Stafford Knot General Chat

Latest edition of this online Stafford magazine. Great articles and pictures.
Breed standard explained

http://issuu.com/thestaffordknot/docs/tsk-jul_aug2012?mode=window&viewMode=singlePage

Love the flybal shots
Interesting but not in a good way to read the line breeding article - especially the backing it up by saying wolves inbreed even more extensivly - wonder where he gets those 'facts' from

The person who wrote that article has been in the breed for 50 years and has had a lot of sucess breeding. He recently had a picture taken with many generations of his dogs all still alive and very healthy. And very much type.

Line breeding does not make health issues in dogs if the dogs are very healthy to start with. In the past some breeders would close breed to see what faults the had in their lines, called a test mating.

Continually line breeding does narrow the gene pool and we then lose genetic diversity.

Not something that was a concern when he was breeding.

Not strictly true that it dosent make health problems
Of course if you are making sure not to double up on genetic health problems and know what you are doing there then it wont be making health problems that way
but
It is well studied that inbreeding (which is what line breeding is) reduces fertility and increases some cancers - also the loss of genetic diversity can mean that all the dogs in a breed can have far too similar immune systems so they can be far more in danger of being wiped out by desease

But my point was the matter of fact way he stated a totaly faulse history of how wolf packs breed, and knowing he is so well respected makes it worse - people just taking his word for it that line breeding is OK cos what we are doing is not as bad as his (untrue) method the wolves use

I acknowledged that it is detrimental to the gene pool but I have never seen any evidence of it causing cancer.

I don't believe that wolves breed like that either but if the conditions are there then a brother and sister will mate together without any problem to them and as they have the survival of the fittest then it is not likely to be a problem health wise.
Left to their own devises dogs will mate to a close relative.