Busting the myths about two Akitas

For the past year I have seen many times people talking about the background of two Akita breeds. Many times the facts about history are totally lost. I have seen many breeders and people who have big impact in Akita World talk about history with wrong facts and share those so called facts as truth for public. Here is some points I want to clear because this also effects me and my dogs.

"American Akitas were made at USA with crosbreeding to other breeds"
This is not true. All of the crossbreeding in the breed was made at Japan before those Akitas were imported to USA. All of the imported Akitas had papers in Nippo, JKC, AKIHO or AKIKYO, so they were registered and purebred with crossbred background. AKC closed the Akita register at 1974 and after that it was reopened at 1993. Between that time period there was no imports from Japan and they could bring new Akitas from Japan after 1993. There was no crossbreeding at USA. They just bred the breed to different direction than Japan.

"American Akita and Japanese Akita are totally different breeds with different background"
This is not true either. As I said previously all Akitas imported to USA were registered as Akita in Japan. Both breeds share the same history and same background. They are only different breeds by FCI and KC, but historically and genetically they are same breed but different lines. That's why crossbreeding between the two should be allowed as American lines are original lines of Akita and some were totally lost in Japan. As we know the biggest problem in Japanese Akitas is the too narrow genepool, so thinking now the breed separation almost 15 years ago wasn't the smartest thing to do.

"You can not get anything good enough from crossing the two Akita types"
Incorrect again. By gene studies these two breeds are actually a same breed but different types and lines. They do have some differences on the genes what they carry. My boy Lemmy is a cross between the two lines and by MDD genotyping we have seen that he is an Japanese Akita and he have bigger variety in genes. From this I have the written statement from the testing company. Japanese Akitas have many health issues what are related to narrow genepool. Dogs with different genes are VERY valuable to the whole breed. But people need to understand that crossing between the two Akitas is not an actual crossbreeding to another breed, it is a cross between the two types.

Lemmy's graph in MyDogDNA

"Crossing between the two types does not save the situation"
This is true but it does help. We need to keep the genepool wide as possible and it doesn't help the breed to survive in long term if we leave dogs with different genes but not the right look out from the breeding. The type is one of the most easiest things to breed back and there is several samples of this in the dog world. Plus the right and original type of Akita have been lost long time ago and now it is too much a show dog with fluffy face, too small eyes, stick legs and a banana back. Akita as a breed will need a total cross to other breeds to survive.

Here is some of the points what came to my mind and have been bothering me for a long time. If you are interested on breed history, go see Loren Egland's web page www.northlandakitas.com where you can find many articles about Akita history. Most of the articles are written by great Japanese Breeds historian Mr. Mutsuo Okada and translated by Dr. Tatsuo Kimura. These gentleman have been great help to me in the journey to understand this breed better. 

Lemmygate

Suomen Kennelliiton jalostustieteellinen toimikunta käsitteli kokouksessaan 11.3.2014 Suomen Nihonken ry:n esityksen koskien koirani Lemmyn (Reliance’s Ace of Spades) rekisteröintiä. Kyseinen yhdistys halusi Lemmyn rekisteröitäväksi amerikanakitaksi. Perustelut heillä oli vähän niin ja näin, niitä sen tarkemmin erittelemättä ja mukana oli paljon virheellistäkin tietoa. Kirjoitin luonnollisesti JTT:lle asiasta oman vastineeni, missä selvensin Lemmyn sukua ja muuta taustaa. Vastineessani kuvaannollistin myös Lemmyn ulkonäköä verraten rotumme muihin edustajiin ja rotumääritelmään. Lisäksi pyysin Genoscoperilta lausunnon koskien Lemmyn omia MDD-tuloksia  (MyDogDNA) ja mitä rodun geneettisestä tilanteesta on selvinnyt tähän mennessä tutkittujen koirien myötä. Kennelliitolta laitettiin lausuntopyyntö myös rodun viralliselle rotuyhdistykselle, eli Akita ry:lle minun pyynnöstäni, koska tätä heillä ei aiemmin ollut.

Itse en nähnyt mitään järkevää syytä sille, miksi Lemmy olisi pitänyt siirtää amerikanakitaksi. Sen piirteissä on toki asioita mitä se on äidiltään perinyt, mutta jos kokonaiskuvaa katsoo, niin kokonsa ja rakenteensa puolesta se on enemmän akita kuin amerikanakita. Siksi ehdotinkin kompromissina sitä, että Lemmy siirrettäisiin akitojen ER-rekisteriin.

Vasemmalla kuva akitan rotumääritelmästä ja oikealla kuva Lemmystä

Joten summa summarum..

JTT:n päätös 11.3.2014 (3/2014):

Koirarekisteriohjeen kohdan 11 mukaisesti koiran RELIANCE'S ACE OF SPADES rekisteröinti korjataan niin, että risteytystaustaisena se on ER-rekisterissä.

” ER-rekisterillä tarkoitetaan erikoisrekisteriä koirille, jotka eivät täytä kaikkia FI-rekisteröintiehtoja.” (SKL, koirarekisteriohje 2014, kohta 11.1 ER-rekisteri). ER-rekisteri on siis tarkoitettu sellaisille koirille joilla on esimerkiksi risteytystausta (kuten Lemmy) tai koirille, jotka tulevat rekistereistä mitä FCI ei hyväksy (kuten AKIHO koirat, esimerkiksi meidän Raj oli ER-rekisterissä).

Monella tuntuu olevan käsitys, että kuvittelen blend-linjojen käytön jalostuksessa olevan jotenkin oikotie onneen. Sitä se ei todellakaan ole. Mutta koska tarkoitus on pitää akitan geneettinen monimuotoisuus mahdollisimman laajana näen hyvin tärkeäksi myös tälläisten ”sekalinjaisten” jalostuskäytön.  Amerikanakita ja akita omaavat kaikki samat kantakoirat, niiden jalostus vain lähti eri suuntiin Yhdysvalloissa ja Japanissa 70-luvulla. Linjat ovat pysyneet erillään ja niihin on muodostunut oma geeniperimänsä. Valitettavasti rotujaon jälkeen nämä melkeinpä järjestään jätettiin pois jalostuksesta Suomessa ja muualla Euroopassa, mikä kavensi geenipoolia rodussa entistä enemmän.  Jotta akitan perimästä saataisiin riittävän monimuotoinen ja päästäisiin eroon rotua vaivaavista AI-ongelmista ratkaisujen tulisi olla paljon radikaalimpia. Tulevaisuudessa tulisi tehdä risteytysohjelma akitalle yhdessä Suomen Kennelliiton jalostustieteellisen toimikunnan kanssa. Risteytyksiä olisi hyvä olla useita ja myös useaan eri rotuun, kuten kromfohrländereiden risteytysohjelmassa tehtiin.

And the short version in English, sorry about this, but I bet you can get the idea using the Google translator.

The breeding committee of the Finnish Kennel Club has decided in their meeting at March 11st 2014, Helsinki that Akita dog RELIANCE'S ACE OF SPADES will be transfered from FI-register to ER-register. ER-registered dog is eligible to use for breeding or attend dog shows and official trials, however it cannot be awarded a CACIB or an International Champion title.

Sleep well my love

It took me long time to do and write this. I still miss my Grand Old man so much it hurts to think.

He was the dog of my life. The dog who changed it all. We had lots of ups and downs but we get trough it all. He was brave and fearless and all those things what Akitas should be. He loved people and people loved him back. I have many friends who have wept with me now that he is gone. He will be missed always.

Goodbye my love, I wish you sleep well without any pains.

MyDogDNA and Akitas

Finally we have some public graphs for Akitas in MyDogDNA! Here is link for that.
As you can see, we still need much more tested dogs to get graphs working better. But you can see some important things even from this information.
Most of the tested Akitas are from different lines and there is some blends tested also. All are quite close to each other genetically, even the blends. But the blends have bigger individual heterozygosity than pure Akitas. My Lemmy boy have 26,1% heterozygosity when median for Akitas is 20,6% (this is the situation at 3.11.2013). So he have the biggest diversity in tested Akitas at the moment. Our grand old man Raj have 21,6% heterozygosity, what is better than the median in the breed. That is quite well considering that his 10. generation COI is 8,6%. He might be also the oldest of tested dogs, so this can explain his amount of heterozygosity. Generation after generation the amount of inbreeding will rise in closed populations, so naturally the older generations tend to have wider genepool. Or he can just be lucky and get different genes from his parents! We are still waiting Paavo's results, so I can't say anything about her.
Genetic relationships graph is not working very well at the moment. I asked about it from Genoscoper (the company who offers MDD test) and they explained to me that the graphs are hard to read for now and we need more tested  dogs to make the graph more clear. At the moment Lemmy is quite close to some AKIHO lined dogs, what is kinda hilarious.
This is just a fast note, school is keeping me very busy but I try to write more analysis from the MDD information in the future. If you are interested about the MDD test, please check out this page http://www.mydogdna.com/

Lemmy's genetic diversity

Raj's genetic diversity

Introduction to the genetic situation of Akitas

Before we can understand the health situation of Akitas, we need to understand basic genetics. Genes make all living organisms, including man, work. I could explain about genes, alleles, and genomes but let's keep this very simple. The health issues of Akitas are mostly autoimmune problems like SA (sebaceous adenitis) and VKH/UDS (Vogt-Koyanagi-Harada disease/uveodermatologic syndrome) and lesser problems including allergies and hypothyroidism. Dogs have over 25,000 different genes, but there is one area in all our genes that makes the immune system work. In humans this is called the MHC area (major histocompatibility complex) and in dogs this is called the DLA area (dog leukocyte antigen). The best example to describe this system when it's working well is a full symphony orchestra with all the different instruments. A good immune system has it all and can play awesome music!

It's very hard to study autoimmune diseases and find a solution. Many studies before and now have shown that it's almost impossible to find one common genetic factor among sick dogs with SA and VKH/UDS. There's no one bad gene that makes these dogs sick; past studies have shown that there are multiple genes behind these diseases. When we narrow genetic diversity, things can go badly wrong and the chance to get bad genes is very high.

In the history of dogs there have been many genetic bottlenecks, starting when dogs separated from wolves and domestication started, over 10 000 years ago. Each of these genetic bottlenecks will take some instruments away from our well-working symphony orchestra, and we're not getting them back. Once you lose these genes, you can't get them back in a closed population. Let's think about Akitas. We could say our first genetic bottleneck was after World War II when the Japanese started to rebuild the breed with the few Akitas left after the war. Let's say then we lost the brass section of our orchestra by the genetic bottleneck. Closing the registry and making Akitas an official breed also made us lose some parts of our orchestra and stopped the process where we could get new genetic material from different populations.

The next biggest bottleneck came when the Japanese established the breed. In making the type stable, they chose only three colors from all they used to have (look at American Akitas and you see the color range). This was when we lost the woodwind section from our genetic symphony orchestra. We can already hear that the music this orchestra makes is not right, but we can still hear and recognize the new music, though it is not so marvelous as it used to be.

Now we move to the golden 90s, where it was natural to use only popular show-winning sires for breeding. This effect can be seen in every Japanese Akita pedigree when you see ten or more generations. With Akitas this popular sire was Ise Unryu No Ise Meiwa Kensha, who is now behind all Japanese Akitas. In most pedigrees this dog can be found several times. The use of popular sires makes us lose the string section of the glorious symphony orchestra. Now we can clearly see that things are not working, and we are losing other orchestra sections one by one and never getting them back. The music is not great anymore: you can still tell which song they are playing, but the power and glory are gone and the orchestra struggles to play. This is the genetic situation with Akitas and many other breeds at the moment.

Many people think you should see clear signs of inbreeding, like this funny banjo-playing dog, or like more dead, seriously ill, or retarded dogs. But inbreeding is not like that: the signs are smaller, like more allergies, more autoimmune issues, and more breeding problems. All this comes because we are losing genetic diversity and our immune system orchestra is not working right.

So what can we do now? We can't get the lost genes back in a closed population. We can try to find lines that have been lost and not used that much, but the fact is these problems are old problems. Early Akita breeders in the USA remember these same problems from the start, and lines didn't matter. Because these health problems can be found in both Akita breeds, we can say the problem started at an early stage of the breed's history, and we surely have not made the situation better. But does this mean the breed is dying? Most likely not, but the health situation will only get worse with closed population breeding. We can try to monitor the genetic situation with gene testing and try to keep all the instruments playing in our orchestra, but that won't let it play the marvelous music again.

The solution to this problem is very simple: we need to outcross. This means we need to crossbreed the Akita to another breed or breeds to get more genetic diversity--more instruments to play in the orchestra of the immune system. Crossbreeding is the only way to get it all done, because you can’t get new genetic material after the breed register is closed. It's a scientific fact that in time all closed populations start to show signs of inbreeding depression (e.g., autoimmune and breeding problems). This happens not only with domesticated animals but can be seen in nature with wild animals, too.

If we want to keep this breed alive and healthy, we need to be creative with solutions. We need to rebuild the breed genetically and continue to breed with close monitoring of genes (We can’t do just random crosses..). Luckily these days we have good tools for that with gene testing and health tests. One of the biggest factors is that breeders need to be open about health issues and not hide them. It is always better to know the problems before you make your breeding choices than to find out afterwards.   

This text was inspired by my conversation with Dr Niels Pedersen at the University of California, Davis. Big thanks to him for taking the time to talk with us Akita fanciers!

This article have also been published in Akita Unleashed and in German 

Kuulumisia pitkästä aikaa!

Kesä on mennyt vauhdikkaasti eteenpäin, kun aika on mennyt kulkiessa työharjoittelussa MTT Maaningalla. On tuota toki muutakin tullut tehtyä kuin vain töissä käytyä! Kesäkuussa tuli piipahdettua toisella puolella maapalloa San Franciscossa (tai tarkemmin sanottuna oleskelin Richmondin puolella, mutta kuitenkin!). Kävin vierailemassa hyvän ystäväni Linda Wrothin luona, jolla on takana pitkä historia akita rescuen kanssa Yhdysvalloissa. Linda on myös tehnyt paljon töitä akitojen erilaisten geenitutkimuksien ja terveyden parantamisen eteen. Voi siis vain kuvitella kuinka mielenkiintoinen vierailuni oli! Päivät meni koirista puhuessa ja historiaa läpi käydessä. Tapasin myös Susan Duncanin, joka on todella pitkän uran tehnyt akitakasvattaja, ensimmäinen akita Susanin perheeseen tuli heidän Japanissa asuessaan 60-luvulla. Lounaalle Susan toikin mukanaan matkalaukullisen valokuvia katseltavaksi .  Reissun päätarkoitus oli kuitenkin vierailla UC Davisissa ja tavata tohtori Niels Pedersen. Yllättäen puheenaiheena oli akitat ja niiden terveydentilanne. Tästä tulee hyvin pian ihan erillistä artikkelia lontooksi kirjoitettuna.

Legendaarinen Golden Gate

Tänä kesänä saatiin myös rakennettua koiralapsille ulkotarhakin, niin ei aika tule pitkäksi minun töissä käydessä. Tarha on rakennettu vanhan tallin yhteyteen, mihin pääsevät myös sisälle todella viileisiin oltaviin halutessaan. Luonnollisesti prinsessa Paavolle on siellä myös oma sänky, kun ei sitä voi matolla tai koiranpedillä nukkua. Pyh. Tarhan tärkeys tuli esille varsin hyvin kun mökkeilemässä olimme koko perhe kaikkine koirinemme. Eihän niitä ollutkaan täällä silloin kuin kuusi kappaletta! Rotuina brasilianterrieri, dogo argentino, petit basset griffon vendeen ja sitten nuo akitakset.

Tarha vielä rakennusvaiheessa

Nakupelle Paavo nauttii uudesta lukaalistaan

Viikko takaperin myös järjestettii n täällä meillä Akita ry:n SawoPäivät akitaharrastajille, missä teemana oli verijälki. Koirat menivät jäljellä todella hyvin, vaikka kuuma oli keli! Seura oli myös mitä mainiointa ja keskustelun aiheita riitti laidasta laitaan, myös koirajuttujen ulkopuolelle (uskokaa tai älkää..). Keräsin myös kaikki akitoihin liittyvät tavarat ja kirjat isolle pöydälle esille ja rehellisesti sanottuna yllätyin siitä määrästä tavaraa mitä olen vuosien mittaan itselleni kerännyt. Paljon kyllä tuli mukana ihan viime reissulta Yhdysvaltoihin ja lisää sieltä on tulossa ainakin lehtien muodossa. Suosittelen jokaiselle akitan omistajalle ja sellaisen hankintaa suunnittelevalle lukemaan Akita World lehtiä ja jos niitä ei mistään käsiin saa niin Loren Eglandin (Northland Akitas) kotisivuilta tätä historiatietoa löytyy todella paljon kuvien kera http://www.northlandakitas.com/  

Oikein hyvää loppukesää kaikille!!

And same in Enlighs.. or atleast the main points! 

I have had really busy summer while doing my internship at research farm in Maaninka. Though I have not been working for whole summer. At June I went to visit my dear friend Linda Wroth to San Francisco and I must say it was one of the best trips I have ever made. Linda have long history with Akitas so you can guess how we spend our time! I also met Susan Duncan on my trip and really enjoyed meeting her! Susan took suitcase full of pictures to our lunch. So much information and knowledge about the Akita history. My main focus on that trip was to meet Dr Niels Pedersen and talk about situation with Akitas. There is coming bigger article about this later in English. 

Foggy trees up in the hills in Berkeley 

In this summer we also build the new kennel area for the dogs, so they can spend their time outside while I'm working. Not so boring for them! It came out nicely and Paavo and Lemmy have been enjoying it. 

Week ago we also had Akita meeting in my house and it all went really well. We did some blood tracking with the dogs and all of them did really well! I also made table for all my Akita things and I noticed that I have collected so much stuff! Well most of it came with me from the US visits. I recommend Akita World magazines to all Akita people, there is so much good information. If you can't get the magazines, go visit Loren Egland's webpage (Northland Akitas) http://www.northlandakitas.com/

I hope you all have really nice summer!!  

Lemmy's relatives at USA

Here is some of Lemmy's close relatives. Going to add more of them in the future! :)

Father - "Smoke" J&G's Reign of Fire

 http://www.baycrestakitas.com/chsmoke.cfm

Mother - "Melody" Sondaisa's Waer Ur Holster With Style
(Mel was shedding when I was visiting so no pose picture about her :D )
http://media.breeders.net/breeder_images_large/1/14/143/143595_1319812067.jpg

Other relatives
Kingdomhouse Mercury Rising - Nike http://kingdomhouseakitas.shutterfly.com/nike

Baycrest's Life's A Beach - Piper http://kingdomhouseakitas.shutterfly.com/piper

You Too's Promised Land - Sadie http://kingdomhouseakitas.shutterfly.com/pictures            

Monumental's AkeyTa The Future – Keeper http://baycrestakitas.com/chkeeper.cfm

Sondaisa's Fyre When Ready  – Holster http://www.westminsterkennelclub.org/2013/photos/breed/WS31417701.jpg

Father's sister – Lil http://www.baycrestakitas.com/lil.cfm

Father's sister – Swirl http://kingdomhouseakitas.shutterfly.com/swirl           

Father's sister – Fiji http://kingdomhouseakitas.shutterfly.com/fiji

Great uncle - Titan http://www.baycrestakitas.com/chtitan.cfm

And let's not forget Lemmy's worldwide famous great uncle, Forrest. He played old Hachiko in the movie http://www.imdb.com/media/rm3723134208/tt1028532

More mother's relatives you can find at http://www.sondaisakitas.com/