Inbreeding
by Concerned Maltese Owner
ORIGINAL MESSAGE:
I have a question for maltese breeders. I am currently looking for a male maltese as a companion for my female maltese. I may breed the two once or twice. So, I am searching for a male that is not related to my female in order to avoid inbreeding. Recently, I contacted a breeder that admitted to having puppies produced by mating a male dog to his daughter. I have a degree in biology and know how dangerous this practice is. I contacted the AKC in order to report the inbreeding situation, and received a frightening response. The AKC stated that inbreeding is not against AKC rules and is at the discretion of the breeders. I was wondering how often this practice actually occurs amongst breeders. Thank you for your responses.
Time in:Thu Jul 16 22:09:56 EDT 1998;ISP Host:208-236-19-4.wtd.net;1st time poster-location: Houston,TX from zip:77056-decode username;hold for approval.................APPROVED;OK TO GO
DISCUSSION:
Breeders have a responsibility to IMPROVE the Breed. We are nothing if not Stewards for our chosen Breed - a connection between those who came before us and developed our Breed to the status we found it when we adopted the passion ourselves, to those who come after us. Every breeder has a different approach to go about this task. Some elect to avoid breeding dogs that are even closely related and yet others choose to breed very very tightly in order to accomplish their objectives. Breeding is very complicated, the trick is to "lock in" certain dominant AND recessive traits that are desirable - and eliminate those that are not. Dominant traits are not necessarily good just because they are dominant - and recessive traits are not bad only because they are recessive. The trick is to determine which is which - and then breed sensibly and responsibly according to the dogs you have and the changes you feel necessary to improve your line to the next level. Breeding mother-son, and father-daughter is very close - too close for many, and breeding full siblings is usually something that even the most experienced breeder will strictly avoid. Line breeding is, for the most part, the practice that most truly successful breeders use to become successful - and it is the succession of breedings planned and performed over a series of generations that the true Breeder is concerned with - a single breeding is simply one more step in the master plan for achieving the ultimate vision. I trust I have satisfactorily avoided answering your question and further "muddied the water" for everyone.
Larry S Divine Maltese
Terriffic Larry ! And to the NO name writer, it is because of people like you , AKC prefers that responsible breeders give only
limited registrations. P.S. AKC is a licensing agency not a complaint department.
Renee
Muddy waters indeed - Larry, I understood every word and only wish that the "breed once or twice" issue had been addressed.
Leslie R
Dear Concerned Owner, Larrys answer is a very good one. I want to add that it is a known fact that inbreeding/linebreeding to strenths will improve your livestock (dogs or cattle) while inbreeding/linebreeding to faults and weaknesses may destroy it. Inbreeding by itself is not bad. It must be done very carefully by dog breeders because usually we do not know all the faults carried in our dogs genes. What we see is the phenotype and is not what we get in the genes necessarily. When breeders linebreed they are trying to get the gene pool in their dogs to agree with the phenotype that you actually see. One of the things that makes breeding dogs so heartbreaking sometimes is because we put so much emotion into it and when something bad happens it can be devestating. Bad things can come out of an outcross too!!. We do the best we can however we combine the dogs but the outcome is not really under our complete control.
Mary Lou
Okay Leslie, I'll make you happy... to Concerned: go read Sunny's post "To Breed Or Not To Breed" and all the responses. Then go back and read Larry's response to your post again. Still want to breed "once or twice?"
Judy
Larry--I am not a breeder but I wanted to commend you for a job well done in your response. Everything made perfect sense and my hat is off to you for saying that breeders are STEWARDS of their chosen breed. I couldn't agree more. Hear hear!
Felicia
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