I am starting a kennel (small) and I was wondering what anyone thinks about inbreeding. I don't know enough about the subject to have an opinion. But, I would be interested in yours. What I was wanting to breed is this. I have a male who I love his traits and I bred him to our 2 females (no relation). They each had a litter and our one female only had 1 puppy. Don't know why only 1 but maybe bc she is older (6 years) but our other female had a litter of 12. We decided to keep the 1 male that our female had but am thinking about saving a female pup out of our big litter. Both of these pups look perfect and I was thinking about breeding them, but they both have the same dad. Different moms but same dad. Do people do this?? And is it ok? Or, is it considered too much inbreeding or what?? Help, anyone.
While the belief that inbreeding has been perpetuated as good by several registries and many breeders the fact is, is that it is not in most cases and should be avoided as a breeding practice.This is why the APBR sets itself above other registries and denies those who practice such to participate in the Certified Kennel Program.
Inbreeding leads to what is known as inbreeding depression and can result in numerous genetic defects over time. Those who promote inbreeding as a positive are most often victims of the registration industries support of the practice since before genetics was well understood, those who practice the process and do not really care what science has proven orthose who find financial incentive from not conduting a positive breeding program.
Most supporters will use evidence that their offspring has never had any problems when the fact is, is they would likely never know as the results of inbreeding often do not show up until later in life. Hip Dysplasia for example is one of the ills of inbreeding and may not show up for 2-3 or more years into a dogs life. Just because a dog is not born with obvious physical defects does not mean that it will not be affected. One of the reasons dogs bite is due to mental instability, which is also another potential byproduct of inbreeding and is easily overlooked by a breeder as this is not something that is on the surface.
While there may be limited occasions where inbreeding can be used as a positive the reality is that such is very rare and are often used more as an excuse for current practice.
If you want to read a real infromation based article built on scientific evidence then we highly suggest this publication put out through the Canadian Veterinary Journal, which is indepth, informative and comes form people with real knowledge, experience and scientific understanding and not just from people who have been led to believe a certain thing that fits into their particular pre-determined mindset: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC195010... .
APBR
