dragonsintheattic:

elodieunderglass:

punk-de-l-escalier:

elodieunderglass:

dxnversalex:

viralthings:

Before and after I sign good boy to my deaf dog

1. what a good boy

2. how nice to see a lethal white with a good life

Wait, I thought that colour combination was only lethal in horses.
Like, your white/pinkskinned/blue-eyed cat or dog’ll probably be or go deaf, but they’ll live…but horses, man, kiss that slimy foal while it’s still fresh, because it’s not long for this world.
Am I missing something?  Can haz nibbet of education?

Homozygous merles are frequently called “lethal whites" by laypeople, and it’s a term that most people will recognize, but the only deadly thing about homozygous merle dogs is that they’re usually culled at birth. They frequently have disabilities that people can’t handle in pet dogs, such as being deaf, blind or both. The condition is preventable – it occurs when people breed blue merles to blue merles in the hopes of generating the desirable, marketable blue merle pups. It’s quite sad, actually, that the pressures of the market leads to the generation of disabled dogs that are then culled at birth. It’s quite possible for these dogs to be acceptable pets with healthy lives, since deafness/blindness aren’t necessarily barriers to being good companion animals.

I used the term “lethal white” since people have heard of it in conjunction with Australian Shepherds and “homozygous merle” isn’t something people have heard of, but it isn’t the same lethal white condition as in horses, which is called Lethal White Overo. 

Disclaimers: 

1. I’m not a dog person, I’m a genetics person, and the Discourse surrounding “LETHAL WHITE IS A PROBLEMATIC TERM” tires me out. 

2. In recent months, I have been coming down more on the side of “making people understand what I’m talking about” than “being 100% scientifically accurate,” because if science communication or discussion isn’t accessible/doesn’t spur curiosity, then what is the fucking point of doing any of it?? when the majority of our audience don’t have a basic scientific education, is there any point in being the science equivalent of a Reddit Grammar Nazi, when that kind of behavior just makes the audience tune you out even further? but I might change my mind on that again later.

Likewise, it is sad that people would breed merle to merle thinking that’ll get them more merles than a merle-to-normal breeding. 

Merle’s not a recessive gene – I don’t know off the top of my head if it’s incompletely dominant or co-dominant – so you only need one merle to produce (on average) 50% merle offspring. Two merles produce (on average) 25% normal, 50% merle and 25% double merle – and if you’re talking about a breed where the solid whites are often culled and you’ve got a breeder who DOES cull, that means that a breeder is likely to LOSE a quarter of the litter – rather than having 50% merles and 50% perfectly healthy non-merles. 

At least it’s not a TRUE lethal homozygous like Overo in horses, Dominant Yellow in mice or (quite probably) Spider in royal (ball) pythons, where either you get a non-viable but living offspring that’s born OR you get an embryo that fails to develop and a smaller litter/clutch than you would otherwise have had.