind that dogs are not plastic and glass, you cannot melt them down and make them over again just by giving them a shiny new empty pedigree.  And while seemingly like a new bottle, each dog is a new creation, the dog does have a past in its genetic history, a darned important one in many aspects that the bottle does not share, nor is the bottles’ past important to its current function. While there may be no difference in a bottle-made-new through recycling which came from the garbage can in the park or a 5 star restaurant, it makes all the difference if the Mudi comes from a line filled with hereditary disease or one that is not.

This less evil side of intentions just returns Mudis to the fold that should not have been excluded to begin with, because the truth is every dog that is born to pedigreed parents deserves to have a pedigree.  Today a pedigree is a birth certificate and provides important information for the owner, the breeder and the breed.  It is no longer just a paper for the rich and famous dogs of the elite.  It can tell you much more about the history and possible future of that dog than most people can imagine.

Another feature of making a dog over with a B/R pedigree is that it can also be used to create lower inbreeding in those places that believe in this practice, but in reality, it’s only artificial lowering.  Any of the B/R dogs that have come into the system in the last decade are just as likely to be closely related to your dog as any of its other known close relatives.  Buying puppies from B/R parented litters in Hungary has become quite fashionable in certain countries in the last few years in order to lower the COI levels of their breeding, but this is just the same as playing Russian Roulette, you will get shot and badly if you truly believe the illusion that these false B/R dogs are new blood in the gene pool.

Almost every B/R dog that exists today is a recycled Mudi from one or more pedigreed parents. If you take nothing else away from this article than that fact, you won’t have wasted your time reading.

Now that the villains in the story have done their dastardly deed, it’s time to ask why did the evil stepmother poison the apple, or in this story, why do the dogs not get pedigrees?  The reasons are both simple and complex.  Much of the time the breeder does not want to pay for a pedigree that they feel the puppy is not worthy of, that is, they do not think the puppy will have any potential as a future show or breeding dog, so why waste the money.  This is a much argued practice in that those who employ this method to exclude pups which lack potential, are the same people that later bring the rejected puppy back in as an adult. If this pre-determination system or “eye of experience” they are so gifted with worked, then these otherwise youthful “rejects” would never be brought back to the fold as now seemingly valuable adults.  The real truth is the pedigrees are not so expensive, but when you are producing so many litters and puppies, many breeders cannot afford to pedigree them all, especially in a breed that costs per puppy (on average), less than a full tank of gas or a filled grocery shop cart in Hungary.  This failure-to-pedigree practice is almost exclusively used by quantity breeders, not by quality breeders.  It is simply compounding and correcting bad breeding practices with one poor choice after another.

This reason goes totally against the original purpose of the B/R system, which was to bring in dogs from previously not pedigreed dogs that shepherds have, not dogs that the breeders didn't care about as a puppy.

Other reasons include breeders not wanting to put their kennel name on a puppy they think is not up to the quality of their name (hence it would tarnish their perfect image), catering to buyers that want a cheap dog as it is widely known that Mudi puppies without papers are easy to get as well as cheaper (and you can always get the B/R pedigree later if you change your mind right), as well as a widespread lack of genuine concern for the puppies produced and the breed itself.  A good breeder pedigrees every puppy in a litter, regardless of quality and truth be told the pedigree is not expensive if the parents are qualified to breed!  None of these reasons (or the people that use them) takes into consideration the damage this does to the Mudi breed.  The Mudi, which is a bonafide National Treasure, is actually a National Shame.  Selling Mudis without pedigree has only brought the reputation of the breed down to a mongrel-in-breed-clothing level and keeps it there.  The Mudi still today garners no respect in Hungary in any canine circles, it is the ugly stepchild of Hungary. This is solely because of the poor breeding practices of the major players, and this abuse of the B/R pedigree system is just one of them.

But far worse than the slipshod reasons given above, is the most sinister reason of all.  With so many diseases in dogs and with some now appearing more and more often in the Mudi too, some of which are so devastating they can take a whole line out of breeding, what is a breeder to do?  They have worked so long to develop their line, their claim to fame!  The solution is once again to abuse the B/R system.  Take the best puppy in the litter, or more than one, or why not the whole litter, out of the pedigree system and bring them back in as B/R dogs and you can even breed them together without the warning of the MEOE against inbreeding levels being too high! Diseases, inbreeding, line faults are a thing of the past, you get a fresh start with the same genes you already had in a shiny new suit that no one will point a finger at.  It’s the definitive stroke of genius and the ultimate abuse of a good thing.

 Acquiring B/R dogs for breeding or breeding with B/R dogs today is filled with real risks, not fairytale villains.  The COI they offer is a total fabrication of reality and the chances of introducing a hereditary disease are above and beyond the chances of any new gene infusion.  This new gene theory can only go so far, there are no new gene factories out there, all dogs share the same interchangeable genes.  While some may make the coat curly and others straight, these are not new, these same genes cause this in other breeds too and what causes diseases in other breeds can be brought to the Mudi as well, it only takes one dog to introduce something foreign to the whole breed (thanks to the many shoddy breeding practices available).  This is why outcrossing with another breed is also inadvisable.  There is no perfect breed and no perfect way out, however there are better and worse solutions and the key is to always choose the better.

I wish I could end this tale with Prince Charming rescuing the damsel in distress, but that is not going to be the ending this time as far too many villains have ruined the last scene.  But all hope is not yet lost and a sequel to this story can still be written.  The proposed breeding rules of the Magyar Mudi Klub hope to keep the B/R system available, but make it much harder and more costly to bring in dogs this way that truly should have gotten their rightful pedigree in the first place.  So those of you that can, please take the time and effort to go and vote to pass the new breeding rules when the opportunity presents itself in the future and don’t let this story end here on such a sad note. We that live here and now, hold the power to change things around for this breed to a better direction and future.  So will you let the Mudi stay the National Shame it remains to be, or not to be, that is the question you should be asking yourself…