I think maybe it depends on the breed and the reason for the breeding? Conan's parents are both outstanding dogs IMO and Conan is as well. He's exactly what I wanted, and exactly what I would want in any other Corgi. He's a fine specimen of his breed, I think. And assuming all of his litter mates are more or less the same, as are his parents, it wouldn't bother me that one pup was a fluffy. If all the dogs were excellent workers and healthy I don't think it would hurt to repeat the breeding later on in life. Our breeder hasn't repeated it, to my knowledge, and maybe it's because of the fluffy produced. But I do know she has used both his sire and dam in other pairings in the past year or so. I don't know if there were any fluffies then. Maybe she decided to take her chances with Conan's breeding? It would make sense to me if I was as sure as I could be that they would produce excellent offspring, regardless of an occasional fluffy.

But I want more ideas from breeders. Anyone? Jenni? I'm not sure who else breeds...

What about me? What's the question? My head hurts.

Do you mean would I breed a dog that had produced a coat? Like if Capri had a coated puppy in this last litter, would I breed her again? Hell, yeah. Those puppies were phenomenal, and if you get 8 phenomenal puppies and one phenomenal puppy w/longer hair...so be it.

I really don't know if that's what you're asking though.

LOL,
To be honest Melissa 6 or 7 pups from somethng as small as a Papillon sounded high to me, but what do I know? I'm only a man!

On a more sobering note, you're not really equating an off coat to a bad bite or bad eyes are you?
It does sound though like you've decided that the hair is a stand alone gene not attached to anything else enre to dog, like say the bite or eyes, or ear set, or the stop, etc.
Even though it's part of the largest organ of the animal, the skin?

And why would you stop breeding the perfect combo if you got a couple of good dogs out of a litter?

Yes! That's definitely what I was asking

Well bad bite, bad eyes, bad hips, bad patellas, wrong coat, all can happen in a pairing of perfectly well bred tested normal parents. If I had one puppy in a litter where it got a level bite instead of a scissor, had a bad patella, or a heart murmur (the three most common ailments in papillons) I wouldn't retain that puppy for breeding but it would cause me to think over who gets paired with who for the future or if the risk of ever breeding that dog again is worth it.

For me it was never a game of numbers. I don't breed dogs for other people with intent... I breed them for myself, their future, and my future. I can only take on so many and so I plan litters according to who I want to carry on into the future, when I'm ready to take on another dog, and where training is with my current dogs.

Right now I'm doing a global search for a male papillon that will match well with one of my girls for what will be her final litter, I could just use the male I used last time which did produce four very nice pups but I already retained a bitch from that cross that I'm happy with. Do I really need another dog nearly identical or should I take what I learned from that pedigree and sire and try something a little different, get a little more diversity in the gene pool around here,possibly learn something new and possibly take a step forward in my breeding program? I'll stack things as best I can in my favor, test for everything under the sun, look at pedigrees, look at existing offspring, relatives, breedings that others have done, attempt to negotiate a contract, and then throw the dice yet again. Hopefully everything will go my way but if it doesn't I'll make note, perhaps cull the litter to pet homes, and move on.

Breeding isn't an exact science. All you can do is stack odds in your favor as best you can. Research... research... and research some more but eventually you're going to have to test that hypothesis.

 Quote: Katie Finlay

Yes! That's definitely what I was asking

Please note that I was answering in terms of a situation where the ONLY issue was a longer-than-stock coat.

Any other faults would be taken into consideration as to their heritability, seriousness, etc.

I wouldn't sell a coated pup on full registration, however. I generally don't believe in limited reg. (if I don't think someone is going to do the right thing when it comes time to make breeding decisions, then I shouldn't be selling them a dog. Period.) but in the case of a coat or other *superficial* problem with NO health implications, then I would just stipulate that the pup not be used for breeding, but certainly would not stop breeding the parents.

It's also really not that hard to avoid coats just by not using another dog who carries the recessive if your dog carries it. True, you don't always know ahead of time, but when you do, it's really not a big issue.

Thanks Jenni. I'm surely only talking about the coats. Anything else is definitely more serious. Just after talking to some people on the Corgi forum that seem to actively extinguish the fluffy coat from the gene pool, I was wondering if perhaps Conan's breeder wasn't doing the right thing. To them, she's not I guess. But to me she is, if she has two outstanding dogs who are proven quality producers. A fluffy or two isn't as big a deal as a health problem, though it shouldn't be bred for - it's just not extremely disappointing in my eyes. But I'm not a breeder lol.

Well, if you're breeding working dogs, IMO, working ability and health should be first and foremost. Temperament falls under working ability, to me. So, if you have those two things, and a slew of other desireable traits...you'd be not only cutting off your nose to spite your face by trying to actively eliminate coats, but making the gene pool shallower by removing a few great producers for a silly reason.

No dog is perfect. If the worst thing my dog *occasionally* produced was a fluffy...I'm a happy girl.

Thanks Jenni, I'm glad that's where you stand. It reminds me that my idea of breeding, although I'm not a part of it, isn't completely backwards. I understand that without form you don't have function, but I think they're putting a really strong emphasis on form over temperament/working ability (because the dogs can't work, regardless of temperament, if they have bad structure - which is true, but a little extra grooming isn't like bad hips or being blind from PRA). It's seemingly something that can be debated until the end of time.

 Quote: randy allen

Natalya,
I'm kinda dense, are you saying the gene carrying the deadly recessive is the same one that handles making the ridge?

Sort of - I'm saying they're linked. Any pup inheriting a ridge has a chance at inheriting dermoid sinus, any pup who happens to lack any ridge genes will not be at risk (if "R" stands for a 'ridge' and "r" stands for 'no ridge', an "RR' or "Rr" pairing could produce a dermoid sinus, but an "rr" CAN'T, and an "Rr" stands a greater chance at NOT inheriting it - does that make sense?).

In my humble opinion, it seems to me that that the greater ridgeback breeding community is, as Jenni bluntly put it, cutting off it's nose to spite it's face by "culling" (even if only by sterilizing) all ridgeless pups. The ridge became a hallmark when the breed standard was written because at some point it was observed that the ridged dogs made better hunters than the non-ridged... however, the original ridged dogs, the semi-wild African Koikhoi that provided the very genes that enable the ridge, were themselves a mixed lot of ridged and ridgeless... and since there was no strict breeding protocol among the native tribes that kept them, the ridgeless were never weeded out (and were most likely a healthier gene pool because of it). The whole issue is compounded by the fact that virtually no Rhodesian Ridgebacks, save a handful living on S. African farms, and perhaps a few in Australia being used to hunt boar, are used for their original purpose - the purpose that made that whole "ridge" factor so seemingly important way back then - HUNTING...

It should also be noted that those original dogs, and the earliest examples of "Ridebacks" as we know them (Koikhoi crossed with European setters, danes, and mastiffs, among others), came in bridles and black and tans, in addition to the range of reds and red wheatons that are the standard today - today, only shades of red and red wheaton may be shown in AKC in the US, though I think the other colors are still technically allowed by European standards, though they are VERY rare, and not bred for...).

Ridgebacks are in a funny place because they are a relatively new and rare breed... their original function is still very close to the surface of their being, and there have really only been a handful of decades by which we can see an evolution of breeding and type. My fear is that the show world (and there isn't really a split at present between working/field and show breeders) will slowly do with them what has been done with so many other breeds - concentrate primarily on physical/cosmetic characteristic (how much white on the feet, how long the ridge, how much black hair in the coat, subjective structure) until it irreversibly, by invisible process, degrades the rest of what makes a Ridgeback a Ridgeback. (And to be clear, I don't claim to be an expert in all things Ridgeback - and it is a bit hard to judge working temperament when the scale simply doesn't exist anymore...) I'm not sure I have an answer, but knowing people, history gives me reason to be wary about the direction things are headed in for this breed...

~Natalya