I'd Like A Mastiff, Only Make It Fit Into A Pocketbook And Color It Blue.

MayorBob.

Posted to Etcetera on Wed Jan 10, 2007 at 11:51:19 AM EST (promoted by port1080). RSS.

The Japanese latch onto fads and ride them for all they're worth.  Gigantic film monsters used to ravage Tokyo and other Japanese cities with impunity.  Golf, a sport requiring a lot of space is a national obsession for a people short on space. Within the last decade and a half, fads have swept over the Japanese.  It happened with tamatgotchi (literally digital pets).  Sometimes they pass beyond Japanese shores.  Both Hello Kitty and Pokemon are fads the Japanese embraced and then loosed upon the rest of the world.  As fads go all of these are probably harmless.  But, it appears the Japanese are embracing a new fad -- one which most definitely has a dark side to it.  That would be the fad of the cute inbred puppy dog.

Calling this desire to breed and own cute puppies a fad misses the mark by a bit.  It's probably more accurate to describe it as a "boom."  A fad is something that comes and goes out of fashion with almost no residual fallout upon its departure.  A boom implies certain social forces at play feeding an almost unthinking fervor to produce whatever the boom is promoting.  So it goes with cute Japanese puppies.  They are a boom because the Japanese a). like things cute and, b). will work like the dickens to produce them, regardless of the consequences.

Case in point are Chihuahuas, one of the more popular breeds in Japan.  Breeders, once they produce an adorable looking little puppy want more of same.  They realize a quick fix exists to ensure the breeding of many, many more.  The path they favor is multiple inbreeding of recessive-trait dogs; in other words, make sure the mother and father of all future litters come from the same family tree (e.g., father-daughter, mother-son, or brother-sister matings).  If you do this often enough, you'll get puppies which all look adorably cute and you can even engineer things so that a number of them have blue coats of fur (another hot Japanese trend).  But, the practice also has its downside (see slide show at the main link).

Among the unfortunate consequences of such inbreeding are puppies with horrible defects - things like brain disorders or missing body parts or a distressing tendency to die suddenly at a young age.  These are problems readily recognized by reputable breeders.  But, in Japan, the dog breeding industry is essentially unregulated (the government agency tasked with oversight has a total of four inspectors to cover the entire nation).  Therefore, the impetus to make big yen on cute and cuddly puppies in Japan's (US)$10 billion pet industry outweighs the realities of their unfortunate and defective siblings.  Even, the knowledge that the genetic defect rate for Japanese puppies is close to four times the rate in the US does little to dissuade breeders from continuing the inbreeding.  But, the blame doesn't rest solely on the shoulders of the breeders who practice inbreeding, according to some observers.  One Japanese veterinarian also blames owners who demand cuter, smaller, and more oddly colored pets to cuddle with, "if consumers didn't buy these unnatural dogs, breeders wouldn't breed them."