Breeding - natural selection style

I read once (or may have dreamt it!), that someone in Spain was breeding dogs by 'natural selection'.

This person kept a large number of dogs on his property and fed them but let them sort out their own pecking order.

The idea behind it was that only the fittest, healthiest dogs would mate, resulting in healthy pups - health testing, natures ways Dogs used were of a certain type, so resulting pups were closer to a breed than a mongrel.

Joking aside - what do you think? Could this be a way forward to get healthy dogs/breeds back on track?

Joking aside, I think you were probably dreaming!

What do I think? Dogs that are not tested for known problems should not be allowed to breed, because you will only get healthy breeds back on track if you breed from health tested dogs.

And how are you going to stop BYBs and puppy farms?

Of course with street dogs, as both mine were, you gets what you chooses, knowing full well that they could carry all sorts of medical and physical problems. And you have them spayed/neutered so they cannot pass on whatever might be in their genetic make-up.

But of course all this is in an ideal world, and we all know that this world is far from ideal.

From my experience lately of Betty being in season she would have mated with anyone including my mop bucket and all males were interested both neutered and entire. So not sure they would be too choosey about who they mated with at all.

I remember this one, I think the person was in America and said that God decided. A lot of controversy because of course that meant father, daughters, mothers, sons, brothers and sisters could all end up mating each other.

natural selection only works over decades and if the dogs have a lot of space and have to provide for themselves. If somebody gives them food, they don't have to be 'fit' to survive as they don't have to hunt. Also, they're kept in a confinemend, so they can't escape, over time that creates inbreeding. And also, they're domesticated dogs living with humans (as they're being kept and fed) so when they're in season they will just mate with any of the dogs. Perhaps the males will have to fight over who will mate, so the apparent strongest will reproduce, but that doesn't say anything about any invisible problems that can still be passed down to the pups.
Natural selection takes so much time, it's impossible to just do it as an experiment like that.

Anyway, I'm all for crossbreeds (because anyone saying that at least purebreeds are bred responsibly is lying in a lot of the cases and over time purebreeds have changed so much, mostly to the worse, that they can't really be called the same breed anymore. So why not cross them, they're not the original breed anymore anyway) but before starting to BREED crossbreeds, I think we need to get grips with the OVERBREEDING problem we've got in the whole world.

Natural selection breeding is what happens in Natural Wolf packs-they consist of two fairly unrelated wolves-one male & one female. They breed & all their offspring remain with the pack until some leave on maturity to form their own packs & the lesser offspring remain to act as Nannies to future offspring of their parents to ensure their genes are passed on.

It is not possible to do the same with domestic dogs as the breeders would not have evolved naturally & would have to be selected.

It is noticable that where there are "packs"of dogs roaming free that the most aggressive males will fight off the others to mate with an in season bitch-this doesn't happen in Wolf packs, were the breeding couple are the only ones who produce offspring within the pack & the father does not have to fight for breeding rights.

Even in feral packs there is no true pack structure as seen in African Painted Dog & Wolf packs.

Wolves/wild dogs etc all have the same genetic conditions that dogs do like HD, ED & badly affected animals are rarely successful breeders in real wild packs, unlike the captive bred packs seen in zoos & safari packs, were the aggressive animals tend to be successful(this was seen in a TV program were two so called"Alpha"males fought for the right to mate with the so called"Alpha"female-this captive pack frequently produced sickly cubs which died young sadly & also produced more than one litter at a time-something that does NOT occur in the wild)

Since joining Dogsey I have often thought what a dreadful owner I am because I had never heard of health testing etc prior to breeding.
I know better now but I only have rescued cross breeds anyway.
So I have just been having a look around and health testing has only come about in the last 30 years anyway. Elbows and eyes even more recently than that.
So what does that tell us? Are our dogs really so much healthier now?

(the little tart!)

Indeed she was

Nippy, it isn't a case of dogs maybe being healthier, it is just that we are more aware of what problems there are and we are in a situation now where we can health test and not breed from badly affected dogs.