Double muscled whippets

[labsnlurchers 39]

so is the one gene muscled dog as fast as a normal whippet? obviously the double gene one wont be but how does the single gene dog compare?

single gene is faster than a normal whippet mate

[thurso jack 3]

so is the one gene muscled dog as fast as a normal whippet? obviously the double gene one wont be but how does the single gene dog compare?

single gene is faster than a normal whippet mate

 

 

and are all the single gene pups single genes or do you only get 1 or 2 in a litter?

[labsnlurchers 39]

so is the one gene muscled dog as fast as a normal whippet? obviously the double gene one wont be but how does the single gene dog compare?

single gene is faster than a normal whippet mate

 

 

and are all the single gene pups single genes or do you only get 1 or 2 in a litter?

depends what you crossing, ive got a diagram somwhere that explains it, bear with me while i find it

[labsnlurchers 39]

On average

bully to bully = 100% bully pups

bully to normal = 100% of pups have 1 copy (fast)

fast to fast = 25% of the litter is bully, 25% normal and 50% fast

fast to bully = 50:50

 

[kent scotty 0]

are they ust quicker but get knackered faster? cant see something with that much muscle being all that in the stamina stakes? ok for racing but maybe would cramped or use up to much energy for long working days? maybe i'm wrong as most state that bull x's are good on stamina! its just all the body builders i know get knackered and there muscles bur pretty quick.

 

 

scotty

[thurso jack 3]

so if you breed bully to normal you get a fast type? if so theres a lad in a village near me with a bully

[labsnlurchers 39]

so if you breed bully to normal you get a fast type? if so theres a lad in a village near me with a bully

yep, bully to normal = 100% fast

just be 100% on what your breeding a bully to, make sure you know it hasnt got a copy of the bully gene otherwise youll end up with alot of 'wendies' lol!

Im not sure what would happen if you crossed it to a lurcher with no whippet in it???Dont know if the one bully gene will be passed on and expressed in the offspring, i would think that it would be though.

[Kat 3]

The man who owns the one I posted told me it was meant to race but is only good for a short while then flags rapidly so they just kept it as a pet. Its a weird creature to watch run.. its dainty on its feet but moves like a walrus lol

[labsnlurchers 39]

The man who owns the one I posted told me it was meant to race but is only good for a short while then flags rapidly so they just kept it as a pet. Its a weird creature to watch run.. its dainty on its feet but moves like a walrus lol

yeah the ones with two copies of the gene (the bully ones) are massively overmuscled, can imagine their agility would be severly effected!

[bullmastiff 615]

Tend to find a "bully" whippet cannot stick the pace and is slower than the half/half whippets. There have been a few in the racing and for the majority 150yds is just too far for them and they will drop off behind at about -100yds. Bully's can also tend to be more susceptable to cramps, the same amount of blood as a non-bully trying to carry the same amount of oxygen around two or three times more muscle cells.

 

Note: Not to be confused with Bull x Ghd or Bull x Whippet.

 

 

Even though I know nothing about Whippets, I do know that big dogs and little dogs don't have the same amount of blood! They produce the amount of blood required by the body(hence the fact you can donate it!). With muscles of that size their probably carrying pints more than a standard Whippet! Even things like veins would be much larger due to the blood flow to the larger muscles(compare a guys forearm to that of a woman)

One thing though you would of thought they'd have quite high blood pressures? (when the muscles contract and force the blood back into the veins)

I believe cramps are caused mainly by the build up of lactic acid in the muscles.

JMO

 

Luke.

[Adam-RunningDog 1]

me and my father had a chat and we where looking at this and i am really interested and would love a fast cross, the bullies are just to much but if i could find a breeder would be amazing but if anyone heares of any fast whippets being sold please contact me most apreciated

[labsnlurchers 39]

me and my father had a chat and we where looking at this and i am really interested and would love a fast cross, the bullies are just to much but if i could find a breeder would be amazing but if anyone heares of any fast whippets being sold please contact me most apreciated

 

thurso jack knows of a bully whippet, try contacting him to see if there are any plans to breed?

[halfmoongh 0]

Carriers are not generally any faster than a non-carrier. Someone said that without having a clue. Ask anyone in race whippets in the US who's in the know and they all know it is not true.

 

A bully whippet is not usually capable of running, let alone racing, they are not faster or stronger, they are often in pain from cramping.

 

Heather

+++++++++++++++++++

 

its a genetic mutation where their muscles double up so they are potentially faster and stronger. if they have one copy of the gene they are 'fast' if they have two they are 'bullies'

[halfmoongh 0]

No, it absolutely does not mean that. That NY Times things is not true.

 

No one is breeding affected dogs on purpose so that is not true. You would not breed a bully to another dog!

 

Many of the fastest whippets do not even carry a copy of the gene mutation.

 

I will try to have Jen Jenson, the person who helped get the test developed join this list and share the proven facts with this thread.

 

Heather

 

quote name='thurso jack' date='Oct 28 2008, 04:24 PM' post='734386']

so if you breed bully to normal you get a fast type? if so theres a lad in a village near me with a bully

[Jensen 0]

Hi all,

 

My name is Jen Jensen; Heather asked me to join up and fill in some of the blanks on the double muscled whippet. I was the person who initially contacted the Ostrander Lab about the bully whippets and then worked on getting a genetic test developed.

 

I'm not sure where to start...maybe with the "carriers are faster" thing. The sample size of the original study was extremely small, less than 100 whippets used to establish that "carriers are faster than non-carriers". That alone makes the results a little dodgy. Additionally, there are four different racing organisations in North America and the study used dogs who ran in only one of the organisations. That automatically removed most of the West Coast dogs from the study and most of the show-bred dogs. The show-bred dogs are generally D dogs and, insofar as pedigrees are concerned, the West Coast dogs are generally the fastest. The Ostrander Lab folk wouldn't know that but, by using only that one racing organisation, they skewed their results towards "the fast dogs are carriers" idea.

 

We've now had a test available for almost a year. Since that time, the whippet racing community has been testing their dogs and (more importantly) sharing their dogs' test results with the rest of the community. I've been tracking test results in my pedigree database and, with results for over 200 dogs (in other words, roughly three times the sample size used in the original study), it does not appear that carriers are faster than non-carriers. In a sample of mostly race-bred whippets, the percentage of carriers stays about the same, regardless of the dogs' speed.

 

As for amount of muscling, Wendy's breeder calls her "the mother of all bullies". She is pretty much the most extreme example of double muscling one could imagine. It was her birth that prompted her breeder and me to start looking into the whole issue (I own a half-brother of hers and am a friend of her breeder). Without Wendy and her owner, it's unlikely we would have got so much accomplished so quickly. Wendy was made available for a myriad of tests and donated more than a few vials of her blood for various scientific works.

 

She really does look like that and no, she doesn't take steroids. Like other DM whippets, she suffers from cramping, sometimes severely. It really depends on the individual dog. As far as I know, the heart is not affected by the myostatin mutation; myostatin is involved in the formation of striated muscle tissue (voluntary muscles) and all organs (heart, diaphragm, and other involuntary muscles) are made up of smooth muscle tissue.

 

Myostatin is not the only substance affecting muscle development and so the amount of muscling in carriers and affected whippets varies widely. The photos published in the original study (and reproduced here) are a little misleading. Of the non-carriers (the left-hand column), the top and bottom dog are race-bred whippets from Europe. I own the dog in the upper left photo; that photo was taken when he was a year old so not yet fully developed. Even though the myostatin mutation also exists in the European gene pool, European racing whippets are smaller and slighter than their North American cousins. Additionally, the dog in the lower left photo was around 8 or 9 when that photo was taken; needless to say, he wasn't in his prime as far as muscle definition goes. The third non-carrier is a show-bred dog; they are also much slighter than dogs bred for racing. The photos of the three carrier dogs (centre column of photos) were all taken while the dogs were at the peak of their racing careers. They don't look much different than non-carriers at the peak of their careers.

 

As an example of this, here are photos of two of my dogs; one is a carrier and one is not.

 

The first:

 

 

 

And the second:

 

 

 

As you can see, the fawn dog (Tighe) is more heavily muscled than the black dog (Dayton). Tighe is NOT a carrier and Dayton is (he is, in fact, Wendy's half-brother).

 

Labsnlurchers, yes you've got the inheritance of the gene correct and yes, you could breed a DM whippet to a non-carrier to get an entire litter of carriers. However, there wouldn't be any benefit to it as, once you look at a larger sample size, it's pretty clear that carrier-status does not necessarily make a dog faster against other dogs.

 

As far as dogs are concerned, the gene has only been identified in whippets. It also occurs in cattle, mice, and humans.

 

I don't know of any North American whippet breeders who are interested in producing DM whippets. All the race breeders I know have tested their breeding stock and will NOT perform any breeding between two carriers.

 

I hope that answered some questions for you all. If there's anything else you'd like to know, just ask.