Genetic Problems Couldn’t Be Ignored
Diane Laratta doesn’t breed poodles anymore. She did for 23 years. Then the phone calls got to her.
Laratta bred standard poodles, the big ones, like Charley, the dog John Steinbeck once loaded into a pickup camper and traveled America with. The Lima, Ohio, breeder never thought she wouldn’t breed poodles. But her phone started ringing.
Two or three times a week Laratta found herself in emotionally draining conversations with poodle owners from around the country. Their dogs’ coats were falling out, their eyes were failing, their blood was sick (hemolytic anemia), their thyroids were shutting down, agonizing bloat was claiming them, they were collapsing in twitching epileptic fits.
What was especially sad is that poodles can have such engaging personalities. You can train them to do just about anything. Their owners become awfully attached to them - read “Travels With Charley.” Like Tinkerbell, the standard poodle was fading before everyone’s eyes. What’s more, in no small measure poodles suffered from the same thing that threatened Tinkerbell - bad faith.
Owners needed a shoulder to cry on and Laratta, a nationally known advocate of the breed, provided one as long as she could.
Then she and two other concerned breeders took action. At their own expense they published a brochure called “Before you buy a poodle” along with a multipage questionnaire aimed at providing buyers with guidelines for finding a good breeder and a healthy dog. The trio took out ads in Dog World and Dog Fancy. They ran the ads for two years, offering their literature free, trying to contain the suffering. They had between 600 and 700 takers. They like to think they did some good.
After awhile, they offered their material to the Poodle Club of America, “but it was politely declined,” says Laratta, “although at the time, PCA had no similar educational material.”
Laratta fought the good fight for standard poodles until three or four years ago, when the roof fell in.
“I started doing some close line breeding, and that’s when I ran into a lot of recessive health problems (that) absolutely wiped out my breeding program.”
What happened to Diane Laratta could happen to any breeder today. She was conducting all the proper genetic health screening for standard poodles - hips, eyes, blood, thyroid, plus careful selection for temperament. Then she did some careful half-brother/half-sister breeding of dogs that were certified healthy in the known categories of concern. That’s when the hereditary disease time bomb went off, triggered by the combination of defective recessive genes. In three litters Laratta had 17 cases of sebaceous adenitis, a devastating skin disease. She stopped breeding the dogs she loves.
“I decided at that point I could not take the phone calls anymore. There were just so many hereditary problems in the breed … I cannot breed them right now.”
Twenty years ago, says Laratta, finding a healthy poodle was no problem. “But I think the lines have become so polluted … there are so many people breeding dogs who either don’t understand genetics enough to know how to breed healthy dogs, or they aren’t concerned enough because what their main goal is is to win in the show ring and they don’t really care about anything else. Or they get caught up in unknowns, which is what happened to me.”
In the wake of her disaster, she took three steps:
1) She switched to whippets, a relatively healthy breed.
2) She speaks out on the need for a national open registry of canine genetic disease so that concerned breeders and consumers alike can select healthy stock. An article she wrote on the subject will appear in the August issue of the American Kennel Club’s Gazette.
3) She helps buyers track down healthy poodles by continuing to distribute her free literature and by referring to a handful of U.S. poodle breeders who are committed to recovering the breed’s health. Those interested can send her a stamped self-addressed envelope: Diane Laratta, 1915 Jo Jean Road, Lima, OH 45806, or call her at (419) 991-7878.
“The fancy knows what’s wrong with (itself),” she says, referring to the nation’s purebred dog enthusiasts. “The fancy just doesn’t always want to admit it.”