Maybe someone will prove me wrong, but I think the horse coloring bit is pure old wives' tale. I've worked with God knows how many pinto horses over the years and I've never noticed a consistent link between less pigment and more crazy. I will say that there are horse breeders who are going for flashy coloring at without regard for other attributes, and they tend to produce horses with less sound minds, but that's because they're breeding for looks without taking temperament into account.

 

Little suspect of the blog due to the temperament of dalmations is because of the coat color? Thought that was prove wrong a while back.
Also like how he ignores people who post logical arguments but response to people who call him a idiot.

 

His article doesn't state that the coat colour itself is the cause of the problems, but that breeding for the coat colour is. My interpretation of that is this: the gene responsible for high amounts of white is close to the gene that regulates/triggers/is associated with the temperament problem and another one that is related to deafness. If those genes are all on the same chromosome, and close together, when you selectively breed for one of them, you end up getting whatever is on the other two, and if either one of the adjacent genes has a detrimental mutation, that mutation will be passed along as people continue to select for the white coat. The article states that dalmations have a strong founder's effect (i.e. all current dalmatians trace back to a very small number of dogs); it is logical to me that due to the (possible) close proximity to the "white" gene, that a detrimental mutation showing up on either of those adjacent genes in even one dog in the founding population would get carried through the population.

Not saying that IS what happened, but it could.

 

Dalmations have issues but I think Parus had it right. When you breed for extreems such as the dalmation coloring with disregard to things like temperment and genetic disorders you get really fun looking trainwrecks. This can be said about a lot of extreme breeds especially the popular ones.

Of course groups like the akc and dalmation club of America are a major contributors too. (Admittedly I'm going by the wikipedia article for my "facts" here)it seems insane that efforts like the Dalmatian-Pointer Backcross Project were not welcomed from the start...

 

Didn't read the article yet (although from your comments it sounds like I've read it in the past), but just wanted to say that dals have deafness issues because genetically their colour is extreme piebald (with Dalmatian spots as a modifyer of the ticking gene), and with EP, the reason for deafness is lack of pigment in the inner ear. There are multiple versions and causes of white coat on dogs, and the version dals have is the pigmentless version.

Because the white spots (or, rather, one big spot) are random (to a greater or lesser extent), some dogs will be born without pigment in the inner ear, which allows dogs (and cats) to hear.

Other breeds also suffer from this problem.

 

I do not really agree with the authors assumptions....

But the breed is a trainwreck..... Prior to Disney, prior to this... Prior to that.....

The breed has been a mess for longer than I have been around.