I'm throwing this out there, especially for people who have experience with breeding. For the past two years, I've been reading up a lot on nutrition, traditional eating (Yes, I'm a Grok fan ) and epigenetics--how environment, and especially nutrition, affect the expression of genes. I've even read the research and observations by Weston Price, who first really recorded how nutrition affected bone structure (specifically the jaw and teeth). It got me thinking about how some breeds of dogs have SO many health issues, like breeds known to be very prone to cancer or allergies. It also got me thinking about the raw/BARF diets for dogs, which would be the canine version of the ancestral eating trends people are starting to explore.
It makes sense to me that if poor nutrition produces human children with narrow jaws, crowded teeth, narrow, obstructed nasal passages and poorly developed hip bones, then poor nutrition in dogs would produce similar structure problems. I know dogs have the added component of selective breeding in their background, but is it possible that some problems that have been viewed as genetic are actually epigenetic and could be improved through a few generations of really optimal, raw feeding?

Well, I looked up epigenetic on Wikipedia and even though I have a pretty strong science background I couldn't grasp it.

Sounds to me like thinking if you dock tails on dogs with naturally long tails, after enough generations some will be born without tails. That doesn't happen. I mean, you cannot effect genetic change that will be passed on by anything you do to the body.

So while I think a good diet can bring out the best in dogs, I don't think it can change the genes.

Betty, strange but true, this broke big in the science community by studying Dutch women who were starved by Hitler in WWII, there were some vague unproven theories about it prior to this event but this rocked the science world.

the (human) babies born under starvation conditions seemed to throw undersize babies into subsequent generations even if the original starved mothers were large women from large parents etc.

been awhile since I looked at this stuff but I think that is the general gist of it.

I am sure if you are interested you will find a link to it.

I think the falicy in this could be that historically dogs have never really had optimal diets. They were fed leftovers, ofal and table scraps. They've been oppotunistic scavangers for a really, really long time now. Some eople in some situations worked to give their dogs the best. But even then the "best" was varied due to culture (for instance sheepdogs might eat very good for dogs but it was still grains, a bit of milk and ofal from butchering) and the idea of providing optimal nutrition for a dog is fairly new.

Mara, that is a great point.