 Barked: Fri Dec 5, '08 10:07am PST |
 | |  | | Off top social foray......hi, Scooter  I almost PM'd you about a Pit thread a week ago. Haven't "bumped" into you recently....hope all is well 
I wanted to leap back to a post Riley made a little earlier. Now that Riley is one succinct doggie....I will de-succient Riley for just a sec just so the whys of the statement is clear. To know at least the first three generations of a dog's pedigree is an integral part of responsible breeding. This does NOT mean that you simply know their names. It means that you know of them and of their genetic integrity and propensities. Think of a stew. If you say you are going to eat a stew, well, you aren't doing that really....you are eating all the ingredients of a stew. You are eating meat and carrots and flour and onions and potatoes and whatever else. Breeding is the same way. You can say in breeding your dog you will be coming up with puppies that resemble him, but such is a short sighted view, for you will be bringing into play all the dogs before him as well, which is his genetic completeness, just as much as a stew's ingredients are. And if you don't know those ingredients....the status of littermates, full blood siblings, cousins, etc., the producing records of sires and dams, aunts, uncles, etc and their bents.....then you are not breeding responsibly, for you are breeding blind. You are serving a stew to the masses without a clue as to what is in it.
This is one area where collectives....national breed clubs most commonly, but also gaggles of like-minded individuals....are priceless. You really should not be breeding without being tied in to a collective in some way....another component of responsible breeding. It is by collective expriences shared that there will be the most knowledge, AND....quite importantly....the most rapid discoveries made about lines that are strong and others that are problematic. When you are not tied into a collective and/or do not at least have strong genetic knowledge of the immediate generations of your dogs, you are blocked from all this information.
A second issue, and one seldom mentioned here on Dogster, is the subject of genetic NICKS. This enters more into the art of breeding and knowing who to breed to whom. This is where breeding exits the world of science and enters the world of artistry. Do you know that Secretariat and Seattle Slew....two of the absolute legend racehorses in the heady '70's....stemmed from the same nick of Bold Ruler/Princequillo? Well, they did. They did not stem from the same horse or were out of the same mare. They had no immediate relatives in common, but they were from the same nick. Secteriat, who was an extremely expensive horse, from an elite farm and from very good parents, was by Bold Ruler and from a Princequillo mare, whereas Seattle Slew, who was from a minor farm from not very good parents and was an inexpensive horse, was by a grandson of Bold Ruler and his dam was sired by a grandson of Princequillo. This was several generations removed from the immediate Bold Ruler/Princequillo nick that produced Secretariat, but people repeated the nick for generations to come, as reflected in Seattle Slew. Curiously, this nick did not work as well when flipped, meaning if Princequillo was on the sire side and Bold Ruler on the dam's side, it was less effective. Big Brown, who made headlines as the Triple Crown winner of this year, represents light linebreeding to a nick that reigned some four decades ago....that of Damascus/Round Table. The dam of his sire and the third dam (Big Brown's mother's mother's mother) both were by Damascus and out of a Round Table mare.
Nicks, as evidenced, are genetically long-lived and can continue for many generations. They are liked fated lovers....when you cross these lines on each other, superior offspring tend to be the result. Conversely, some line crosses do just the opposite and produce very inferior or problematic dogs. So for those who think you breed nice dog A to nice dog B and get nice dogs? Think again.Edited by author Fri Dec 5, '08 10:25am PST
|  |  | |  |
|
| my posts | my page | msg me | my family's posts | gift me | become pals | [notify] |
1
Scooter, for a silly ol' 
The big thing has screwed up the TB, and he is screwed up, is early retirement, which basically is Secretariat's fault as he broke trend to not race as a four year, and they only did that because because there was too much money in him to afford him losing anymore. Part of it before always was running a horse hard, long and carrying a lot of weight...THAT was when you proved yourself and were considered one of the best and were thereby availed max genetic opportunity. Now they race them so briefly, no time really to test the vigor, race day medications as well to mask the truth of the horse's physical endurance....which really is a lot as regards racehorses holding up. They don't anymore. Good example in any case of how a trend can bring havoc to a breed.
