It has only recently really come home to me what a tremendous watershed we have passed, all unknowing, as dog breeders over the past decade or so. There is no one moment to which one could point and say, "There! it was on that particular day that our whole world changed." No. Like many really big changes, it has come about gradually but quite forcefully.
Dog breeding has entered the information era. We now have access to information in a way we never had before. Computers and the Internet have done it. Before we relied on books, word of mouth and personal experience. Now the personal experience of many is available to many, where before only through published books was the personal knowledge and experience of one person available to many. Apart from published books and newsletters, it was a few-to-few proposition. New ideas disseminated slowly, if at all. And there were times when it seemed as though the lowest common denominator ruled, when old wives' tales and outdated information were rife. Even simple pedigree information had to be painstakingly researched, either directly from registry stud books (assuming you could locate a set of published volumes) or uncertainly by copying from one breeder's pedigree collection to another's. And nobody, but nobody, had ever heard about anything like "population genetics."
Now, all of a sudden ANY serious breeder can have access to sophisticated computer software for kennel management, can put together (or sometimes just download) a breed database and research 10 or 12 generation pedigrees, can calculate inbreeding coefficient. Now there are email lists to discuss specialised interests of all kinds, including veterinary health problems and genetics. Now there is online access to scholarly papers on canine topics, as well as to a wealth of serious material on an educated layman's level. Now population genetics has become -- not yet mainstream knowledge -- but a matter for serious discussion among the more aware kind of dog breeders. And for whatever it may ultimately turn out to be worth, the canine genome is being sequenced and researched.
Participation in any major email discussion list such as the Yahoo "Canine Genetics" list quickly results in a feeling of information overload, mental indigestion even. Too much is being discussed by too many people too many threads, all at once -- it's getting hard to keep up with just one active list, let alone several. I repeat, we've suddenly entered the information age. And now, paradoxically, information is not enough.
When information is everywhere, it is no longer the limiting factor. And so we are down to something much more difficult -- judgment. Of course, that's what has always distinguished the best dog breeders from the others. But maybe it has become that much more difficult to apply that judgment, given the welter of new information -- and that much more vital to do so.
Posted by ditkoofseppala at July 26, 2006 07:34 PM