THE GREAT BREEDERS MR. LUKEY AND MR. THOMPSON. IQ3 



It is certain that many mongrel dogs are troubled with 

 them ; and this deformity is not merely confined to the canine 

 race. At the present time I have a male kitten which has 

 double thumb claws and dewclaws as well ; his mother has a 

 redundancy of toes : her mother had double dewclaws, but 

 the thumb claws were single, yet the nail or claw in each 

 was double. 



I see no advantage in disqualifying an otherwise good dog 

 because he has dewclaws, but have noticed that both mastiffs 

 and St. Bernards with them are usually less straight in their 

 hind legs than dogs without them. The so called cat hams 

 being very common to dogs with dewclaws. In the St. 

 Bernard this deformity may amount to a characteristic of the 

 breed ; in the mastiff they are admissible, but should be bred 

 out. "Writers and fanciers who do not seem to know the 

 difterence between the old English mastiff and the Alpine 

 mastiff with its longer and wedge shaped head, may have no 

 objection to dewclaws. 



Mr. Thompson wrote, " 1 have seen mastiffs of exceptional 

 " character with more or less white on them, and think any 

 '.'judge ignoring a dog simply for this reason, would display 

 " fastidiousness to a fault, I even think that a dog which is 

 ' slightly hail shot about the ears and sides evidently shows 

 ' that he has been produced from stock carefully and closely 

 " bred. 



In this opinion Mr. Thompson stumbled closely on the 

 fact that in-breeding has a tendency to weaken the colouring 

 matter, and produce white patches or spots, but white spots 

 or patches are no sure proof of purity of blood, they merely de- 

 note chat close breeding has taken place. The bloodhound is 



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