Performance vs. Conformation (cross post)

14 Performance vs. Conformation Well, no USENET APBT FAQ would be complete without touching on thissubject, as it has been debated to death on rpd*. Below is a post madeby one of the authors during the

"Performance vs. Conformation" threadthat appeared on rpd* in late 1994.Post

Conformation is essential for performance. The original>labrador standard was written strictly by field folks>as the exact type of dog that did best in the field trials>of the time. In a different country with different field trials, the>dogs that do well at this have changed to follow that performance,>while the show breeders mostly breed toward the original conformation>for the old field trials. That they do very well in the new hunting>tests bears me out.>A dog that has been bred strictly for performance can fall into the>same sort of pitfalls as a dog bred strictly for conformation. Any>sort of extreme *will* give you problems.This argument, historically speaking, puts the cart before the horse.Performance breeding--the long-term, multi-generational practice ofselective breeding according to the principle of survival of thefittest-- predates conformation breeding by many thousands of years.Breeding for conformation, i.e. for show purposes, is a relativelyrecent phenomenon, dating back to the nineteenth century. Butperformance breeding surely goes back to the earliest domesticationof canines during the stone age for purposes of hunting and guarding.The former is a luxury of a comfortable middle class whose dogs wereno longer essential to their livelihood; the latter was often a matterof basic subsistence for hunter-gatherers.The rule of performance breeding hasn't changed in all that time: youtest the individual dogs to find the ones who best perform theirassigned task and breed only these superior dogs. It is important toremember that performance-breeding is not the work of a single breeder.It is the collective work of centuries of conscientious breeders whostrove to add tiny incremental improvements to the achievements oftheir predecessors. Very gradually, the dogs grow into their taskgenetically, doing their thing more and more by pure instinct andrequiring less and less training to do it well.If even one generation of breeders is careless and violates this ruleof selective breeding, the achievements of all the previous breederswill be wiped out or diminished, perhaps irrecoverably. It makes nodifference whether the task be tracking, racing, or pit fighting; thesame criterion applies. To the members of the bull breeds list, allthis is going to sound familiar. But I'll say it again: the proof isin the pudding. For centuries, those who bred dogs for bull-baitingor pit fighting didn't give a damn what their dogs LOOKED LIKE. Allthey cared about was whether or not the dogs were successful at whatthey did. That was the sole criterion for selecting dogs for breeding.For this reason, performance-bred APBT's show a very wide range of variation in phenotype, since they were never, at least until very recently, bred for conformation. But, no matter what it looked like, there's no way you would ever mistake a real APBTfor anything else if you saw the way it fought. The qualitythat enables an APBT to defeat any other breed of dog, even a dog fouror five times heavier, is not evident in the dog's phenotype. Neitherthe APBT's impressive jaw strength nor the explosive muscular powerof its torso are enough to explain why a game 50-lb. APBT can alwaysovercome a 120-lb. Rottweiler or a 200-lb. Mastiff or Tosa. It isgameness, the quality of never quitting in spite of exhaustion, bloodloss and broken bones, that enables a performance-bred APBT to prevail against such odds. No other breed has even a quarter of theAPBT's gameness. And this extraordinary quality could only have beenbuilt up gradually over countless generations by a strict applicationof the basic rule of performance breeding described above.Breeding dogs for the looks that you think will enable them to performa given task is a wrong-headed approach to performance breeding, yetthis is precisely the approach advocated by many AKC breed clubs.These clubs try to make the ex post facto conformation standard seem asthough it preceded the actual performance-based evolution of workingbreeds. Conformation breeding for the sake of performance only makessense if motivated by nostalgia for a performance breed that no longerexists, having been bred out of existence in the production of a showdog with a only superficial resemblance to it. As I understand it,such was the motivation of the various recent efforts to create a betterfacsimile of the original bulldog of yore. Yet it makes no sense atall to try to improve performance by breeding according to a conformationstandard when there is already a stock of performance-bred dogs thathave an unbroken continuity to the performance breeding of the past--as in the case of APBT's.A lot of people who don't know APBT's wrongly assume that the thingsthat make a dog APPEAR tough--a massive head, a barrel chest, and athick, short neck--are what make a champion fighting dog. In fact,these things are usually a detriment to performance. In any case, youcannot tell by looking at an APBT whether it will be a champion fighteror not. The extent of its gameness, the single most important componentof an APBT's fighting prowess, is not a visible quality.Please, no flames. This is not meant to be an apology for dog fighting.My only point is that performance breeding is historically prior to,and not at all enhanced by, conformation breeding. Conformation breedingcan very well complicate the challenge of performance breeding since itadds an extraneous criterion: the breeder must not only breed the dogsup to snuff performance-wise, but must also please the show judge whois enforcing an ideal that changes with the winds of fashion. Performancebreeding and conformation breeding are both selective methods of breedingbut they should not be confused with one another.

 

Well people also ASSumue when talking about Conformation and a dog having good or bad automatic think of show dogs or comparing them and this is not the case at all.

A pit dog NEEDS and should be to historical standard to excel at his highest potential.

But this does not mean a man made set of guidelines of what is and is not PRETTY!!

Being Pretty (in mans eyes) and and being Conformationally correct (in a historical context) can differ widely.

 

BR, correct me if I'm wrong but the adba conformation standard and the historical standard are completely different,rite...

 

Read TDK's post in the thread "Pit Dog Conformation"

IMO if the judge is a good one then NO...

AKC and UKC yes.

 

Very Good Post!!!

 

back to the top.....

 

nice topic,performance vs conformation, two different dogs for two different people.

 

tdk he got high drive so he game lol