When Line Breeding Where Do you Cross The Line: - Page 11

When you linebreeding you must firstly understand why you are linebreeding to a particular animal and be well aware what this animal is in appearance and in producing ability.The old saying that outcrossed dogs look better than they produce and inbred dog produce better than they look holds true to a very great degree.The other factor is that in different breeds the levels of inbreedings that turn out successful can vary.In my opinion one has to understand what level of inbreeding turns out successful in that breed.Having tried many levels of inbreeding over the past 26 years I can only conclude that breeding type to type is more important and that a high quality female without major faults and an not too closely bred pedigree is your safest bet so that you can add in the qualities of any desirable stud dog you wish to emulate the style of.Then again remember that the very beautiful Queen Cleopatra came from 7 generations of brother/sister marriages!

Beauty is one thing, but what about health issues associated to linebreeding? Unless you know the history of all the individual dogs in that line, how do you stand a chance to evaluate that? That information is not available. Most dogs go out of the breeding programme at seven, eight years of age. However, I aim for long-lived, healthy offspring. How do I get there?

As counterintuitive as it sounds tight inbreeding is the only way to eliminate genetic diseases I would think, take a lot of culling tho. Does that make any sense?

Yes VK it does make sense. As I understand it, and I am no expert of course, but you can only eliminate genetic faults if those faults are expressed. By closely inbreeding or linebreeding, the likelyhood of those faults being expressed is greater. Until all the genetic markers for faults are mapped, and we can examine potential combinations for genetic health before a mating, the close breeding is the tool we have.