The Awful Donut Syndrome in Dogs

This is an old comic picture drawn by my friend Jasur Rakhimov (http://jasur.rakhimovs.com) a while ago for my dog website. We wrote about the Awful Donut Syndrome. We had a lot of fun, I know it is somewhat silly but thought I would share anyway. We are concerned about dog's health and breeding practices.

...Imagine that in your favorite breed now there is a terrible inheritable disease which affects dog's hearing, nerve conductibility, coordination and ability to understand commands (well if you do not train your dogs and do not give them any commands, the latter might not be a big issue). This disease manifests itself all of a sudden, without any initial signs and leads to full disability. Your dog curls into a donut, stops eating, rolls around the house and shits everywhere despite not eating anything (a real enigma of nature!). Then of course it will die a painful death.

The only way to be certain that your dog does not carry the Donut syndrome is to check if you can teach it to crawl under your bed following the command "Tara-Bara-Schmeps-Fuchs!" and then to crawl back. Please bear in mind that the bed must be of the relevant size so that the dog actually fits under it. This test was developed by certified specialists, biologists, veterinarians and ethologists. They chose that very combination of sounds and movement that allows to confirm whether the dog bears this awful genetic heritage. If the dog cannot pass this test, it will definitely have the Donut syndrome and will pass it to the progeny, in the autosomal dominant way.

Would you be interested in filtering these dogs out of your breeding program, assuming of course that you do not like such donuts? And if yes, would you agree to train and test your dogs, given that you know that the problem exists and three dogs of your friend have already turn donuts? However those who passed the test will not donut at all. So, how about testing?

And, if any of your breeding stock does not pass, will you avoid breeding the dog, despite all its champion titles? Let us say that is a stunning dog, a show star, but definitely a future donut?

And please do not tell me that dogs do not go donut in our country. They do. Especially as everyone now tries to import new modern breeding stock. Please do test and be fair with yourself, if you see that a dog is a potential donut - do not breed it! Even though the Donut Test is not mandatory, please test your dogs. Also please consider bringing in new lines and bloods fully free from Donut. Although... of course it is up to you. You are allowed to breed Donuts if you like.