Line Breeding

[Seraphina]

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Autosomal recessive is the term used to describe the inheritance of genetic traits located in the autosomes, which are the 22 non-sex determining chromosomes.  Mendel and scientists since then have demonstrated that recessive genetic traits (or disorders) occur when both parents are carriers.  In this case  the chance of two of these alleles landing in one of their offspring is at least 25% and in autosomal dominant traits even higher.  50% of the resultant dogs, or a minimum of 2/3 of the rest of the litter will be carriers.  So it is obviously not easy to avoid passing on a problem carrying this sort of odds.
Lanny

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By the way humans have 22 autosomes, dogs have 38.

Naturally all Whippets share large percentage of their genes, after all 96 percent of the protein-coding genes in both chimps and humans are identical, while in some stretches of DNA where genes either regulate other genes or whose function is unknown, as much as 99 percent of the genetic material in both is identical. We also share percentage of our genes with every living thing on the earth, including yeast. (w00t)

However it is the small percentage, the 35 million tiny bits of DNA in the human genome that differ from chimps, that make us what we are. And it is the difference in this tiny percentage that makes individual inbred or possessing healthy gene diversity.

 

[jayp]

Well, ive been offline for a few days due to storm damage but have just read replies to my topic,thanks everyone for your considered opinions.Contrary to the opinion of some breeders i am well aware of the principles of line breeding, inbreeding and outcrossing if care had been taken in reading this topic it is not this to which i was referring, nor was i giving any personal opinion but all i was asking was the opinion of experienced breeders on the degree of linebreeding, which is inbreeding to a degree. I have studied the pedigrees of champions in other breeds and noticed a difference why is this? All i can say is if having the best interests of the breed in mind and trying to glean as much informatin as i can makes me a fool in some peoples eyes then so be it. jan

 

[Avalonia]

All i can say is if having the best interests of the breed in mind and trying to glean as much informatin as i can makes me a fool in some peoples eyes then so be it.  jan

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Hey Jan, asking intelligent questions is smart, not stupid so don't sell yourself short! Look at the wonderful discussion your questions have raised! I have seen news of the storms you folks have had. Pretty terrible! We had an ice storm here at the start of December that cost us power for 3 days. It's a pretty awful feeling to feel as helpless as you do when that happens.

All the best.

Lanny

 

[Seraphina]

interesting article by C.A. Sharp is editor of the "Double Helix Network News".

dangers of close breeding

 

[dragonfly]

I believe that close breeding within families is unhealthy for the genetic base of the breed in the long term. There is a greater risk of genetic defects with close line breeding, that is a proven fact and is the reason that incest is outlawed in most societies. The highest incidence of genetic defects in human populations are found in societies where familial intermarriage is common. I know the majority of breeders totally disagree with me on this issue, but I feel very strongly that we are storing up trouble for the future by continuing to breed closely within families. Even when outcrossing it is extremely likely that there will be common ancestors way back in the pedigree so it is impossible not to inbreed to an extent in any case.

Cathie

 

[Avalonia]

I believe that close breeding within families is unhealthy for the genetic base of the breed in the long term. There is a greater risk of genetic defects with close line breeding, that is a proven fact and is the reason that incest is outlawed in most societies. The highest incidence  of genetic defects in human populations are found in societies where familial intermarriage is common. I know the majority of breeders totally disagree with me on this issue, but I feel very strongly that we are storing up trouble for the future by continuing to breed closely within families. Even when outcrossing it is extremely likely that  there will be  common ancestors way back in the pedigree so it is impossible not to inbreed to an extent in any case.
Cathie

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We are very lucky in the whippet breed to have a significant population of dogs from which to choose world wide for our breeding programs. But I get back to the point again that ultimately all our stock inevitably relates directly back to Ch. Zuber and his parents and grandparents, Charlie and Lizzie. So nobody in the breed population is unrelated, ultimately and it doesn't take much digging beneath the skin to find out how little time it takes for a breeding program to produce dogs that carry significant relationships amongst them, even when breeders strive to avoid breeding in this manner.

The greatest likelihood of people breeding dogs that are not at all closely related comes with neophyte breeders who breed one or two litters in their time in the breed and then disappear leaving a dog or two behind that may then find its way in the breeding pool. Many of these first time breeders will choose to breed based on what is often popular, or readily available to them, without regard to pedigree. It is really when people decide to launch a breeding program that they start to think (perhaps too much!) about where they will go in further litters down the road.

Thus, the moment someone undertakes a longer term breeding program they unwittingly set in place a narrowing of the gene pool that they will access. This is because they base their breeding program on their preferences, and their personal preferences are usually manifested in a handful of bloodlines that they come to like and think will work well to create and maintain the whippet type that they like.

So even though that breeder may access one male from this breeder's program, and one male from that breeders program, and while they may think that these two dogs are from different gene pools and the breedings done with them really results in a diverse gene pool, what you find as you examine succeeding generations that are bred is increasingly closer relationships associated with the dogs in the totality of the breeding program.

In essence, the breeder has unwittingly, even while attempting to select broadly, narrowed the acceptable gene pool based on the type of dog they like and other preferences associated with their ideal whippet, ending up ultimately with a gene pool that is suprisingly consistent, and more closely related than they may have ever considered they were building when the set out to establish a unique and diverse breeding program.

Add to this other factors that narrow the gene pool and increase the relationship of dogs within a particular breeders bloodline. For instance, breeders who breed on the basis of coat colour, as an example fawn, have deliberately excluded all those dogs whose coats are brindled. That is a huge exclusion of gene pools right there, and the reverse is equally true, though it is my experience that more often than not breeders who breed for brindle are more likely to incorporate some fawn dogs in their breeding program, keeping their gene pool that much more expanded. My observation is that the reverse - fawn dog people who will breed to brindles -- is far less likely.

Just for fun I ran a relationship calculator on four of the dogs of a breeder participating in this forum who espouses the diversity idea.

I randomly pulled two dogs from the early registrations of the breeding program in 1990 (not littermates but the two dogs shared one common dam via different sires) and two dogs from fourteen yeas later in 2003/2004 (not littermates or sharing common parents with themselves or either of the dogs born in 1990) and found that one dog born in 1990 was grand aunt of BOTH of the dogs born in 2004, while the second dog born in 1990 was great grandmother of one of the dogs born in 2003/2004, and grand-aunt of the other.

This says to me that it is a lot harder to avoid linebreeding and inbreeding than anyone might imagine.

All of this prompts me to suggest that what we really need to be devoting our energies to is eliminating health problems that have begun to crop up in the breed and that are already known to be, or are whispered to be, problems in some bloodlines -- be these heart problems, auto-immune diseases, etc. These are dogs who really should not be bred, and if we can at least be honest with ourselves and others, and exercise a degree of integrity so that we eliminate dogs from the breeding pool that are known to be carrying these problems we will, again be in a position to leave the breed at least as well off, and perhaps even a little bit better than it was when we elected ourselves to play god with its gene pool.

Lanny Morry

 

[Seraphina]

All breeds were started with only handful of related animals. However until the registers became closed (less than 100 years ago) individuals of other breeds were often introduced.

It is all very well to calculate coefficients, as long as people realise that what they are getting are [SIZE=14pt]probabilities[/SIZE].

It is like if just before you get on a commercial aircraft , you get somebody to tell you what is the probability you will die in aircrash that day. The result would be 0.0...something%, but if the plane does come down the pobability is more like 99.99...something%. (w00t)

You can take 5 generations pedigree work out the coefficients and get a result that your dog is not inbred, go back another few generatiions and the number may inducate it is very heavilly inbred. :wacko:

I have met some young people very enthusistically trying to line breed to a particular famous dog of yesteryear - living some 30 years ago. They have only seen the dog in a photo, but I remebered him well, and they would have been very disapointed. If he was alive today he would not have the success he did then.

 

[sander]

We are very lucky in the whippet breed to have a significant population of dogs from which to choose world wide for our breeding programs.  But I get back to the point again that ultimately all our stock inevitably relates directly back to Ch. Zuber and his parents and grandparents, Charlie and Lizzie.  So nobody in the breed population is unrelated, ultimately and it doesn't take much digging beneath the skin to find out how little time it takes for a breeding program to produce dogs that carry significant relationships amongst them, even when breeders strive to avoid breeding in this manner.

Is this really true? The KC was as far as I know still accepting whippet registrations of dogs from non-registered parents well into the 1930s, and it doesn't sound overly likely that the majority of them would have had common parents with Ch Zuber, nor that exclusively CH Zuber descendant stock survived the genetic bottleneck during WWII. Considering the amount of influx of unrelated blood (in the form of dogs that probably only had ancestors via greyhounds and terriers) in the end of the 19th century, are there actually any dogs who can really be claimed to have a significant number of genes that might be traced directly back to Zuber? Much more a math than "trick" question.

Everything I have seen to date (admitedly this is most probably much less than those really cognizant in the breed are likely to have seen) indicates that whippets sprang as athe result of numberous breeding experiments followed by breeding for a type over a long stretch of time and not an isolated case of a breed founder creating the breed out of a small number of dogs like say in the case of GSD-s or Dobermans.

 

[Seraphina]

We are very lucky in the whippet breed to have a significant population of dogs from which to choose world wide for our breeding programs.  But I get back to the point again that ultimately all our stock inevitably relates directly back to Ch. Zuber and his parents and grandparents, Charlie and Lizzie.  So nobody in the breed population is unrelated, ultimately and it doesn't take much digging beneath the skin to find out how little time it takes for a breeding program to produce dogs that carry significant relationships amongst them, even when breeders strive to avoid breeding in this manner.

Is this really true? The KC was as far as I know still accepting whippet registrations of dogs from non-registered parents well into the 1930s, and it doesn't sound overly likely that the majority of them would have had common parents with Ch Zuber, nor that exclusively CH Zuber descendant stock survived the genetic bottleneck during WWII. Considering the amount of influx of unrelated blood (in the form of dogs that probably only had ancestors via greyhounds and terriers) in the end of the 19th century, are there actually any dogs who can really be claimed to have a significant number of genes that might be traced directly back to Zuber? Much more a math than "trick" question.

Everything I have seen to date (admitedly this is most probably much less than those really cognizant in the breed are likely to have seen) indicates that whippets sprang as athe result of numberous breeding experiments followed by breeding for a type over a long stretch of time and not an isolated case of a breed founder creating the breed out of a small number of dogs like say in the case of GSD-s or Dobermans.

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That is interesting. I wonder if that may be the reason why so far Whippets in UK and also here in OZ (mostly from UK lines) are relatively healthy, while from what i can gather talking to American Whippet people, over in the USA there are many problems. The Americans wonder how it is possible that the breed which was based on dogs imported from the UK have problems which are rare back in the old country. But that is easily explained, in the USA famous dogs can sire hundreds of litters, and if breeders line breed to them the whole population becomes inbred, and various problems well established.

 

[Seraphina]

Another thought:

Many breeds went into a drastic decline during WW2, breeds like Great Danes were particularly badly affected ,as they consume as much as a person, and for many people it was impossible to feed such a large dogs through those years. So afterwards the breeding stock was very limited and old. But I wonder if little Whippets ( and they were still little in those times) were lot easier to get through, especially as they were able to catch the odd bunnie to share with their families. Is here on K9 anybody old enough to remeber the WW2 to tell us more about those times?

In the USA and Canada it was probably lot easier to keep dogs during WW2, maybe people even bred litters?

 

[playawhile]

We are very lucky in the whippet breed to have a significant population of dogs from which to choose world wide for our breeding programs.  But I get back to the point again that ultimately all our stock inevitably relates directly back to Ch. Zuber and his parents and grandparents, Charlie and Lizzie.  So nobody in the breed population is unrelated, ultimately and it doesn't take much digging beneath the skin to find out how little time it takes for a breeding program to produce dogs that carry significant relationships amongst them, even when breeders strive to avoid breeding in this manner.

Is this really true? The KC was as far as I know still accepting whippet registrations of dogs from non-registered parents well into the 1930s, and it doesn't sound overly likely that the majority of them would have had common parents with Ch Zuber, nor that exclusively CH Zuber descendant stock survived the genetic bottleneck during WWII. Considering the amount of influx of unrelated blood (in the form of dogs that probably only had ancestors via greyhounds and terriers) in the end of the 19th century, are there actually any dogs who can really be claimed to have a significant number of genes that might be traced directly back to Zuber? Much more a math than "trick" question.

Everything I have seen to date (admitedly this is most probably much less than those really cognizant in the breed are likely to have seen) indicates that whippets sprang as athe result of numberous breeding experiments followed by breeding for a type over a long stretch of time and not an isolated case of a breed founder creating the breed out of a small number of dogs like say in the case of GSD-s or Dobermans.

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But the whippets that became dominant after the WWII were whery much Zuber-based in that the Brekin whippets who very much came to influence the breed through Laguna (later on) and so on were heavily inbred on Tiptree and the Tiptrees were bred back to the Zuber Grand son Ch Shirley Wanderer over and over again. The single dog who influence the breed very much in the UK right now is Ch Samarkands Greenbrae Tarragon as he appears (although he lived in to the seventies) hundreds of times (sometimes over 1000!!) behind many of the top winners in the UK of today. I once calculated how many times the most frequent ancestors shows up in the pedigree's of Tarragon's sire and dam and the "number one" whippet in these statistics is Ch Shirley Wanderer. In The whippet book by Renwick published in the fifties the authors argues for breeders to collect stock to be able to line breed back to Wanderer. I am not saying that everything is based on Zuber but through the selection that has been made and is being made over the time it is very visible that whippets of today carry Zuber in their pedigrees more times than probably can realise......

Henrik Härling

 

[Avalonia]

Another thought:Many breeds went into a drastic decline during WW2, breeds like Great Danes were particularly badly affected ,as they consume as much as a person, and for many people it was impossible to feed such a large dogs through those years.  So afterwards the breeding stock was very limited and old.  But I wonder if little Whippets ( and they were still little in those times) were lot easier to get through, especially as they were able to catch the odd bunnie to share with their families.  Is here on K9 anybody old enough to remeber the WW2  to tell us more about those times?

In the USA and Canada it was probably lot easier to keep dogs during WW2, maybe people even bred litters?

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I can take any dog in my whippet data base of more than 20,000 whippets world wide that I have more than three or four generations of pedigree for (and this is the vast majority of the data base), and trace every single one of these dogs back to Zuber, his parents, and grandparents Charlie and Lizzy. The information for all of the early English dogs in my data base was collected on site at the Kennel Club library on Clarges Street where I went through the registration volumes from the start through to the late 1920s before I ran out of time the day I did this research and complied the information. I have significant numbers of their descendants from the 1930s so it is clear the breed was proceeding normally till the onset of the War. The scantest information I have is for the period from 1940 to 1945. After that registrations pick up significantly and you find that the dominant dog immediately pre WW2 was Ch. Pilot Officer Prune, born, on 11 November 1945 which means he was from one of the first litters bred after the cessation of hostilities on VE Day. In my program I find Pilot Officer Prune sired 19 litters for which I have descendants so he was certainly bred Day) with a very significantg litter being that bred to Bolney Starshine of Allways who was in fact bred and born during the war period, in June 1944. Her sire was born in 1940 I see. Bolney Starshine of Allways was bred again in late 1949 to another post-war bred dog, Eng.Ch. Sapperley Kinsman, and out of that came one of the dogs most associated with the modern whippet era, Eng.Ch. Wingedfoot Marksman of Allways, born in January 1950. I am suspecting that the male population then was still pretty thin on the ground because he was bred 24 times, which is a significant number of litters at any time, but probably was necessitated at the end of the war because of reduced breeding stock.

There was certainly breeding activity in America via the Meander dogs and others during the period of the 40s but if you scratch a Meander dog and look at its pedigree you quickly go right back to English imported dogs, which is how the link to Zuber is once again completed.

The post war period saw significant importation of English whippets to both Canada and the United States, right through to the late 1980s when for whatever reason importation of English bred whippets seems to have dropped way off. The last of the muti imported lines seems to have been Anne Knight's Dondelayos and Bobby James Samarkands. And when they died, so it seems did significant importation of English lines to North America.

During the decade and a half of the 90s and 2000s I think my son Mick and I have brought in the majority of English whippets to North America. We brought in a male from June Cox (Rearsbylea Moonwalker), and two females from June Cross, one of whom was deliberately poisoned by a neighbour and died before she was a year (a sick old woman with mental health issues), while the other, Runaround Jenny Wren, was never bred, but she lived to be the oldest whippet we ever had dying at 17 years, 5 months and 25 days of age.

Our concentration however has been on Nevedith and it has included Nevedith Wood Chip, Cdn. Ch. Nevedith Local Lancer, Cdn.Ch. Nevedith Wotta Wispa, Cdn.Ch. Nevedith Ayfa Aylestorm, Nevedith Evening Dusk, and Eng.Cdn.Ch. Nevedith Ceefa Ceely. As well we have brought in Nevedith bloodlined dogs from Rudi Brandt (2 dogs - Cdn.Ch. Frontrunners Full Monty and Frontrunners Guys n Dolls), Jarmo Vuorinen (2 dogs - Cdn.Ch. Scheik's Whisky Avalonia and Fin.Swed.Cdn.Ch. Scheik's Ardbeg Avalonia, both bred back out of an Avalonia male from our Nevedith lines that went to Finland) and Bart Scheerens (Cdn.Ch. Boxing Helena's Art Lover of Nevedith). These have provided the elements of our breeding program.

For whatever reason, the North American focus turned to North American breeders about 1990 and it has not changed since But make no mistake about it, behind every American whippet is the English bloodline that traces itself inexorably back to Zuber, Charlie and Lizzie!

Lanny

 

[jayp]

When breeding programs were embarked upon in the early days usually close breeding by the large kennels any substandard stock was ruthlessly culled and therefore did not find its way into later breeding programs. This does not now happen unless the defects are obvious.

Whippets i agree are in general in a healthy state but in my humble opinion the only way close breeding should be the norm is if all breeders were absolutely and without exception honest and open about their successes and failures.

Since this is about as likely as plaitting fog perhaps we should err on the side of caution jan

 

[aslan]

Many whippet breeders are very secretive about problems produced in their breeding programs. They are extremely unlikely to tell you how many males they've bred without testicles, etc. I have asked these questions of breeders in the past and all knowledge has been denied.

Unless we were forced, here in Australia to register every pup and its ailments on a publicly accessible database we will never know. Even then we would not know because people would still lie. Put the pup down and say nothing.

And so it happens - something surfaces in your litter and you have NO IDEA where it came from. How many of us doing this as our hobby and not a business - have the money to abandon all current dogs and start over? And what if you did that and got a new brood bitch only to find in her first litter you'd been lied to again because the dogs had no testicles and the bitch has a heart murmur? How many of us have the money to physically trace all the dogs from a litter and view them for ourselves to make sure that the males were all entire or free from whatever problem? We can really only ask the questions and we have to deal with what we are told, whether that is the truth or not.

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Lanny after reading your article I am interested to find out what you think about the 'outcrossing' of two line bred dogs ie. both parents are line bred but not on immediately common lines, because I don't recall you specifically mentioning it. What's your take on that?

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The Americans wonder how it is possible that the breed which was based on dogs imported from the UK have problems which are rare back in the old country. But that is easily explained, in the USA famous dogs can sire hundreds of litters, and if breeders line breed to them the whole population becomes inbred, and various problems well established.

Popular sires happen in the UK as well (maybe not hundreds of litters) - but look at the use Heavenly Mover is getting in recent times - and you have to work a bit to find an English pedigree that doesn't have Dutch or Fergal in it.

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[Seraphina]

Popular sires happen in the UK as well (maybe not hundreds of litters) - but look at the use Heavenly Mover is getting in recent times - and you have to work a bit to find an English pedigree that doesn't have Dutch or Fergal in it.
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Fortunately, it is unlikely there were serious deffect in their genome. Or if there was something, it is not a problem with simple inheritance, pops up only occasionally and nobody knows where it came from.

Some deffects, such as cleft palate or spina bifida are often one of, and very possibly have environmental cause. yet in many genetic faults site it is recomended tha if you have one of these defects in your litter you shoul eliminate from your breeding programe both sire and dam, and their immediate relatives. To do that would seriously affect breeds and do lot more damage than good.

I also tried to talk about problems with other breeders, and interestingly I found NOBODY HAS EVER HAD ONE :lol:

 

[dragonfly]

Firstly: There are plenty of pedigrees in the UK without Fergal in them.

Secondly: Size is about more than just height.

Thirdly: Seraphina I will willingly admit to problems, ALL breeders get defects, it is inevitable. If a breeder of several years standing and a handful of litters has not at least had the odd monorchid to admit to, they are either very lucky or liars. I would rather buy a brood/stud from a breeder who told me what problems they had, than from one who says that all their matings have produced perfect puppies. I think that the majority of breeders cover up problems, which is TOTALLY inexcusable and selfish for their current clients and for future generations of breeders.

I will now clamber off my soap box

Cathie

 

[Avalonia]

It is clear in re-reading my piece that has prompted much of this discussion that I didn't cover all the bases. I had been asked to write something that would be relatively brief and of necessity I stuck more to defining what things were than how they worked. But since you are curious let me tell you what we have done.

Even with a goodly number of dogs, as we have, we do not believe you can linebreed for more than a couple of generations before you need to go back out of your line and outcross for vigor and yes, gene diversity. So we have always had dogs who typify the type and quality of dog we like to serve as outcrosses in our litters. Their role in diversifying the gene pool and preventing inbreeding is crucial, so it is critical that they be very carefully selected.

The first dog we actively sought for outcrossing was a lovely nearly white bitch acquired from Sporting Fields kennels in the USA. Cdn.Ch. Sporting Field Perfection was born in January 1992 and was a daughter of the great Am.Cdn.Ch. Sporting Fields Kinsman whom I unashamedly adored for the qualities he stamped on his get. She was out of Gatsby's Gypsy of Sporting Field, a bitch that was sired by Am.Ch. Gold Dust's Joint Venture out of Am.Ch. Sporting Fields Gatsby's Mimi.

We picked Amanda, not just because she was so wonderfully conformed and of a lovely size, but because her pedigree, which was a total outcross to us, was actually linebred along Sporting Fields lines on both the top and bottom. Our consideration here was that if we going to be using an outcross then we wanted the line we went out to, to be as well bred within itself in terms of linebreeding, as we considered our own Avalonia dogs or the Nevedith lines from which we bred them.

Amanda's first litter, sired by Cdn.Ch. Nevedith Local Lancer united those two lines. Out of it we got five puppies. For those who have not noted, we named all Lancer children after single malt Scotch whiskies, inspired by his RCC win at the Whippet Club of Scotland as a pup just before I brought him to Canada. We find it incredibly easy to know who is by who and out of who by maintaining themed names on our litters. We kept two of the Lancer/Amanda pups, a dog and a bitch, on the basis they would form an essential component of our program to provide a mixed gene pool to take back to purely Nevedith bred lines.

Three of the litter became champions -- Cdn.Ch. Avalonia Lagavulin (Buffy), Cdn.Ch. Avalonia Bowmore (Robbie), and Int.Fin.Swed.Dk.Nord.Ch. Avalonia Glen Scotia (Muffy).

Buffy, a petite 18 inch mahogany brindle bitch with white points has provided us with three litters bred back on our Nevedith bloodline, two sired by Ch. Avalonia Wotta Jesta (a son of Ch. Nevedith Justa Jesta x Cdn.Ch. Nevedith Wotta Wispa), and most recently, in September 2006 in her final litter for us, out of Cdn.Ch. Nevedith Hfa Hanky Panky, another Jesta son.

Puppies from Buffy bred back on Nevedith lines, have to go back out to our outcross line again because they are again predominantly Nevedith in pedigree. This has been our practice all the way along. Linebreed, go out to a good well bred outcross, breed another generation coming back to the strongly Nevedith/Avalonia line, and then go back out again.

As Sporting Field Perfection reached her middle years, we went shopping for new young females to continue our outcrossing line. We bought in two other American females, both carrying Sporting Fields Kinsman as their grandsire. Cdn.Ch. Windsong Chase The Stars is a striking black brindle and white bitch out of Am.Ch. Bohem American Graffiti from what I think was the only litter ever bred from him. Her dam is Eclipse Keeper of the Stars, a daughter of SF Kinsman out of a daughter of SF Kinsman. We acquired a second Windsong female, Windsong Justa Starr who was -- no big surprise here when you see Justa in the name -- a daughter of Nevedith Justa Joker out of Eclipse Keeper of the Stars.

As you can see, the outcross line has common components from the first dog acquired in 1992 to those purchased in 1999 and 2000.

We bred Windsong Justa Starr to Fin.Swed.Cdn.Ch. Scheik's Ardbeg Avalonia, who is out of our original line via Cdn.Fin.Nor.World Ch. Avalonia Wheatfield Waving, and produced a male called Avalonia Bilbo Baggins, whom we sold but sought one stud service back from when we were told he was going to be neutered by his owners (who were afraid he would impregnate their neighbours unspayed pit bull bitches!!!)

He was bred to Windsong Chase the Stars, doubling up on the Eclipse Keeper of the Stars line to Sporting Fields Kinsman, and produced a litter of 5. We ran on three of the bitches for 6 months before we made a decision on which to keep -- their quality was such that we simply could not decide, and then we kept the bitch we registered as Cdn.Ch. Avalonia Barbados (Fox).

Fox carries three strong American lines, with a small dash of Nevedith in one of them, and has served as our outcross bitch in the last couple of years. We bred her in 2004 to Lancer in what turned out to be Lancer's last litter and had just two pups. Cdn.Ch. Avalonia Edradour (Apollo) and Cdn.Ch. Avalonia Glenlochy -- two extremely sound, extremely flashy 20 inch dogs that keep the spirit of Lancer alive in our hearts.

With our two outcross females now of an age where we will no longer breed them, in 2006 we again needed to go out to bring in a new outcross line. And again we went back to the Sporting Field lines, but this time we selected something very different... a black and white male out of two Sporting Field parents, with one being from the Sporting Field black line.

We now co-own Ammardan DuMond Avalonia (Andrew), born 20 September 2006, with our friend Jalynn in the USA (DuMond whippets. She owns Cdn.Ch. N. Hfa Hanky Panky and Cdn.Ch. Avalonia All Hallow's Eve, a daughter of Eng.Cdn.Ch. Nevedith Ceefa Ceely, amongst other dogs.)

To give you an idea of who Andrew is perhaps you will have a better idea if I tell you that Andrew's sire is the full litter brother of Patsy Gilmour's Eng.Ch. Sporting Fields Winged Dove Over Dumbriton.

I apologize for going so deeply into our breeding program to try to describe what we do and why, but I believe it was the easiest way to show what we look for when we shop for an outcross and then use it in our tightly linebred lines.

The critical element, in our view, is consistency over time. As you can see, it is now 15 years since we acquired Sporting Field Perfection, and our outcrosses over that entire time has been made up of dogs with strong genetic ties to her sire, Sporting Field Kinsman. We have found this particular line to have worked extremely well when bred to Nevedith bloodlines, which is why we have pursued it right up to the present. Had it not worked we would have had to look for another line, but there again, we would have looked for the best linebred pedigree of dogs unrelated to ours as the basis of that outcross.

Hope this all makes sense!

Lanny

 

[Seraphina]

Popular sires happen in the UK as well (maybe not hundreds of litters) - but look at the use Heavenly Mover is getting in recent times - and you have to work a bit to find an English pedigree that doesn't have Dutch or Fergal in it.
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There are also very many dogs around the world with Nevedith Rare Rogue somewhere in their pedigree, anybody knows how many litter he sired?

 

[Avalonia]

There are also very many dogs around the world with Nevedith Rare Rogue somewhere in their pedigree, anybody knows how many litter he sired?

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I wish I could say my pedigree records on Rogue are up to date, but sadly I am dependant on what I can find from breeders, or what people send me in the way of show catalogs or emails they send that detail dogs to up date my pedigree program. I can partially answer the Rogue question, but would greatly benefit from having people in Australia and New Zealand who used Rogue emailing me with details of all the dogs in litters they had out of him to bring his picture up to date. The least amount of information I have is from Australia and New Zealand so if there are people out there who have old show catalogues they can photocopy that list parents, dob, registered names etc. gosh I would love to have them.

What I can tell you is that when I run a descendancy report on Rogue, who was born in 1995, on my computer it runs 21 pages. By way of comparison, my program shows Hillsdown Fergal produced at least 30 litters, and his descendancy report runs an astonishing 130 pages. Pencloe Dutch Gold sired 19 litters according to my records, and has a descendancy report of 85 pages. Nevedith Justa Jesta sired 31 litters and has a descendancy report that runs just 37 pages.

In terms of Rogue, my program shows that some breeding programs now have five generations down from Rogue (Nevedith and Boxing Helena) and many others, ourselves included have 4 generations.

We ourselves own two Rogue children from his 11 litters that were born in England before he was exported: Cdn.Ch. Nevedith Wotta Wispa and Eng.Cdn.Ch. Nevedith Ceefa Ceely.

In England Rogue is sire of 9 English champions, which as I have mentioned in previous posts on this forum, puts him high up on the list of top English whippet sires for number of champions produced. The 9 is quite an astonishing number for so few litters, but it has been enhanced by the incorporation of two Australian bred English champions, albeit they were bred out of what was originally English (or should we say Scottish) stock at Peperone.

His Eng.Ch. get are:

Eng.Ch. Nuts in May at Nevedith

Eng.Ch. Fullerton Just Xsara for Hungtinghill

Eng.& Aust. Ch. Nevedith Veefa Vanity (herself now in Australia)

Eng.Ch. Nevedith Veefa Vesper at Marchpast

Eng.&Cdn.Ch. Nevedith Ceefa Ceely (now in Canada)

Eng.Ch. Fullerton Dream Mover

Eng.Ch. Janelyn Silvatec Sixpence

Eng.Ch. Peperone White Heather (Aust. imp.)

Eng.Ch. Peperone Solid Gold (Aust. imp.)

On a final personal note, in a Ceely litter born on 31 March 2006 we produced, and have kept, a red fawn and white Rogue grandson who will make his show debut in Canada in 2007. He is registered as Avalonia Reckless Rogue... call name Rogue and he is a stunner.

Lanny

 

[dolly]

Many whippet breeders are very secretive about problems produced in their breeding programs.  They are extremely unlikely to tell you how many males they've bred without testicles, etc.  I have asked these questions of breeders in the past and all knowledge has been denied.Unless we were forced, here in Australia to register every pup and its ailments on a publicly accessible database we will never know.  Even then we would not know because people would still lie.  Put the pup down and say nothing.

And so it happens - something surfaces in your litter and you have NO IDEA where it came from.  How many of us doing this as our hobby and not a business - have the money to abandon all current dogs and start over? And what if you did that and got a new brood bitch only to find in her first litter you'd been lied to again because the dogs had no testicles and the bitch has a heart murmur?  How many of us have the money to physically trace all the dogs from a litter and view them for ourselves to make sure that the males were all entire or free from whatever problem?  We can really only ask the questions and we have to deal with what we are told, whether that is the truth or not.

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Lanny after reading your article I am interested to find out what you think about the 'outcrossing' of two line bred dogs ie. both parents are line bred but not on immediately common lines, because I don't recall you specifically mentioning it.  What's your take on that?

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The Americans wonder how it is possible that the breed which was based on dogs imported from the UK have problems which are rare back in the old country. But that is easily explained, in the USA famous dogs can sire hundreds of litters, and if breeders line breed to them the whole population becomes inbred, and various problems well established.

Popular sires happen in the UK as well (maybe not hundreds of litters) - but look at the use Heavenly Mover is getting in recent times - and you have to work a bit to find an English pedigree that doesn't have Dutch or Fergal in it.

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Heavenly Mover has only sired 5 litters, do you not mean Dream Mover ??