I intend to vote “yes” on the upcoming DCA ballot. The depth and intensity of the LUA debacle confounds and saddens me as it did the last time. I struggle to understand the intensity of the opposition to the LUA. I have actually heard Dal people questioning if the Uric Acid issue is a health problem in Dalmatians. I have heard of people severing friendships that had spanned decades over the LUA issue. But why?

In a broad sense, all domestic canines result from some form of human selection. When I worked on the original "A Review of Color in the Dalmatian" I came to the opinion that many of our Dalmatian recessive colors came from early breeders striving to reconstruct the Dalmatian breed after the major wars that raged across Europe and England. Read the history of the breed in any of the books on the breed. A hundred years ago they likely thought nothing of using whatever dog was available to provide the needed trait. The devastation of England in WW I and WWII did nothing to help the Dalmatian gene pool. Why else would the line, that the Dalmatian head should not resemble the head of the Bull Terrier, have existed in the earlier Dalmatian standard unless someone had not crossed to a bull terrier for bone? Where could we have gotten the long hair recessive? My bet would be from a cross long ago to an English Setter. In the introduction of Eleanor Frankling's The Dalmatian, published 1964, it states “Pedigrees were uncertain, breeders used dogs of any breed which seemed likely to be able to add some needed quality to their stock, there were no such things as shows and working ability was all that mattered.” She goes on further to state “We must accept the fact that we know nothing with any certainty about the Dalmatian origins.” With this background, I find it hard to believe the pointer cross brought anything to the Dalmatian that was not already in our gene pool, with the exception of the LUA gene.

--Cindy Ingalls Gootee