why so few preservation breedings?

[QCK23]

I'm new to the dog world so I've been reading, researching, and analyzing peds. I noticed while trying to trace some pretty famous bulldogs that bloodlines are being diluted by continuously crossing. I understand why crosses are done but I would think you would want to have some inbreeding in order to keep a inventory of the original blood on your yard for future use not to mention pure preservation of blood. Like I said I'm just a rookie trying to funderstand the strategy behind breeding and get some other points of view.

[Officially Retired]

I'm new to the dog world so I've been reading, researching, and analyzing peds. I noticed while trying to trace some pretty famous bulldogs that bloodlines are being diluted by continuously crossing. I understand why crosses are done but I would think you would want to have some inbreeding in order to keep a inventory of the original blood on your yard for future use not to mention pure preservation of blood. Like I said I'm just a rookie trying to funderstand the strategy behind breeding and get some other points of view.

The breeders who stand the test of time always do preservational breedings; there is no other way to maintain consistent quality.

The rest aren't really true breeders IMO---they're more like "bloodline crap shooters," forever "mixing this with that" in an almost a lottery-like effort to hit lighting in a bottle with some kind of "magic genetic scramble." Sometimes this works, but more often than not such breedings don't amount to much, because it is exactly the opposite approach to how all breeds were formed in the first place.

Now then, occasional strategic crosses can be exceptional, usually made by knowledgeable veterans, but good breeders always preserve their mainstay first. Once this has been secured, good breeders may then make carefully-selected experimental crosses, but they do them sparingly, and usually with much more actual knowledge about the strengths/weaknesses of the outside blood they're adding-in.

Jack

[Vdk]

I'm new to the dog world so I've been reading, researching, and analyzing peds. I noticed while trying to trace some pretty famous bulldogs that bloodlines are being diluted by continuously crossing. I understand why crosses are done but I would think you would want to have some inbreeding in order to keep a inventory of the original blood on your yard for future use not to mention pure preservation of blood. Like I said I'm just a rookie trying to funderstand the strategy behind breeding and get some other points of view.

http://www.apbt.online-pedigrees.com/mo ... _id=385258
I have this bitch now who in my opinion is a great example of a "Preservational" breeding. I know you probably wont recognize most of the dogs in the first 4 gen but if you analyze it closely you'll see the breeder definately had experience and knew what he was looking for in this line. I just recently had this litter drop off of her and while it may look like a 50/50 cross it mostly all goes back to Butcherboy/Eli with an out of Bolio through the Frisco blood. http://www.apbt.online-pedigrees.com/mo ... _id=345678
Imo alot of "breeders" or wannabes atleast make multiple crosses in hopes of finding that "Perfect blend" and then plan on linebreeding or inbreeding on that partcular cross. Problem is they usually become over run with pups and sell most of them.

Vdk

[QCKLime]

That's a good reply, VDK, and I agree to an extent. You can only know so much about a breeding by looking at it on paper (Spyder is a VERY nicely bred bitch, btw, some of the stuff that I love in there), but to me, that breeding is still a "cross", even though it directs back to very similar ancestors for the simple reason that BOTH of those lines have been so well line- bred and maintained (especially in this particular instance) that the dogs don't resemble each other very much anymore.

The mainstay "traits" of heavy Chinaman dogs vs. heavy "Carver" dogs are very different, in EVERY specimen I've seen of both, so there's something to gain and lose in the hand off of what traits your male has and what traits your female possesses. Very different from taking two similarly bred dogs, known for similar traits, that carry said traits, and line or inbreeding in an effort to preserve those traits.

Now, that's just my opinion, and obviously I don't know your two individual dogs personally, this may not apply to them at all -- but as LINES, they are different. If you go far enough back, you're bound to intersect at some point with the great dogs of the past that SO MANY of our present day dogs are down from, but it doesn't necessarily prevent them from being a "cross" in a modern breeding. You have to decide when that ancestry is a moot point. A friend of mine and I were just corresponding about this the other day, after I referred to my dogs as "Banjo/Bolio crosses" because Banjo is essentially an inbred Butcherboy dog, and Bolio and Butcherboy are comprised of all the same dogs, or siblings thereof, just inverted. He asserted that it works so well because it isn't really a "cross" at all, and why it may blend well together now because it's originated and funneled through similar bred dogs, I still consider it a cross as well, as my heavy Bolio dogs are nothing AT ALL like my heavy Banjo dogs.

[Officially Retired]

That's a good reply, VDK, and I agree to an extent. You can only know so much about a breeding by looking at it on paper (Spyder is a VERY nicely bred bitch, btw, some of the stuff that I love in there), but to me, that breeding is still a "cross", even though it directs back to very similar ancestors for the simple reason that BOTH of those lines have been so well line- bred and maintained (especially in this particular instance) that the dogs don't resemble each other very much anymore.
The mainstay "traits" of heavy Chinaman dogs vs. heavy "Carver" dogs are very different, in EVERY specimen I've seen of both, so there's something to gain and lose in the hand off of what traits your male has and what traits your female possesses. Very different from taking two similarly bred dogs, known for similar traits, that carry said traits, and line or inbreeding in an effort to preserve those traits.
Now, that's just my opinion, and obviously I don't know your two individual dogs personally, this may not apply to them at all -- but as LINES, they are different. If you go far enough back, you're bound to intersect at some point with the great dogs of the past that SO MANY of our present day dogs are down from, but it doesn't necessarily prevent them from being a "cross" in a modern breeding. You have to decide when that ancestry is a moot point. A friend of mine and I were just corresponding about this the other day, after I referred to my dogs as "Banjo/Bolio crosses" because Banjo is essentially an inbred Butcherboy dog, and Bolio and Butcherboy are comprised of all the same dogs, or siblings thereof, just inverted. He asserted that it works so well because it isn't really a "cross" at all, and why it may blend well together now because it's originated and funneled through similar bred dogs, I still consider it a cross as well, as my heavy Bolio dogs are nothing AT ALL like my heavy Banjo dogs.

People who have never actually bred their own families don't realize that, even within the same family, there are sub-families that have absolutely no similarity at all (even though they look "the same" on paper).

I remember when I was young in the game, Big Ernie showed me one of his pedigees and I said, "Isn't that too tight?", to which he responded, "Nah, what most people consider 'too tight' I consider to be an outcross, and what I consider to be tight most people call insane." He went on to explain that dogs from 'this' group of his family were totally-different, traits-wise, to dogs from 'that' group of his family. In fact, the dog he beat Poncho with (Ch Leonard) was technically an inbred dog (Ch Julius and Ch Whitey were littermates, while Texanne was their half-sister), but he considered it an outcross.

I wasn't dogman enough back then to understand what he was trying to tell me, as "papers" were the only thing I understood in regards to "tightness," but I sure do understand what he means today. Forget totally different lines with "some common ancestry" back 6-10 generations, you can have a group of dogs that have all the exact same ancestors right there upfront, but that picked up different traits from one another, and therefore (even though 'on paper' they're loaded with the same ancestor) in reality they are totally different genetically ... because different traits funneled through, and so by breeding them together, you are essentially making an 'outcross' within the family.

To the average person, who doesn't actually know the dogs in the pedigree, and who is only reading a piece of paper, the breeding can look "too tight" to their un-seeing eyes, but to those who actually know the strengths/weaknesses of every dog in the pedigree, they can see that, in reality, the breeding is an outcross of completely different traits blended together, albeit from the same family.

Jack

PS: Here is a super-tight preservational breeding Big Ernie did on the already-inbred Ch Leonard: he bred Leonard back to his mother, and then he bred the bitch produced back to Ch Leonard, to produce Face.


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[YigYang]

I noticed while trying to trace some pretty famous bulldogs that bloodlines are being diluted by continuously crossing.

Yes this is true and i totally agree, and i think the cause of this is because some breeders are not well educated on line breeding and inbreeding to preserve the genes and blood, but they are more focused on breeding to any "ch" or well proven dog, and in some case's just because they feel there dog is missing something

I understand why crosses are done but I would think you would want to have some inbreeding in order to keep a inventory of the original blood on your yard for future use not to mention pure preservation of blood.

Line breeding is second to inbreeding to keeping any blood preserved, which i think is the best way to keep our dogs the same as they were years back. Inbreeding will do nothing but tighten up the blood, and preserve its traits and characteristics of a specific blood or strain.

[Vdk]

That's a good reply, VDK, and I agree to an extent. You can only know so much about a breeding by looking at it on paper (Spyder is a VERY nicely bred bitch, btw, some of the stuff that I love in there), but to me, that breeding is still a "cross", even though it directs back to very similar ancestors for the simple reason that BOTH of those lines have been so well line- bred and maintained (especially in this particular instance) that the dogs don't resemble each other very much anymore.

The mainstay "traits" of heavy Chinaman dogs vs. heavy "Carver" dogs are very different, in EVERY specimen I've seen of both, so there's something to gain and lose in the hand off of what traits your male has and what traits your female possesses. Very different from taking two similarly bred dogs, known for similar traits, that carry said traits, and line or inbreeding in an effort to preserve those traits.

Now, that's just my opinion, and obviously I don't know your two individual dogs personally, this may not apply to them at all -- but as LINES, they are different. If you go far enough back, you're bound to intersect at some point with the great dogs of the past that SO MANY of our present day dogs are down from, but it doesn't necessarily prevent them from being a "cross" in a modern breeding. You have to decide when that ancestry is a moot point. A friend of mine and I were just corresponding about this the other day, after I referred to my dogs as "Banjo/Bolio crosses" because Banjo is essentially an inbred Butcherboy dog, and Bolio and Butcherboy are comprised of all the same dogs, or siblings thereof, just inverted. He asserted that it works so well because it isn't really a "cross" at all, and why it may blend well together now because it's originated and funneled through similar bred dogs, I still consider it a cross as well, as my heavy Bolio dogs are nothing AT ALL like my heavy Banjo dogs.

I understand what your saying and agree with most of it. Before I knew Spyder's traits I thought it was a 50/50 cross even though they did both go back to same ancestors. What changed my opinion is the fact that while Spyder doesnt actually have Chinaman in her ped she is similiar in traits and characteristics through years and years of the breeder making a similiar cross to the one that created him (Eli/Carver). Now im not sure if that was the intended outcome of his breeding program or if the dogs she is down from are as similiar to him historically as she is (I do know they are said to share a high % of his style), and I do know her traits and thats why I decided to breed her to my Frisco/Spike stud. Now I totally agree with the fact that dogs can have damn near identical ancestors with completely different traits, but thats not the case here. See on paper this breeding looks more like a cross then linebreeding, but characteristically its more like linebreeding. Both dogs are generations removed from one another and common ancestors of the other, but carry similiar traits and compliment eachothers few weaknesses. And the offspring created off this breeding while young still show many physical characteristics of Chinaman dogs and or the early Frisco offspring. Do I call them Chinaman dogs?? No that would be absurd, but I feel while they may have Frisco up front they more resemble physically and genetically the cross that created Chinaman. Except with an added shot of Bolio.. 8-) The is jmo based on what I know about my dogs. Do I think that a Frisco/Spike stud bred to another heavy Carver/Eli bitch would be the same? No not even close. But I think that when you know your dogs and the traits they carry ( pass on in Apollo's case) then you can more accurately breed them in the direction your aiming without shooting blindly or worrying to much about how it looks on paper. Again this is JMO and I dont claim to be any kind of expert.

Vdk

Edit: Oh and QCKLIME what if characteristically your heavy Banjo and heavy Bolio dogs were similiar? Theoretically speaking of course. Would breeding them together then make it linebreeding in your opinion? Im not trying to push my thoughts on you just curious. Seeing as how you said they share many ancestors already. If they shared the same physical characteristics would it waiver your thought process? Again if not thats cool as we all think differently. But im just curious.

[R2L]

to much so called preservation breedings already, keeping the blood pure whilst capabilities keep weakening. getting tired of people who get to blood horny. so what you found a cold dog with the same blood. keep searching.
there is a big space between inbreeding and a total out cross

[Officially Retired]

to much so called preservation breedings already, keeping the blood pure whilst capabilities keep weakening. getting tired of people who get to blood horny. so what you found a cold dog with the same blood. keep searching.
there is a big space between inbreeding and a total out cross

I would say the number of pointless outcrosses to quality linebreedings is about 50-1 (if not 500-1), so IMO the exact opposite of what you say is true.

Then there is what your'e talking about, which are pointless "tight" breedings based on paper.

Keeping blood "pure" just to have it is not what I am talking about at all.

The truth is, the longest-standing breeding efforts are ALWAYS kept pure based on the continual selectivity of similar good traits, not just based on paper.

Jack


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[R2L]

i have no doubt you know how the preserve your blood hows its supposed to but those pretty "pure" paper breeders seem to annoy me more then pointless outcrosses