ecini, totally agree with you on inbreeding,but it will always go on while the kennel club encorage it, as show winners are only judged on looks, they dont give a stuff about inbred unhealthy dogs, they should refuse to register the very inbred lines

"show winners are only judged on looks,"

Have you ever judged???

Apparently in Sweden, the KC won't register brother/sister or mother/son or father/daughter matings... which is a start. Here, I think it would be interesting to ban anything with an CoI greater than 10, but that'd rule out almost every pedigree dog in the country

sadly

e

muddiwarx - no i have not ever judged, but imo there is nothing to stop a dog with a genetic disease being shown, the dogs are judged on type so inbreeding to get 'type' is encouraged. are dogs health probs declared to the show judge ? there should be a vet certificate to declare that the show dogs are healthy and no epilepsy, bad hips etc.

ecini - what a great idea, but 10% is going a bit far, there would be nothing left to show. perhaps start with a higher % and in 5 years time aim for a lower figure, the only prob with this would be it would encourage cheating, with people lying about which dogs they have used, would only work if all dogs were dna tested.

sounds good to me.... the problem being the vested interest in the breed hierarchies, who go on to be the KC hierarchy. I was speaking to a woman who is getting out of one breed because the top breeder, who wins breed title at Crufts all the time, has so bullied everyone else in this relatively small breed, that they dare not even mention the raging disease that is sweeping through them, predominantly from her lines - and if they can't mention it, they can't test for it. Seems immensely sad and not in anyone's interests, particularly not the dogs'.

but it's a bastion of vested interest and there doesn't seem to be a chink in the armour.

e

I think everyone thinks breeding successfully is easy but there aren't actually that many people prepared to stick their neck on the line and do it. As any serious breeder will tell you, every single planned mating is a painstaking toss up of potential pros and cons.

I have done a half brother-sister mating twice, both times line breeding back to the same dog, the dog and his lines I knew very well. I did these matings specifically with health and working ability in mind, the resultant pups exhibit great working ability and are clear for all testable genetic diseases within the breed and of the 7 pups hip scored all have very low hip scores. This line is a line I will specifically go back to as one that is very 'safe' for hips.

I have however bred a pup diagnosed with AIHA (Auto Immune Haemolytic Anaemia), this mating was a TOTAL outcross, could not have been much further apart, with an in-breeding co-efficient of 0 over 10 generations.

So while I agree with the idea of hybrid vigour in principle...in practice????

When breeding you have to accept that there are simply no guarantees, every single mating is a gamble and all you can do is research and plan to reduce the odds in your favour.

Getting back to the original question...IMO line breeding can be a useful tool but one that should only be adopted infrequently and with a lot of careful thought and planning.