The Choice of In Breeding and Linebreeding in Dogs
In-breeding and line breeding are close terms used more often when two related dogs or more are in common ancestry of a puppy. Line breeding is just a milder version of in-breeding. Many people have vague ideas or wrong notions about the term that a dog is ‘highly bred’. In-breeding is in wide circles of breeders regarded as the root of all evils in outcomes of genetic traits of litters. However they should know better. In-breeding if done properly and with firm knowledge in the pedigree or the bloodlines of the parents is a very powerful mechanism to produce highly stable and strong healthy litters.
Is Inbreeding the Necessary Evil?
In-breeding by itself produces nothing. It just accentuates or concentrates the traits which are already there in the bloodline of the dog. If a half brother and sister are mated and produces aggressive pups it is not because the brother and the sister were mated but because the common ancestry in the pedigree of the dog had the traits of aggression in either the grandparents or the great-grandparents or carried the gene of high aggression in the common bloodline. That particular trait has got amplifies due the mating of close bloodlines. Now, these puppies being in-bred would have a higher probability of transmitting the high aggression trait in their off springs. But had the common grandparents of the puppies had excellent health condition , strong nerves and bold, firm temperament, then these qualities would have descended in these puppies too, and the same thing would have happened in reverse..
