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by Scottie Westfall

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Why is inbreeding bad?

January 26, 2012 by SWestfall3

Inbreeding is bad for dogs.

Do I need to say this again?

It’s bad for dogs.

The only people who think it is good don’t know what they are talking about– or they have been so severely indoctrinated into the dog culture that they can’t see it.

Yes. Indoctrinated.

In virtually all of these dog registry and competition systems, there is a strong desire to produce a high level of homozygosity in either behavior or conformation. You win more consistently if you have more homozygosity in your lines. It doesn’t matter if we’re talking shih-tzus or trial border collies. The tendency is to breed tightly and to breed to the dogs that win.

No one sits back and thinks about what this does to the dog populations in the long-term, because no one is really in it for the long term.  You’re in it to win it.

This means that dogs will continue to lose genes over time.  At the very same time, it will be these breeders who are forcing them down these tight genetic bottlenecks who will say they are improving the dogs.

They might be improving in one sense, but in another, they are impoverishing their animals with each successive generation.

The least obvious way in which they are impoverishing their dogs has to do with the immune system. You can’t see immune systems or the genes associated with them, but by golly, you can lose immune system genes.

The genes associated with the immune system are called the Major Histocompatibility Complex, which are called the dog leukocyte antigen (DLA) system. These genes are very easily lost when one is inbreeding or very tightly line breeding.

Now, in most domestic dog populations, breeders are operating within a closed registry system. These closed registries rarely allow new blood in, and if they do, it will most often be from dogs that derive from the same founding population– so it’s not really a new infusion of genes at all.

Then, you have another nice problem within closed registry systems. They demand that people breed only from the best dogs within that system. So certain winning stud dogs wind up siring a huge proportion of the puppies in each generation. Over time, many of these dogs wind up with very similar paternal ancestors, which means it’s very hard to produce dogs within the breed that are not highly inbred.

So you essentially have a system set up for the destruction of the domestic dog as an organism. Over time, the immune system will continue to weaken, coefficients of inbreeding will continue to increase, and the health and reproductive ability of the dogs will continue to fail.

Do we seriously want dogs to end up here?

Do we think all of these breeds are so unique that we can never allow a gene flow to exist between them?

If we think all of these things are true, then we have to accept the obvious consequence– the total collapse of many breeds.

And this analysis doesn’t even account for the tendency for deleterious and lethal recessives to be inherited in a homozygous fashion as a result of inbreeding.

If we are to be honest about saving dogs,  we need to tell these people who promote this toilet science of blood purity and who sanctify consanguinity that they are very wrong– and what they are doing is ultimately dangerous.

I don’t care if some breeder or some half-assed geneticist says it’s okay.

It’s not okay.

It’s going to destroy dogs.

Someone might get good results from a very tight breeding.

That’s not what I’m talking about.

I’m talking about population genetics and population genetics over time.

If everyone is doing that sort of breeding over a long period of time within a closed registry system, it is guaranteed to fail.

Massively fail.

But the institutionalized fancy and its token prostitute scientists continue to promote inbreeding and make apologies for its use that are so twisting of the actual science of dog biology that one wonders if these people might be closet creation scientists.

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Posted in dog breeding | Tagged dog inbreeding, inbreeding, Inbreeding in Dogs | 16 Comments

16 Responses

  1. on January 26, 2012 at 5:45 pm Djanick Michaud

    Very few breeders don’t stick to the inbreeding principles… in fact, when I talk about that with other breeders, I realize how “indoctrinate” they are and I have to agree on your words. Breeding on the philosophy of genetic diversity makes no sense in most of the practice because on the short term, it doesn’t meet the expectation… but this is totally wrong. We know it for humans : inbreeding makes weird humans, let’s just think of some royal families… Louis XV, king of France didn’t have all his head straight… and this was a result of tight inbreeding. So I don’t understand that some people think that rule doesn’t apply on animals… it’s all the blody same thing !

    I have been against, I am against and will carry on being against this kind of practice. Unfortunately, I have to compose with the past work that has been done before me. After 4 generations of dogs produced, I have managed to bring the COI way under 5% on 12 generations calculation. To get to that result, I had to find some dogs that were not in the “championship circle” but still proven working dogs. Then the “mix” planning isn’t that easy to make sure I stay on track with my breeding program.

    Individual interests comes first in this world and short time planning is the rule and not many things stay out of that system… From the politicians to the breeders, most think that way… results, results and results, right now and as long as it seves individuals straight away… but not thinking about legacy, perennity, perpetuation.

    “Sad but true” (Metallica)


    • on January 26, 2012 at 6:17 pm retrieverman

      I don’t get why people don’t want to use less than stellar dogs in their breeding program.

      One of the most important brood bitches in the North American golden retriever was Gilnockie Coquette, and look at what she produced.

      https://retrieverman.wordpress.com/2011/02/15/gilnockie-coquette/


      • on January 26, 2012 at 8:01 pm Djanick Michaud

        Reasons are simple and I’ve touch sure part of it in my previous answer… Also, a lot of breeders try to make their fame from previous breeder’s success. If one cannot have a solid breeding program, the need for past fames is the only way. (my two cents…)


  2. on January 27, 2012 at 2:23 pm glencuanpointers

    I would love to commenton this post and the subsequent comments but to be able to do so it is necessary to ask you to “define in-breeding”. Lots of people talk about in-breeding as if it is generally accepted that there is a given point wher line breeding becomes in-breeding but where is that point? It isn’t necessary that everybody agrees with you definition, just that they understand where you draw the line.


    • on January 27, 2012 at 2:47 pm massugu

      Glen, I believe Scotty laid that out pretty clearly with his post on breeding pigeons. If you check out that post it should answer your question.


  3. on January 27, 2012 at 5:09 pm glencuanpointers

    “Glen, I believe Scotty laid that out pretty clearly with his post on breeding pigeons. If you check out that post it should answer your question”

    You’ll have to be a bit more specific. I would look for the needle if I could find the haystack.


    • on January 27, 2012 at 5:18 pm retrieverman

      I’m going to write something in the next couple of days that might make this a bit more clear.

      One can breed tightly and maintain MHC haplotype diversity– because we can now test for it.

      The problem is that if one is selectively breeding, maintaining this diversity in haplotypes might conflict with breeding for other traits.

      So what does a breeder do?

      Maintain diversity of MHC/DLA haplotypes or breed for the traditional traits?

      My guess is they will choose the latter.

      So they are probably better off breeding for the traits within a diverse gene pool.


      • on January 27, 2012 at 5:30 pm DesertWindHounds

        Any breeding within a closed system is inbreeding. Period. Dogs are a naturally outbreeding animal. Even the development of dogs for specific tasks was not done within a closed system.

        I would classify ‘inbreeding’ in dogs as producing a higher COI over time. This can be done on a breed wide or kennel wide basis. If the average COIs of your litters are getting higher over time, then you are inbreeding. If you are making an effort to maintain or lower your COIs, you are not inbreeding. It’s a mealy mouthed definition because dog breeders tend to avoid the bare fact of the first paragraph.


        • on January 29, 2012 at 1:34 pm massugu

          Agreed. Dogs are domesticated wolves and young wolves looking to breed leave the home pack and find another. Many (most?) mammals do something similar. This is an evolved behavior to ensure genetic diversity. Line breeding by humans, regardless of the species being bred, contradicts this natural tendency, often resulting in a reduction of genetic diversity, disease resistance, etc., etc., ad nauseam.


      • on January 27, 2012 at 8:28 pm Raeganw

        Jess is correct in her information, but most people in the fancy do not use the terms correctly.

        Most breeders of purebred dogs use inbreeding to refer to immediate family matings: father – daughter, aunt-nephew, brother – sister, etc. There does seem to be an aversion to close relation breeding, today if not always (I have seen CKCS pedigrees that are a mess). Many people will say they do not inbreed if they are not doing close relation breedings.

        Line breeding is usually used to note that you’re doubling (or more) up on a specific ancestor.

        For example, if you see a litter of puppies advertised as “linebred on Ch. Sparklypoo’s Fancy Pants!” it’s a fair bet that Fancy Pants appears behind both the sire and the dam. Beckett’s rule is very common.

        All linebreedings are inbreedings, but not all inbreedings are linebreedings, in the same way that all squares are rectangles, but not all rectangles are squares.


        • on January 30, 2012 at 11:00 pm Kary

          “(I have seen CKCS pedigrees that are a mess).”

          Two of my favorites:

          . . . and another ‘linebred’ with a similar result:

          In an attempt to not singally pick on just this breed, I believe these kinds of pedigrees can be found in almost every breed; but I do hope less often than I’ve found them in Cavalier databases.

          Kary


  4. on January 30, 2012 at 7:27 pm DIY Balancing Selection « The Retriever, Dog, & Wildlife Blog

    […] my previous post entitled “Why is inbreeding bad?” I noted that one of the real issues with inbreeding is an impaired immune system as the result of […]


  5. on February 3, 2012 at 10:20 pm Kary

    In your blog you mentioned ‘indoctrination’. I stumbled across this nice little piece and I thought I would share.

    “How Outcrossing Destroys a Breeding Program”

    http://www.americanbluelacyassociation.com/blog/?p=1355#awp::?p=1355

    Kary


    • on February 3, 2012 at 10:28 pm retrieverman

      Someone sent me this link earlier this week.

      I about died.

      There is a big war going on in lacy dogs (which come in blue and red). The working dog people are vehemently opposed to AKC recognition.

      But there is this quisling organization that’s bought into all the blood purity theology.

      The Lacy family never kept their dogs pure, and no rancher in Texas would raise hell that a border collie or a blackmouth cur were somewhere in their lacy program. Further, the lacy breed itself is said to have a wolf crossed in at the founding, which is hardly any kind of pure breeding!


  6. on February 3, 2012 at 10:34 pm Kary

    The auther of that post came on the cangen-L list to get advice on how to proceed with linebreeding for best success. A little trolling I believe. The results were interesting. ;)

    Kary


    • on February 3, 2012 at 10:45 pm retrieverman

      The person who sent it to me is on that list, and we spent some time making fun of her.

      She has French bulldogs and lacys.

      My advice is to continue screwing up Frenchies and leave the lacys the eff alone!



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