Humans cannot be directly parallelled to animals as, apparently, our gene pool is far smaller but, Yes, I would say possibly with that family all that happened was that two parts of a defective gene were automatically doubled up on and the poor wee mite has paid the price. Little ones like that earn their Angel Wings here, they pass straight to God's side, I really do believe. I nursed a sweetheart with a specific syndrome who sounds very similar to this little one- no inbreeding, no first cousins, it just happened. It does make you wonder though, exactly what we are doing in our quest for "perfection". Dobes have no end of problems (Dobes, not mine specifically) vWD, Hd, PRA, you name it, it's got an initial and it shows up in pedigree dogs. My friends pack of hounds has NO hereditary unsoundness- NONE!!! They are Bassets (Grand Vendeen) already an unsound breed in "pedigree" form, NO UNSOUNDNESS in his pack. He breeds only for Hunting ability and soundness. As soon as you start breeding for anyhting else, the animal suffers, it seems.