# "Tight" line breeding...



## Tim Martens (Mar 27, 2006)

this question is directed at those who have actual experience breeding. not what you believe or what someone has told you....

with that.....i have heard the generalization that with VERY tight line breeding of excellent dogs, that it will produce one or two excellent dogs, some that need to be culled, and some just not suited for work. whereas when two excellent dogs are bred that don't share too many genes, you get 4-6 VERY good dogs, MAYBE one excellent one, and the rest "pet" quality. is there any truth to this generalization?

i have ZERO experience with breeding...


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## Jeff Oehlsen (Apr 7, 2006)

I am not a big proponent of tight linebreeding, but when I did go to linebreeding, I bred the dog I was considering, then took a daughter back to him. This type of breeding I guess could be considered tight. I was looking to see what recessives were in the dog I wanted to use. 

I have done this several times in the past. The thing that I was looking for was a dog that when bred like this didn't have a large number of trash puppies. 

2 out of 8, then 3 out of 7 and 5 out of 8. First number was the good pups. I stopped after this, mostly because it is hard to cull that many puppies. Took something out of me, and I pretty much stopped breeding shortly after. Probably three out of all of the culls were in bad shape, were you would put them down anyway.

Linebreeding is in my opinion used too much without knowing what bad recessives the dog has to start. There are many really good dogs out there that carry a lot of trash genetics. They start showing up in the 5th or 6th generation usually, and then you get one or two good pups out of a litter if that. I would really hesitate to breed a really tight linebred dog. Work? yes.


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## Selena van Leeuwen (Mar 29, 2006)

Tim we did and are planning tight linebreeding/inbreeding. We had 2 litters father/daughter combination. We are planning a half brother-half sister litter.

All charachters were (more than) suitable for work (Spike is one of the siblings),and there were no gene suificiencies (like bad hips or back). 
So I can´t back this statement. You have to know your lines and indivudual dogs very well for doing this.


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## Jeff Oehlsen (Apr 7, 2006)

What did you get from the 2 litters, father/daughter?


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## Selena van Leeuwen (Mar 29, 2006)

9 puppy´s totally. Spike is one of them, Benta the other. 1 brother is a policedog in Belgium, 1 is with my father in law. 1 died at 8 mo, by a medical mistake of the vet. Few in sports, the others were to difficult for their owners, and are sold abroad. Don´t know what became of them.


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## Tim Martens (Mar 27, 2006)

so jeff, you would say that the generalization of "all or nothing" is somewhat true in your experience and selena you'd say that if you really know the lines and know what you are doing, that the generalization holds true? is that what you two are saying?


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## Jeff Oehlsen (Apr 7, 2006)

I would say with me, all I had to go on was a pedigree that I only knew a few dogs, and only by how they worked. I had Rottweilers and this is a breed with definate problems. DS, for the most part have no where near as many poor recessives as the Rottweiler. Also, living where the breed is from, I am sure she had much more access to information regarding genetic problems. Most of the dogs I got from overseas, were dogs that I went and saw, then bought on the strength of their work and character. The breeders barely spoke English. Basically I was starting out blind.

I still don't care for really tight linebreeding, unless you are outcrossing to another tight linebreeding......well, maybe. I am not the "pedigree" type of breeder. I tend to stick to what I see, and what the dog produces. I do like the outcrosses for health reasons, and I was able to do so with good results overall.


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## Selena van Leeuwen (Mar 29, 2006)

It was for my time, wasn´t being involved with hubbie yet. But hubbie knew the dogs from birth, and knew most enceisters by working with them or from birth. Other dogs in the bloodlines he also knew very close or their charachter very well.


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## Daryl Ehret (Apr 4, 2006)

Tim Martens said:


> so jeff, you would say that the generalization of "all or nothing" is somewhat true in your experience and selena you'd say that if you really know the lines and know what you are doing, that the generalization holds true? is that what you two are saying?


My opinion is that no matter what you do you will produce "some" pet quality when you breed, linebreeding or outcrossing being irrelevant. If I were to generalize, I'd guess 10-20% pets, 10-20% top quality, and the rest acceptable but not really outstanding. The important thing in linebreeding is to narrow the randomness of traits to obtain predictability, with the "hopes" of cashing in on the phenomenon of _hybrid vigor_. Without hybrid vigor, the breeding results should be no better, in fact worse in the long-run than a type-to-type breeding, because you have just created a genetic bottleneck.


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