is there anything wrong with breeding two dogs from unrelated backgrounds as long as they complement each other and are healthy? i have looked into line breeding and just find it confusing.
and i know the whole idea of breeding is to improve the breed but outbreeding with two dogs that complement each other would improve the breed wouldnt it?

i know the whole idea of breeding is to improve the breed
Well that's a good start!!

but outbreeding with two dogs that complement each other would improve the breed wouldnt it?
Why would you think that outcrossing would improve the breed?  The important thing about ANY mating is that you should "know" as many of the ancestors on both sides as possible AT LEAST 3 generations back.  Inherited genes, both good and bad, often miss a generation (or two or ten!) before emerging again, so just because the sire and dam are healthy certainly doen't mean that their progeny will be.  This is a fact that most puppy producers, as opposed to experienced breeders, either don't know or choose to ignore!

Outcrossing! No such thing! ;)

In a breed as numerically large as Labradors for instance my Anna is, at least on her pedigree, an outcross but that is only the start of the answer. There are common ancestors until you get to the 10th generation. By the 16 generation there are very fey dogs which do not appear at least once, often many times on both sides of the pedigree. In most breeds I would expect this too occur much earlier!

There is no problem with outcrossing but if I was looking for a puppy I would want to know the breeder's reasoning behind it. Is it done with some underlying reason? Or is it just that the stud dog had four legs, a head and tail, and was local?

By the same token, if line bred, what line? Do I like that line? Is the line too close? And if the dogs lined are local dogs, was thought given to the line breeding or did it just happen because being local lines ALL dogs in the area carried those lines?

Am I a natural sceptic? You betcha!

Best wishes, John

I do not have a huge amount of experience in breeding but my understanding or thoughts on it are you have to know the lines , what in in the lines and what to expect from the lines. Taking 2 dogs that are similarly bred or not similarly bred can be as bad as each other if the thought and understanding is not there. You could breed 2 dogs with similar lines but that both had a similar fault so you would not have achieved anything better but possibly made the fault twice as bad.

A good way of looking at it I think is not completely be just focused at the lines or completely for outcrossing but at type.   Different lines can and will often hopefully had a similar or particular "TYPE" which is probably what people are looking for.

There may be a reason why someone needs to go out their lines , to bring in new blood etc or to try and through generations remove a fault but the type will more than likely be similar.

Hope that makes sense.

Hi Guest

This is a "how long is a piece of string" question :)

If you have two dogs that are linebred but totally unrelated for 5 or 6 generations (depending on the breed you won't often find more than this) and where one line excells whether the other is weak - say shoulder angulation then you will probably breed some pups with poor and some with good angulation.  You would then need to pick the best to breed and mate it to, probably a related dog that also excels in good shoulder angulation (and everything else conformationally and health wise).  This particular problem is not generally *fixed* in one generation but does this give you any answer to your question?

If not then please register and come back and ask more questions :)

Aha, I think you may have answered a query that I had.  I know someone who is contemplating using their stud dog on a bitch (and vice versa) however, both bitch and sire are line bred and totally unrelated for upwards of 7 generations (unusually I may say).  I don't know anything about breeding but to my untutored brain I thought that perhaps this would produce a litter that would not necessarily be very even and/or that would not necessarily be predictable in conformation as I think you are suggesting?

Whereas if either of them were to be mated with those who were of more similar lines then you would have a good idea of what you were getting.  Is this right?

You cannot get something out of a mating that you have not put in. If your line has a specific problem area, say front end angulation then by outcrossing to a dog with a good front end (Who's back end may not be perfect) may result in a puppy with the best bits of both. Trouble is, you might just get a litter carrying the worst of both! You can cut out some of the chance by looking at the progeny of the stud dog. Does he throw good front ends?

If you achieve success then look a generation or so back in the stud dog's pedigree and see if you can find something there to compliment your puppy. If you can then hopefully, by line breeding to that you have started down the road to "Fixing" the changes you have made to your line

Regards, John