What Must be Done to Ensure the Health of the Uga Mascot Line?

Sooner or later, that demand for purity of the blood line is going manifest itself in bad ways.

Health and longevity must trump bloodline and color. I don’t know if those are choices that must be made, but if they are, I firmly believe that no amount of risk to health and longevity should be carried to preserve lineage from the original Uga and pure whiteness.

they take dog shows as seriously as we take college football.

… but to me, the most notable change from the previous line to the most recent 2 Uga’s has been their energy level. I mean, Uga V was famous for regularly roughhousing with Hairy Dawg all the time on the sidelines, and I don’t have to remind anyone of his most famous energetic moment.

Uga’s VI, VII, and VIII all seemed much more lugubrious on the sidelines; content to perch themselves inside their doghouses (or on top of their ice packs) for virtually all of every game.

I would feel much more confident about the next Uga, whomever he is, if he has an energetic, friendly personality instead of a somiferous, aloof air.

I think it’s important that Uga remain a lineage mascot, but I don’t think it’s important that he remain monochromatic, and, like mbrd71, I don’t think maintaining the bloodline requires inbreeding.

While I know the policy on color has nothing to do with racial matters, it always makes me wince whenever it is mentioned that Uga represents a tradition of being all white at the University of Georgia since the mid-1950s. It’s coincidental, I realize, but it’s bothersome, nonetheless. Besides, a brown spot here or there didn’t detract from Russ in any way that matters to the fan base, and, as noted above, other qualities are much more important in a mascot than being solid white. I know of no one who would choose a short-lived pure white mascot over a mascot with a brown spot on his back or ear who reigned for a decade.

Magical Munson Woods, while being too young yet to ascend to the throne, is a part of the Uga bloodline; basically, if a dog has papers tracing his bloodline back to a previous Uga, he’s part of the bloodline. I’m perfectly all right with a great-grandson of Uga VI becoming Uga IX, even if he isn’t the grandson of Uga VII or the son of Uga VIII. Bringing in fresh blood—-literally, rather than merely figuratively—-makes good sense genetically, and, if his ancestry is traceable back to an earlier Uga, his claim to heirship is legitimate, even if the degrees of consanguinity are greater in number. They’ve gotten British monarchs that way, haven’t they?

In short, I believe we are able to have our cake and eat it, too, if we allow the line to branch out, enabling us to take advantage of the benefits of greater variety in breeding while still taking our mascots from the same family tree, albeit from more distant branches.

So we’re going to import a dog from Germany?

/House of Saxe-Coburg’ed