Why not 3-3 on Urus? Because it's too damn close, that's why!  The SV strongly recommends that linebreeding be done no closer than the 5th or 4th generation.

Look, I approach genetics a bit differently from a breeder. I've got a degree in biology. The first thing that happens when the critters you're experimenting with get too closely inbred is you loose hardihood, longevity, and defective genes start to pop up. One of the reasons the offspring are no longer so hardy or resilient is because the immune systems get screwed up. And that can manifest itself as allergies.

It doesn't matter if Ursus is 3 generations back. What matters is he contributed the same set of genes to the pedigree twice and some of them are bound to be faulty. No dog is perfect. The closer the breeding, the greater the chance of those genes being in a homozygous state, where they are going to show themselves. We've got a closed genepool. All we can do is shuffle and re-shuffle the same set of genes again and again.

If you REALLY want to know how closely you're breeding, you need to calculate the coefficient of inbreeding.

Look back to the origins of the current showlines. An awful lot of very heavy inbreeding took place. My female has Palme 14 times in the 6th and 7th generation of her pedigree. People may say, "oh, that's too far back to have any effect" but that's not so. What happened back then fixed certain characteristics in the showlines: the red and black coat, for instance. The genes contrubuted by Palme, Uran and Canto didn't just vanish over the generations: they are still there, and due to that initial inbreeding, they are present in just about every single showline dog. Try finding a German showline without Palme in its pedigree. It's nearly as difficult as finding an American showline that doesn't have Lance of Fran-Jo!

Here's a couple of articles that explain it better than I can:

http://www.texterterriers.com/dbreeders.htm 

 http://www.briardsbriards.com/the_fable_of_old_blu.htm 

Use of even the best popular sires, by its very nature, limits the frequency of some in the breed gene pool while simultaneously increasing the frequency of others. Since sons and grandsons of popular sires tend to become popular sires the trend continues, resulting in further decrease and even extinction of some genes while others become homozygous throughout the breed. Some of these traits will be positive, but not all of them.  


 

At 5 1/2 months my GSD puppy survided a heart operation.
Sire Born : 22. December 2008

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Reverse Linebreeding

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Linebreeding - 5 generations

• 5 - 4,4........................................... in VA1 Ulk von Arlett
• 5,5 - 5........................................... in VA1 Zamb von der Wienerau
• 4 - 4,5........................................... in V Gorbi von der Wienerau
• 5 - 5............................................. in V22 Ninja von der Wienerau
• 4 - 4,5........................................... in V59(BSZS 1992) Warinka von der Wienerau
• 5 - 5............................................. in V Tala vom Kirschental
• 5 - 5............................................. in V Xeno von der Wienerau
• 3 - 3............................................. in V2 (BSZS) Ultri von der Wienerau