I want to bring up an important issue, the fact that MANY breeders and some geneticans don´t fully understand how genetics work regarding breeding of dogs. Many seems to think that strict linebreeding and close breedings are the way to go if you want healthy strong dogs. They say that close breedings brings health problems to the fore, and this is good becuse then they know what the hidden health problems in their breeding stock is. This strategy is completly wrong. To be able to use inbreeding as a tool to weed out defected genes from the breedingstock,whitout causing bigger problems then the one you are weeding out, you need lots of animals and several unrelated stocks, conditions that not is available in breeding with dogs. This is used in breeding whit plants where you have almost unlimited breedingstock. Some say that by breeding a line and then do an outcross you get hybrid vigor and that is true, but this only has positive effects on fertility and the immunesystem, NOT workingdrives, the offsprings are not going to have better workingdrives than the parents has, by introducing fresh blood in the line, the damage by the strict linebreeding is the only thing that is fixed. If we are looking for strong workingdrives, which depends on several pairs of genes, linebreeding whit outcrossing is complettly ineffective. You can´t keep such specific combinationseffects during a longer period of time. If you want to reach success in breeding for traits where many genes are involved,like workingdrives and character, you should use breedingdogs which raises the quality of the offspring independent of the origin off the breedingpartner. This is called the selection of the "general breedingvalue", as opposed to the "specific breedingvalue", the breedingeffect you could only get by a certain breedingcombination but not in general.
While the "general breedingvalue" is added for each generation so that the breedingstock grows stronger and stronger, the "specific breedingvalue" disappears as soon as you do a breeding outside the, for the moment, favourable combinations. When breeding for workingtraits by using close breedings and then outcross, you take just as many steps back in the outcrossing as you take forward in the linebreeding. The consequence of this is,as we also see quite a lot of, nothing positive happens in the workingability in several breeds.
When breeding for economic reasons like they do whit cattles and pigs, several thousands animals are gathered in a single breedingprogramm, and they breed different lines and then cross them to get hybrid vigor, which rise the fertility and therefore gives more money. Animals whit eventuall disfunctions they just slaughter, but still gets money for the meat. In the breeding of dogs the breedingstock is much smaller,and you can´t use a dog which has defected functions. When the breedingstock is limited, systematic crossingprogramms are a threat against the genetic future of the different breeds. You need lots of animals to not risk genetic failures. Linebreeding in already limited genepools are not a solution to create healthy dogs whith strong character, some carefully planned linebreeding maybe could be possible in large breeds whit lots of breedingstock, but DNA analyzis shows that many large breeds whit several thousands of dogs have an effective population of only about 100 dogs, which is a critical limit if a breed are going to stay healthy for a longer period of time. This is caused by to much line/inbreeding on a few dogs.
This is the biggest misstake we have done in breeding of dogs for the last 100 years, to overuse certain dogs, often studdogs. What is the solution for breeding healthy strong dogs? Well, the answear is simple, but demands consistency.
Never overuse certain breedingdogs, and never breed on dogs which shows defected functions. Weed out all animals from the breeding which doesn´t reach your goal for the breedingprogramm. This is the basic rules for selection which is followed in nature. There are no "magic tricks" in dogbreeding, but if we follow these simple rules, we have a good chance to create good dogs, and the problems whit sickness caused by defected genes would never be a serious problme because the genetic variation.
What we can learn from the science of genes is not exactly how to create perfect workingdogs, but we can learn what is absolutely wrong to do in a healthy breedingprogramm, and then linebreeding in already limited genepools are the biggest misstake.

That hurt my head....I wish someone could explain all that in english the normal non breeding guy could understand. How the heck did all you breeders learn this stuff? <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/confused.gif" alt="" />

Lonny,

Pick the very best dogs, based more on the dog first then the pedigree.

Don't compromize in your selection of breeding animals based on a good pedigree, but poor chacteritics in the dog.

Understand the limitations of the breeding program you are embarked on. Make sure that you have adequate genetic material to maintain strong working stock.

Don't over breed a few animals. If any one (or a few) dog(s) are over represented in the breed of dog, it is the same as only having one or two dogs to breed. The genetic material is basicly the same, it is just recurrent in many individuals.

See also: http://www.leerburg.com/ubb//ultimatebb.php?ubb=get_topic;f=6;t=000068

God thank you for Richard! Ok that I can understand, and it makes sense! See I never understood thsi Line breedign business... or inbreeding, like we don't "well most of us" don't inbreed, when it does occur many bad physical and mental problems occur... why would you do this with dogs? Does not the same thing happen to dogs as humans?

I'm going to read that thread you posted now.... then I will be back to ask questions. hahaha Your great Richard.. thanks alot for putting up with me.

Alright! Well I read thoes 400 pages of posts.... wow it is clear there is as many ways to breed as to train....so don't bother to answer my inbreeding question... got that covered, and understand. Thanks for the info... that was intresting, informative, touching, and aggraviting.... all the quality's I look for in a good discussion!

The basic types of dogs,sheperddogs,mollosers and so on, have existed for thousands of years. To divide dogs in lots of different breeds and then only breed strictly to dogs of same breed, is something that have been done in most cases only in about 50 years of time, only in a few cases more than 100 years. No animals are 100% free from defected genes, but in a large genepool the probability that two animals whit defected genes should meet and get offsspring are so small that it never cause any serious problems, if it should happen, the forces of nature takes care of this,an animal whit disfunctions can´t survive in nature, therefore don´t pass on his bad genes. Linebreeding is an easy way to fix the apperance of a dog, like color,coat and so on. When humans started divide dogs in breeds, they used this to fix the type of the different breeds, but now when type is already fixed we need to concentrate on not increase the level of inbreeding in each generation, by only using a few dogs in breeding. The health problems caused by defected genes in small genepools are already serious problems in some breeds, and more will be added to the list in a near future if breeders don´t change their methods of breeding. Research shows that MANY large breeds are breed in a way like breeders only have acces to about less than 1oo dogs. Breeders of workingdogs need to cooperate more to make sure that certain dogs aren´t beeing overused in breeding. Humans lust for competitions are also a threat to many breeds, popular showdogs are often breed to much, but also workingdogs because they have won a big workingcompetition. In many cases the difference between a dog which come at first place and a dog that comes on a 5th place are so small that they have equally breedingvalue, but many breeds to the winners, even if the only difference between the dogs are that the winner had a more skilled trainer. We need to see the difference between what is genetics and what is training, many dogs never have the chance to compete, but they could be excellent dogs.

Something that is beeing often discussed nowadays is to cross different breeds to increase the genepool. This should be done only with breeds that are similar in type and character. If you cross in some rotties in the dobermannns genepool and then cross back to dobes,after a few generations you have dogs that look like dobes, but now whit a bigger genepool. If we should have strict limits between different breeds which is very similar in type and character is also something to think about. My opinion is that the difference between a malinois and a dutch sheperd are so small that we don´t need to keep them seperated, crosses between these dogs are often done by the police in holland, health and temperament is the only thing workingdog breeders should work for, not details like color and other small differerences in apperance. By the way, I think these crosses looks nice to, malinois and GSD crosses are other options.

Then only valid argument to separate dogs in different breeds is that we know what to expect from a puppy when it´s old, size and temperament and so on. This is a very strong argument, therefore different breeds are needed. But we need a new thinking of the importance of keeping our breeds "pure", when the prize is so high in many breeds.

In many of the "younger" breeds, you will see bigger differences in type as a result of the different breeds used to "create" the breed. In some breeds, like the ABD, there are distinct lines of significantly different sizes. In others it isn't uncommon for there to be big differences in the dogs and have them still be with in the standard. There does seem to be some advantage in this variation in a breed. In this case uniformity may not be an advantage.

This creation of new breeds does significantly increase the gene pool available for a period of time. It then severly restricts the gene pool to a few individuals of the newly created "breed". The creation of these new "breeds" does not neccesarily reduce the likelyhood of genetic diseases. In fact it may actually increase the incident of these diseases based on this limitation of the gene pool in the early development of the breed. It takes a significant period of time to improve these problems.

In almost all of the working breeds the problems are similar. As a result of this there is little advantage in the crossing of dogs as you are likely to bring the genetic diseases in with the crosses. Since many of these diseases are not well understood geneticly, with many of them being recessive and/or controlled by multiple genes, it is possible to mask the problem for a period of time. That doesn't mean that it doesn't exist. As an example, with dysplasia I have come to believe that it is controlled by multiple genes that have an additive effect. This is why I believe that you get the different grades of hips and can get dogs with severe problems in the same litter with dogs that are normal. Some of these chacteristics also seem to be tied to the physical structure of the dog (larger breeds and the slopeing top line of the "new"/ASS lines of GSD).

Extreames of "type" seem to create more problems. For this reason some breed clubs are advocating the breeding towards the center of the standard, rather than the extreame edges. There has been a reduction in the incident of some diseases based on this selection for the middle. It also seems to increase the "vigor" of the breed.

Breeds which from the start have been created by to few induviduals are in the dangerzone for future healthproblems caused by small genepool. If a breed differ a lot in type doesn´t mean that the genetic variation has to be big, but if a strict type is wanted, linebreeding is often used to fix this. It only takes an effective population of 100-200 dogs to keep a breed free from serious healthproblems caused by defected genes during several hundred years, if you use a carefully planned breedingprogramm, today there are dataprogramms which shows the accecptable level of inbreeding of every breeding. The problem in many breeds are that even such low numbers like 100-200 dogs are hard to find, and this is the result of overusing certain dogs.

As a said before, no dogs are 100% free from defected genes, but in a genepool where you keep the genetic variation on a reasonable level, the problems with defected genes are never going to be a serious problem. The solution is to follow some basic rules. Never overuse specific dogs, and never use dogs which shows hereditay defects or other weakness, then the amount of defected induviduals will be halve for each generation. If you want to speed up the rate even more to reduce the negativeeffects of doubbled defected genes, then you stop, at the same time you discover a defected dog, with breedings on the induviduals parents and littermates.
With these methods the frequency of defected genes are so low that it never create any serious problems. But the breedingstock musn´t be to small. Then you are forced to do inbreeding even if you don´t want to.

When it comes to hipdysplisia, few disfunctions on dogs have been more researched than this. Dysplasia has also been successfully reduced in many breeds by not breeding on dogs with these problems. As Richard said, the construction of some dogs are a big reason to dysplasia. To heavy dogs, and overangulated legs like in the GSD, it´s not strange that the malinois don´t have the same problems with dysplasia as the GSD, based on their more natural structure.

milt,

If the exact hereditary illness or defect is passed on by heredity with the exactly same pair if genes, it´s true that a cross between two different breeds wouldn´t solve the problem with this specific illness, this could happen but it´s not so common as you may belive.

When it comes to diseases which depends on insufficient in the immunesystem, many of them are caused by the general lowering of hereditary variation that inbreeding create and not of specific pair of genes. Two inbreed breeds with similar diseases caused by a weak immunesystem, could in this case increase the variation in the immunesystem which leads to that the "mutt" becomes more healthy than the two breeds which was crossed.

If you have the same defect in two breeds in an organ like the eye for example, this could be caused by some small differences in all the complex genes and protein that makes an organ function normal. So it´s only when the defect is caused by singel hereditary with a single pairs of genes, or when it´s about a change in the same pair of genes in two breeds, as crossing don´t lead to better health and less defects.

So it´s not true that all workingbreeds are affected by the exact same genetic diseases. Some of them are quite healthy. I will also say that I´m not wanting to stop all purebreeds. It´s not a problem that we are breeding whitin different breeds. It´s the wrong breedingmethods that cause problems, in some breeds the illness caused by wrong breedingmethods have gone so far that crosses with similar breeds could be necessary to avoid animal suffering and save the breed. But for many breeds better breedingmethods is enough to avoid future problems.

Strict limits between very similar breeds are also stupid, I don´t remeber the breed, but it was devided into 4 different sizes and 4 different coulors, and they wasn´t crossed between each other. This limitation of genepool are really stupid but is often seen in showdogs.

Regards