Studies in Dog Genetics and/or breeding - Page 3

It is without a doubt that the dog must bring something to the table.... I have many friends who say they never look to the podium dogs for breeding, but rather, to the dogs around 10-30 in the WUSV or BSP results. And although the podium dogs might not always be a good choice for breeding, as far as a road map, I believe that the sport does offer some point of reference for breeding. But for sure, you must always look at the dog, not his or her score book, to make an accurate assesment of that animal. (Many people love dogs that do not "out" or get real dirty... These dogs aren't always on the podium.) And I am not implying that I am typically impressed with no "outs" or "dirtiness", as it is usually indicative of a training issue rather than a testament to the "indominable spirit" of that dog.

But your original question to me was, "Who was WUSV Champion, Ronnie or Eros?, and I said BOTH.... The genetics of the dog combined with the skill of the handler, the relationship between handler and dog, etc...

Bark and Hold thank you for that book recomendation I will be looking into that as I am very interested.

part of the debate being had is that we should come up with some sort of scale on temperments, drives, nerves, etc. in our dogs and evaluate them then do a study on them via that. Obviously just one person in their life time will take a very long time to come to the conclusion of one let alone a few of the things needed to be studied on these dogs. But how beneficial would a study like this be to our breeding of dogs?

Now comes in the opinions of what one thinks is temperment another doesn't like in a dog so we would have to figure out how that would work. But thats where my debate comes in;, is it possible to really decide on a clear cut scale to create this study we want. or is everything about a dogs traits decided on opinions of each individual?

what I also want to hit on is this.

In a study you have a control group and then the other groups that you work on.

These dogs would all be kept in the same environment and there would be so many in the study that errors are calculated in. so for example studying drive.
There are say 100 litters of puppies. they are all raised under the same general breeding practice of mom takes care of pups we wean them off and separate them out at 8 weeks. Well each indivudiual dog is shown a toy and it is dragged on the floor and each puppy gets the same picture.

-How many puppies chase it?
-How long do they stay interested?
-How many bite the toy?
-How many bite then immediatly drop it ?
-How many shake it?
-How many just hold it?

That would measure prey drive. Then you measure food drive and obviously we know how to test for those things. But each dog is given the same picture.
So for measuring it and gathering groups in german shepherds, We have amazing working lines, some general ok working lines, then some back yard bred dogs, maybe some showlines in there. Get a variety of the lines to evaluate each of them like that.

If the study gets into it enough you can study the parents of dogs as puppies, then study them again as adults and preferably gave them the same general picture of how their lives are and the same general training and then study how much drives are passed on from a backyard bred dog to its puppies and how much drive is passed on from champion working lines to their puppies.

gagsd4- thank you for those links. going through them now they are very helpful and interesting and right along the lins of what we were looking for

You are welcome! Hope they are helpful.
---Mary

"Now comes in the opinions of what one thinks is temperment another doesn't like in a dog so we would have to figure out how that would work. But thats where my debate comes in;, is it possible to really decide on a clear cut scale to create this study we want. or is everything about a dogs traits decided on opinions of each individual?"

Surprisingly, a large majority of characteristics would be prefered my a majority of people a majority of the time for a majority of purposes they require, but there will be some differences. That would present some problems, since it wouldn't be very "scientific" to describe the parameters of the study and define the values of a particular trait on subjective opinions, even if they belong to "the majority".  Standards are important, but differences can be important as well.

What works for one particular person, in one particular method of training, in one particular job, isn't the answer for all.
 
Some charater traits or combination thereof would be very appreciable to most anyone, but currently lies beyond the handler's scope of personal experience to yet realize it.  IOW, to not know what your missing til you have it.

Some character traits are directly correlated to an inverse tradeoff between traits that may be found equally desireable in their usefulness for differing purposes, even under the same or similar training applications.

Also to consider, are environmental aspects of our perceptions and preferences.  Environmentally, in the case of group dynamics involving multiple dogs that interact, there might be a preferred role for each member that's best left uncontested by other members of the group, or a preferred comfort level for the handler to not deal with too many instances of certain extremes.

Darylehret usually jumps right into these ^_^



I may be going a bit tangental on this; but something I find fascinating is how with clones, oftimes the markings are not the same. I read an article that showed a drastic difference in the blaze patterning on the foreheads of a mare and her four cloned foals. None of the horses looked the same. There were differences in temperament as well.

Despite sharing the same DNA, there were differences.

Of course anyone who has known identical twins knows that they've got different personalities.

It is my belief that a good breeding provides the potential, but environment ultimately determines results. You can have a dog that is, at the genetic level, ideal. However, raised by an owner who either doesn't utilize that potential, or doesn't know how to use that potential, will never advance as far as the same dog could with an owner who knows how to maximize the dog's developement.

Likewise, a mediocre dog will only get so far, regardless of who the owner is. This is true for show and workinglines. A so-so showline can be trained to present well in the ring, knows how to walk, how to stack, and all that; but she'll never get as far as a dog that's conformationally better. Same with workinglines: if the foundation isn't there, all the work in the world can't make it so.

(Anyone remember the military's SuperDog program? -- Dogs with excellent genetic material, and early developemental stimulation to maximize potential, but when the program terminated these "superdogs" weren't utilized. They sat in their kennels and basically withdrew into their own heads.)

It's been my personal observations that only a few pups (one, maybe two) out of a litter appear to be conformationally correct while you. However, they might lack the temperament potential I desire for Schutzhund. So finding the right blend... it's hard. I also prefer a harder dog. Some breeders might prefer a softer dog, and thus select those.
 
It's easies in a program that -only!- looks at one aspect: like working ability at the expense of appearence, or appearence at the expense of working ability. Getting a dog that can dog both, and consistantly producing that is a decent challenge.

There are also situations where, when it comes to dogs producing: I can think of several males who have achieved high VA ratings, yet their siblings actually produce better (for what I desire, at least) because, as Daryl pointed out some traits oppose each other. The perfect balance in one parent might not yield the same results in progeny. I've seen some SG dogs that produce amazing progeny; but alas it seems many people can get caught up in the titles of the parents, and not the parent's progeny.

The progeny are a better indicator of what an adult produces that a VA, SCH3, etc.




I don't think there'd be scientific papers because different breeders will, consciously or not, select for certain traits they find desirable. The random variable of environmental control makes it very difficult to yield emprical results on the success of progeny unless they were all raised exactly the same way in exactly the same situation.

The clones were probably from Smart Little Lena, a stud horse, and each of his clones were carried by different surrogate mares.



Although they may be genetically identical, there are stages after conception but before birth, where the activation of genes that are present are regulated.  The process of "epigenetic" changes are not alterations of the genetics themselves, but they can be heritable in a true sense, although "turned on or off" during this process in favor of environmental cause.  For example, external influences through maternal behavior and diet can provide the means to even skew the results of gender ratios by at least as much as 2:1, or inversely at 1:2.  That's one consideration I've meant to experiment with further, but missed the opportunity involving my last two coinciding litters a couple years ago.  With my bloodlines, the majority of prospective buyers are most interested in males, and as a handler preference, I happen to do better with males myself.

I haven't had any notable success in changing the ratio of males and females in mammals. However, I've had great success doing that with my reptiles.

Because females are more valuable than males, it makes sense to have a clutch of as many females as possible. My last clutch of boas -- technically a litter since boas give live birth -- had a male:female ratio of approximately 1:3; which is a very nice turn out.




PS: That's exactly the picture I was remembering. I should've read that article more closely. I thought Lena was a mare from the name

I think with reptiles it has to do much with the temperature at which the eggs are kept, although I don't know further details.  Although different with mammals, it illustrates a very good example for our ability to influence epigenetic changes.  While "in the cooker", we have every reason to believe these foals had different inluences during their genetic development.

But that's not all.  Even after birth, there will be behavior shaping influences instilled by the mare, and many other environmental factors that would further separate their phenotype identities, but to a much lesser extent, on account of being guided along the "norm of reaction" for their given genotype.