# A Different View on Breeding/Neutering



## Rachel76 (Feb 3, 2014)

Thank you for thelink, it made for interestingvreading and I can see where she is coming from. I will be curious to see what actual breeders think.


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## Poodlebeguiled (May 27, 2013)

> So how does this apply to our field of dogs? It’s our job to wisely remove the weakest. It’s not plucking the very “best” out and elevating them–if you do, in just a few generations your population will lose the great majority of its genetic material.


A very well explained article and a very important quote above. I agree with it 100%. We have lost so much genetic diversity that it is hurting our breeds. I am not a breeder, but might breed my little champion stud one day. He is not perfect, but it would be a shame to take him out of the gene pool and further reduce variation in the population because he is a fantastic dog all around. One little minor fault here and there can always be improved on future generations. As long as he's not sick. I truly wouldn't want to pass that along. But striving for as many unrelated genes is something to work toward to get out of this bottleneck. In some breeds they've even outcrossed with other breeds but only occasionally so that it doesn't deteriorate the breed itself. This is not a bad idea, imo.

Thanks for sharing the article.


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## JudyD (Feb 3, 2013)

I'm assuming the article is aimed at breeders only. Surely the intention isn't to leave most pets unneutered, so that they can be bred, but in order to really increase genetic diversity, wouldn't breeders need to keep more of their pups and breed more litters? Sounds like either breeders would be overburdened, or the pet market would be flooded with healthy pups...not that that's a bad thing for those of us who want healthy pups. I can certainly understand the rationale, but how would it actually work?


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## Poodlebeguiled (May 27, 2013)

I don't think the article means to breed every Tom, **** and Harry but to have more of a mind set of picking out the worst and not breeding those rather than concentrating on only the best of the best. I think it should still be left up to responsible breeders and not every pet owner who happens to have a dog they think should be bred. I think health testing is important. But If breeders keep breeding the same dogs over and over and over again, there's not enough diversity in the gene pool and that's basically why so many purebred dogs have all these issues.

OMG! It edited out the nickname for Richard! roflol


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## patk (Jun 13, 2013)

probably the person at pf most qualified to talk about genetic diversity in general is lily cd re. having read the article, though, i have to say that ruffly speaking does keep referring to corgis (which is what she breeds, although i think at the time she signed up for pf she mentioned thinking about poodles) and emphasizing that they are generally a healthy breed. when you have a healthy breed to start with, the last thing you want to do is make choices that may lead to the appearance and perpetuation of health problems.

for a poodle breeder, i think maybe some of the problem lies with the akc? i'm not sure. but, for example, if you only recognize certain colors, i suspect you are getting quite far away from the original functions of the breed and decidedly cutting down on genetic diversity. also, many breeders are still doing line breeding. and of course everyone wants a dog from the year's number one conformation male, etc. that kind of thinking led to the problem with the wycliffe line in spoos. (somewhere i read a mention that there is something of an evolutionary bottleneck in reds, too - which i why, i suspect, breeders like arreau are importing dogs.) then there was the judge at arreau's pearl's show who basically told the handler pearl did not stand a chance with him because of her color! yikes!

i think most of us don't even ask about coi when thinking of getting a dog. but that could be as important as health testing, as there is no test for every health problem that could arise. but if there is a defect of some kind, inbreeding is very likely to promote and perpetuate its appearance. so it is useful for the buyer, as well, to understand the importance of genetic diversity and to look at the breeder's practices on that score. i'm starting to do that a little more with toys, and it's not all happy times out there.


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## Mahlon (Jun 8, 2014)

Thanks for the link, that was a very well written (and thought out!) article. It really focuses on the science of breeding, vs. what is accepted, and uses logic very well in discussing accepted practices that truly aren't a very good way of going about things.

It'd even have been more interesting if they would have addressed Linebreed (inbreeding) and the usefulness of that technique in a breeding program like they describe. 

The scarey part is how well the author paints a picture of how big of an issue most breeders strategies are, especially in the show world, and what a significant and bad effect it has on the overall population... We in the poodle world know all about it if you've done the research, Wycliffe in particular exemplifies the ills of selecting only the best, and also linebreeding on top of that. And yet, most breeders today fall into the trap of trying to obtain a sire or dam from particular bloodlines that are touted as being supreme. 

Variety is truly the key, and loss of variation is the enemy.

-Dan


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## ericwd9 (Jun 13, 2014)

I always think of the effect show judges have had on the breed. In particular just because judges like to see a particular trait does that mean its an improvement to the breed. More a fashion statement! Narrow muzzles being popular in shows against the wider healthier wide muzzle of the water retriever that a standard poodle really is.
Eric.


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## Mahlon (Jun 8, 2014)

JudyD said:


> I'm assuming the article is aimed at breeders only. Surely the intention isn't to leave most pets unneutered, so that they can be bred, but in order to really increase genetic diversity, wouldn't breeders need to keep more of their pups and breed more litters? Sounds like either breeders would be overburdened, or the pet market would be flooded with healthy pups...not that that's a bad thing for those of us who want healthy pups. I can certainly understand the rationale, but how would it actually work?


I think the question to your answer of how it would actually work, would be more sires(dogs) being used. If you think about most breeders, they do NOT have a 50/50 distribution of the genders, but instead 1-2 males, and however many females (usually at least double if not more than the males). The idea also promotes varied mating, vs repeats, and not everyone concentrating on the few Champion/GrandChampions available for mating. This also means retiring breeding dogs sooner in order to move onto the next generation, which should (in the technique described) be more genetically varied than the parents. More "Lines" need to be developed, and sires especially should not be fathering the amount of litters they are. 

Current practices promote less males, more females, and repeated matings between "healthy" & "Champion" dogs, which most would assume would be a good thing. Reverse the numbers of what a breeder should be looking at for acceptable breeding dogs in a litter, currently that's going to be a very small number kept intact to reproduce, and a large amount released as pets. In the described scenario of the article, they are promoting that small amount be used to remove unacceptable breeders, and that the remaining large portion of the litter should be viewed as acceptable to breed (not by BYB, owners, etc. necessarily, but by breeders in their plans and strategies).


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## Poodlebeguiled (May 27, 2013)

The problem with "fixing a type" in creating uniformity in a breed is that inbreeding or line breeding, which_ is _still inbreeding must be done. If I were to breed Matisse, I would only breed him once or twice and very carefully...because too many of his genes out there would contribute to the sad state of affairs we have because of too many repeat breedings. It's a conundrum because we want to pass on those traits that we love, to get that homogeny. But in doing so, we also can't get away from that sneaky defect that might be way back in the lines that we don't even know about. It hasn't been expressed yet. 

Inbreeding/line breeding decreases the biological health of any species. It even happens in some wolf populations where they're isolated and wolves are breeding with father, daughter, grandmother etc. They're less likely to survive. The immune system is compromised, more cancer is seen, lower sperm count... there's smaller litters, more death and failure to thrive, still born etc. There will be more genetic disorders seen due to genetic drift. 

When there are a few champion dogs, fantastic dogs, everyone wants to breed with them. This is a huge mistake and is what has caused the deterioration of purebred dogs. 

More genetic diversity means that the alleles are more evenly distributed throughout a population rather than squeezed into a small number of animals. There are the most possible alleles. There are two copies of genes and if there's a defect in the carrier situation, there's still one copy that's all right and the defect will be less prevalent. But when you breed the same sire over and over again, you're selecting _against_ all the other alleles of the male population and those will be lost forever. Now, things are getting really narrowed down. And soon genetic death will occur in a species.

Every time a breeder breeds a dog to another which has same relatives anywhere down the line, they're discarding more combinations of alleles. They're decreasing genetic fitness in a species. It happens occasionally in nature but not too much or a species can go extinct. 

It's a dilemma because we like our purebred dogs with uniformity and traits we can count on for jobs we do. But it probably is a mistake to be too stringent on conforming to some of these standards if it doesn't have to do with the health of the animal...structural, anatomical, temperamental etc. Or with his ability to do what he's bred to do. I don't quite know what the answer is.


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