Charlie my friend,
We may not have a problem with bad bites in the breed, but we certainly have a problem within many (most?) of our major trial lines these days. Even if the rate of bad bites within trial dogs is the same as the "general population", we are failing the breed.
Go back to the original post; when someone like Vern (with a longer history with trial-bred GSPs than the rest of us, even you) mentions that he's hearing about big name trial dogs and breeders that are breeding to, if not producing, dogs with bad bites the rest of us should take notice. And Vern isn't the only guy I know with 30+ years experience with trial dogs and trialers who's made the same observation; breeding a dog with a bad bite is no longer taboo among many trialers.
Bites are very obvious. If someone chooses to breed to a dog with a bad bite, well that's their choice. Like many genetic traits bites are polygenetic and recessive so you don't know with any certainty whether or not they will appear in the next or subsequent generations just because one parent has an off bite.
Well Charlie, the last dog I know of with a bad bite had a perfect bite until about 12 months, and then it went bad. This was from an amateur breeder who did everything right; sire and dam (and their siblings) had good bites and at least 3 of the 4 grandparents I'm certain had good bites.
Regardless, the ONLY way to reduce bad bites is to refuse to breed to dogs with bad bites and dogs that produce pups with bad bites. Is this foolproof? Nope, but it's the best option we have. And yes, I do know of dogs with such bad teeth due to crossbites where they can only be fed mush, or have had teeth pulled to prevent breakage and infection. We owe our senior dogs a better life than that.
And for the record, I know of at least 1 litter that recently came about due to the publicity of a FC from this board. Owner of the female didn't know that the sire has a crossbite, and when informed of this (after the litter hit the ground) was amazed that the owner of the sire would stud out a dog with a bad bite, or at least didn't disclose it. The general public assumes that trialers, who lecture them about the superiority of a trial-bred dog, know better than to breed a dog with a bad bite.
And let's face it; it's not just about bad bites. If a breeder is willing to accept bad bites "to give them the best chance of producing winners" what else are they willing to accept? I find it hard to believe that someone willing to sneak a pointer in is going to worry about bad bites. There's been a lot of cr*p bred into our breed under the guise of "producing winners" and "improving the breed".
Now, there are folks who'd rather these threads not appear. I've gotten a few emails about how "this needs to be kept private","this is giving us a bad name" and "this is giving anti-trialers ammo".
Well guess what folks, we've earned it!
JMO,
Dave