Different dog breeders – different ways of breeding. While some breeders work to find their ideal breeding dogs, others came across the right stud or dam that are suitable in starting a family of future champions.
No matter how a breeder is working, the most important part is to choose it’s dogs due to a great characteristics, not because of subjective feelings.
A reputable and respected dog breeder never breeds two dogs because of intuition. Finding the perfect breeding combination requires countless hours of studying and analyzing pedigrees and bloodlines of potential matches.
Pedigree and bloodlines analysis means the thorough research of the chosen dog in order to diagnose their weakness, strengths as well as other signs that could predict any undesirable traits and characteristics. The information that could be found in a dog pedigree chart include:
-Titles and Awards
-Inbreeding Level
-Patterns of Desired or Undesired Traits
-Health
-Coat Type, Color and Pattern
-Stud Book and Ancestry
There is no way to be known the genome of the potential dog match, so detailed study of each dog’s ancestors, one by one and going back to as many generations as possible, is the only way to diagnose all the signs that potential litter from chosen combination could have. Some traits are recessive and can be passed over to each generation without showing. Detailed study of only one generation is OK, but in order to see the defect or the pattern of the potential dog match, detailed study of as many generations possible is required.
Extremely valuable information that can be accessed, thanks to the public databases is does a dog is affected by a given inherited (or not) medical condition or disease. In the last 5 years, DNA screening tests have been very helpful to many successful breeders to remove defects out of the breed in a way much more easier than in the past. There are many minor defects or flaws that may not be serious, but it may take several generations before this minor defects become major and defect whole litters.
Word of Advise : When you read a pedigree for desired traits, you can go thru the bloodline in two ways:
-Selecting dogs that show the desired results.
-Selecting dogs that are proven to have clear measurable physical features that are responsible for a given desired results.
For example, if a breeder is breeding dogs for running speed, the breeder should breed two dogs that were known to have ancestors to run fast, or the breeder should study what makes a dog run fast and focus on picking partners with this characteristics. (such as – longer legs, high muscle mass, lean body, etc.)
