This is why the new pet-friendly stores (Petsmart, etc.) don’t even sell cats/dogs.
stevephillips, from The Mixed Breed Dog
Vet student here,
just to say that cross-bred dogs are just as likely to get hip and elbow dysplasia as pure-breds, especially if they are from large breed backgrounds.
Diet and care in early life, as well as genetics, are the most important factors in preventing degenerative joint disease.
And I’d put my vote for getting a dog from a breed rescue society if you’re after a certain breed, or a shelter if not.
I’m surprised to hear that mixed breeds have the same incidence of health problems as purebreds. I always assumed that, like the European royal families, inbreeding had increased the incidence of certain diseases and lowered IQ.
I wish to echo the many replies already posted: Please do not buy an animal from a pet store! As the daughter of a 35 year vetran of Old English Sheepdog breeding, we hear all kinds of horror stories about “puppy mills” selling to petstores. Please visit the American Kennel Club website for lots of great information:AKC Homepage From there you can find many breeders as well as breed clubs who do rescue.
I also agree with many who have said to adopt from a shelter, but again, you don’t usually know what thieir background is and you can’t really predict what you will get and can sometimes get a dog that has perhaps been abused, etc. Of course you can also luck out. Whatever you do, be sure you are prepared for pet ownership by doing lots of research on different breeds and find out what kind of dog will be right for you, based on adult size and the personality and so forth. Remember, a dog is not just for Christmas, it’s for life.
But, dauerbach, the point is that most large and giant breeds possess genes within their populations for these defects. They’re the same genes, regardless of the breed. So, crossbreeding still produces the same possibilities for dogs to carry, pass on, and exhibit these traits (keeping in mind that most of the traits are complex, and the genes may only indicate a predisposition to develop the defect).
You are probably correct in mentioning inbreeding. . .although it’s not done much now (except by many puppy mills, reprehensible breeders, etc.), it was done in the past at the very beginning of many breeds’ creation simply because a newly created breed will only have a few members. Now that there are many, many members of most of these breeds, the job that responsible professional breeders are charged with is making sure that dogs carrying the undesirable traits are not allowed to breed–cleaning up the gene pool, or improving or enhancing the breed as they call it.
Another vote for not buying the pet shop puppy. If you want a dog for a specific purpose with a known background, do your research and find a reputable breeder and be prepared to spend a good bit of $$.
If you want a good dog that’s a good companion, check out the breed rescue groups or the local shelters.
'Nuff said.
Yet another “NO PET STORE!” yell here.
We have two rescue dogs, a golden and a yellow lab who has a bit of golden in him (though the lab genes definitely came out on top) and they are the best dogs in the world. Especially Isaac, the lab. He’s SO smart, and he tries SO hard to please. I’m a great fan of labs.
If she wants a lab, there are lab rescue groups. And I’m willing to bet there’s labs in a local shelter; they are sweeties, but they ARE high-energy dogs and can be difficult to handle without good training. And when you have people who have a young lab and don’t get him neutered and he lives in the yard and after a year and a half or so he gets out of the yard and goes looking for some nookie, he might well end up in a shelter, needing only some medical care and love and attention and training.
Sorry about that, but the golden rescue we got our dogs from always has bunches of young males for precisely that reason…the dogs don’t CARE if they don’t have their balls, men!
Here’s a couple articles of interest:
I hate to be the voice of dissent here, but…
My current dog and my last dog were both purchased at a pet shop. The first I ended up getting there when I answered an ad in the paper for a free puppy, and by the time I got to the house, the husband of the woman I talked to had brought the puppies to the local pet shop. I went to the shop and bought the puppy. She was a wonderful dog.
My current dog was purchased from a pet store as well. I’d watched several local humane societies for months, and they never had a dog that had the qualities I wanted. I also talked to my vet, who is a wonderful, wonderful man. His take on the whole pet store thing was that at least in my area, he could very much recomend the stores. He said the negative publicity given to pet stores had done it’s job - the quality of dogs in his opinion were much better than they’d been in years past, and the conditions they were kept in were much better.
If there had been breeders in my area for the type of dog I wanted, I would have gone to them. But the nearest I could find was several hundred miles away.
On another note, there is no way in hell I’d get an animal from my local humane society (I’ve moved since I got the above dog.) I was there a few weeks ago, and was NOT impressed with the conditions. Not all humane societies are quality places - much like not all pet shops are horrible.
You’ve recommended a Labrador to your friend. They are great animals. Here’s the deal. As the Lab is the most popular dog in America, you’ll definitely find several at any shelter you go to. Lots of my friends have Labs and Lab mixes from the pound, and they are fabulous.
Again, no pet stores. They are the retail vehicle for puppy mills.
I’d appreciate it if phraser and other animal professionals would please come in here clear up some serious misconceptions that people may have about purebred inbreeding.
Yes, many unscrupulous puppy mill operators have directly bred littermates and I’m inclined to view that as a criminal act. That sort of inbreeding literally guarantees health complications for any offspring of the pair.
There is another form of pairing used during the establishment of a breed known as line breeding, which is quite different and is supposed to have nowhere near the deleterious effects. Would someone more qualified please elaborate on this?
It’s a very fine line, Zenster. Line breeding is breeding relatives with each other. However, they are not CLOSE relatives. This, I believe, is technically inbreeding, but not as dangerous as breeding littermates or parent/child pairs.
So, you’re right in saying I was wrong when I said inbreeding was done only by bad people. . .it’s not. . .but close-relative inbreeding is the bad thing. Line breeding seems to be an acceptable form of breeding relatives to maintain desirable qualities (it’s not only used with dogs, but also cattle, livestock, probably plants, etc.).
Linebreeding is different than inbreeding, but both can be done successfully - the former more than the latter.
Let’s get our facts straight and let’s start from the top:
** outcrossing** You bring two dogs that are less related to each other than what’s normally found in the breed. This means they may well share common ancestors, but it’s really FAR down, and not much if at all (hey, the gene pool was small when they started out). This will promote heterozygosity - it will allow the breed gene pool to diversify by matching up unrelated genes from mom and dad dog and pass on a new set of characteristics to the pups. This can help mask some recessives, too, and put some genes into the “carrier state” - for example, in Duck Tollers, we have an issue with PRA and its carrier gene.
If you outcross, you will end up with a highly variable litter - puppies won’t look alike at all, or will vary a lot in markings, size, traits for the breed. This is true for animals of a same breed - but if the parents are completely different and unrelated (like of different breeds altogether) there will be some uniformity to the litter.
Breeders will outcross so they can bring in new traits to their line of dogs. Maybe, for example, they really want to introduce a dark red coat to their golden retriever line which is, for now, a light gold colour. They may look for a mate that is from a completely different line - but it should also be a mate that will “complement” their breeding dog’s faults and aim to better the line he/she has already got. Again, in Tollers as an example: one line throws really SHORT legs in dogs. Outcrossing to a long-legged line has now settled that midway, for a number of kennels.
Here’s an interesting tidbit fact: An outcrossed litter can produce some stellar show-winning puppies. My current Aussie pup is one of those. However, breeding her would/will be risky (if her breeder chooses to do so) - most outcrossed dogs, though they may look perfect themselves, seem to be unable to pass on these characteristics (or, as we say, “throw” those characteristics) to their puppies. So, as the lingo goes, “low inbreeding coefficients” can be a bad thing, too, if you want to preserve the look and feel of the breed. What would normally happen, if you’re a good breeder, is that after such an outcross, you’d want to breed that offspring to someone related in the original line, as to solidify the changes you’ve made to your line by your outcross.
Confused yet? Canine genetics are awfully complicated. That’s why it’s better left to those who know what they’re doing.
Onward.
Linebreeding It’s not as bad as it sounds, in canine genetics. The point is to try to concentrate the genes of one or more ancestor (or the whole line) through their appearance or instinctive traits (such as herding). Usually we try to get that ancestor to appear in the lines a couple of times over. For example, my toller Valen is the spitting image of his great great grandfather. Said great great grandfather appears 4 times in his pedigree (6 generation pedigree) - twice on BOTH SIDES - which means both on his sire and his dam’s side. Reason? Simple. This way, the genes have a better chance of finding each other again and pairing. We try to get this ancestor behind more than one offspring - if he’s only there for one, then only 50% of his genes will be passed on to your new litter (which can be like 5 generations away).
It still gets trickier, but I’ll spare you the details - if you produce a puppy, through linebreeding, that is absolutely perfect, and some of those perfect traits weren’t those of the ancestor you’re linebred on, you can still end up with a pup that won’t breed “true”.
Now the touchy one.
Inbreeding It’s not as gruesome as it sounds to us humans… incest! 
When breeders who know what they’re doing inbreed, they increase the uniformity in their litter. This means puppies will be far more uniform, and potentially close to the breed standard as they want them to be. Inbreeding can be both good and bad: it can strengthen the good traits like nobody’s business… OR it can strengthen all the bad, too, depending on how the genes pair up. If you inbreed, you won’t CREATE new genes that are nasty - you’ll just let some who are already in your lines come to the surface - out of dormancy in a way. It can increase the tendency, say, towards some genetic defects because it can pair up two dogs who share the genes to CAUSE the defects. Inbreeding, unless you know what you’re doing, can cause some serious genetic defects.
This being said, some lines of dogs have survived and THRIVED on inbreeding… others have not. it can be done, and has been done. Again, you have to know your genetics…
…
So what’s the plan if you’re a breeder? Most will linebreed to strengthen the characteristics they like in their dogs (conformation meeting the standard, instinct, temperament, the works.) Then, they may outcross in order to bring in new characteristics. Once that’s done, they may linebreed again to solidify the changes to their lines. On occasion, there may be inbreeding (nephew/niece, for example) to solidify some family traits, or to eliminate others. It’s all a matter of how the genes pair up, in the end, and whether or not they will be passed on to the next generation of puppies.
This is one of the ways we know that your golden retriever puppy will look like a golden, act like a golden, work like a golden…
I don’t know if your friend has his heart set on a puppy, but when I was a kid, we got a retiring hunting dog (a purebred yellow lab). He was both extremely smart and extremely well-trained, which was a big advantage. I honestly have no idea where my parents got him from - he was a Christmas present.
He had a few quirks - he used to like to sit near the Thanksgiving turkey before it was cooked (although he would never touch it), and he liked to drink hot coffee (we thought that the hunters probably gave it to him when he got too cold).
While I hold with boycotting petstore puppies, I don’t think I’ve ever seen one for sale that was even $100 more than the local breeders- say $550 for what a breeder in the area is charging $450 for. Are there really petstores charging $900 for a purebred puppy, or breeders charging $275 somewhere?
It’s important to consider carefully WHY you (or, in your case, your friend) might want a purebred. There are reasonable reasons to want one, and not-so-reasonable reasons to want one. “I like how that breed looks” is a not-so-reasonable reason, for instance, while “I want a dog that’s small enough for me to handle, who likes the kind of exercise I can provide” is better.
Once you have that figured out, you’re ready to find one. There’s no substitute for learning a lot about where you get the critter from. A pet must not be an impulse buy.
I’d echo DanielWithrow in saying upbringing has a lot do do with critter temperament, just as in human temperament. Genetics also has something to do with it.
Some breeders both actively breed for temperament AND take their responsibilities as puppy raisers seriously. Good breeders tend to raise only one or a few litters a year, because it’s a lot of work. If you go to a reputable breeder, you can find out about how the puppy was raised. You can visit the breeder to see what conditions the critter was raised in and meet the critter’s relatives and childhood playmates. You can talk to other people who have adopted puppies from the breeder.
If you go to a breed rescuer, you can get the professional opinion of the rescue org about the critter’s temperament. Also, they often have information about the critter’s background – registration papers are often available. Rescue critters usually need rescuing due to flaws in their original owners, not in the critters (like the owners didn’t give good obedience training).
If you go to a pet store, you often can’t learn anything about how the puppy was raised, about its parents’ health, etc. And living in a pet store is a good way to make even a healthy, happy critter neurotic or sick.
Many (most?) shelters have lots of dedicated volunteers and staff who safeguard the critters’ health and give them at least some attention and socialization. They do this out of love for animals. Pet shops tend to be staffed with people who see pets as commodities – this is just in general, of course, not in all cases. There are wonderful pet shops. It matters a lot what the specific conditions are.
Definitely. Anything “Doodle-ized” is almost always selling for around $1000 - the same mixes that can be found in a shelter. Today I found someone selling “Super Tiny Maltese!” on the internet for $4,200 - yes, $4,200!!