One of the things to keep in mind about breeding dogs, even when inbreeding on high-percentage dogs that you know, is that different results can still obtain even among littermates.

For example, take a look at my page on the Wright's Inbreeding Coefficient. If you look at the two littermate sisters I describe toward the end (Jezebel and Laguna Sunrise), although these two bitches had the exact same pedigree, they were totally different in their actual traits. As I said in that page, "... 'on paper' these two sisters have 'an identical' WIC. However, the physical reality is Laguna Sunrise carries a much greater 'Hollingsworth' (or even Red Baby) GENETIC PULL AND EXPRESSION than did her sister Jezebel, who carried a much stronger 'Poncho' pull in her actual physical expression and characteristics."

And remember, this kind of disparity came from an inbreeding of my own line, and where I personally knew every individual (and littermate) of virtually every ancestor. The truth is, although the pups were 75% Poncho, and while I was trying to get "Poncho dogs" from the breeding, these pups were also 50% "Hollingsworth-type" dogs as well ... so it is only natural some of the pups (Duke and Laguna) came out more like Hollingsworth dogs ... while others (Jezebel, Unreal) came out more Poncho-like. So, even though I got some disparity in my results, I pretty much expected to get one or the other "type" of dogs from that breeding ... and I did.

This brings us to the trouble with outcrossing (and especially scatterbreeding) is you simply have NO IDEA what side of the pedigree a given pup is going to "pull" from. While a straight outcross of two clean-bred lines can be somewhat predictable, when you scatterbreed you essentially have a genetic "grab bag" of possibilities ... so trying to get a solid prediction is nearly impossible to do ... which is further complicated the less and less you actually know the dogs in the pedigree.

In other words, the more and more you know about the dogs in the pedigree, and the closer and tighter your breedings are, the more accurate will be your predictions on what you're going to get ... while the less and less you know about the individual dogs in the pedigree, and the less and less related each of the dogs is to the other, the more of a "crapshoot" you're making ... where it's going to be any man's guess as to what is going to happen. This doesn't mean good dogs can't happen from a scatterbreeding, but it does mean any sort of "predictability" or "consistency" is going to be impossible.

Hope this makes sense,

Jack