Now before you all put your head in your hands and cry, I have no intention of breeding but I read a lot of the breeding posts and have to admit that I'm a bit lost on all the in, out ,line breeding stuff. Could one of you explain, in very simple terms :D what it's all about and if it's not too complicated why you do it?

Inbredding and line breeding are in fact basically the same. The two terms are used to differentiate the degree.

Most people would say inbreedingwas mating of the closest relatives. Mother to son, father to daughter, brother to sister.

some people would consider the mating of Half siblings and Grandparent to grandchild, and first cousins to also be inbreeding, and others would call this line breeding.

Most every one else would consider it linebreeding if there are the same dogs on both sides of a pedigree withinn 3 generations, and others wopuld still think it linebred as much as 5 generations.

Reasons for linebreeding can be quite complex, but basically to increase the likelihood of geting similar to what the linebred inbred animals are or have produced. Trying to load the dice in favour of producing what you want. It can also be a useful tool in finding out what bad points are hidden behind an animal, as these are more likely to be expressed, along with the good, when a closely related breeding takes place.

Outcrossing is normally mating of unrelated animal within 5 or more geneartions

You've explained it all v.well Brainless, well done! :D
Nicky

Didn't she do well?! :D no seriously Barbara, thanks, makes sense now, and after this I'm going to digest the stuff you sent me at home, if I get confused I'll pick your brains on Monday at training! :)

Hi Barbara, I've always thought of line-breeding as a specific form of in-breeding where the breeder consitently breeds back to a particularly excellent male ancestor, but that 'definition' seems to have fallen into disuse.

I would agree with you, though it can also be to a strong female too.

I am sure some accidental or coincidental line breeding goes on, by which I mean that the common ancestor/s were not the main reason for it.

I would think though that most breeders would be looking more carefully to try and fix a certain dogs traits by linebreeding. Once the objective is achieved, they may decide to linebreed to another ancestor to strengthen anothe feature that has perhaps weakened. the two steps forward one back syndrome. Though if an outcross is available with desired traits, and has produced them in offspring, or comes from a line consistent int them, then that would be my choice.

There comes a point where there just isn't what you need in the lines you are using and some fresh ingriedients are needed. I know it isn't a PC view, but some3times working with the Devil you know is better/less harmful than introducing new blood, where the latent traits are not yet known.

hi julie
this is something that takes a GREEEAAAT deal of research.....ive been researching lines for about 2 years and i had no plans to breed!!!!!
for thosefolk who do linebreed,which is prob themost common,these breeders would pay a huge amount of attentions&costs to get the quaility and improvments, or they want a line that breeds backto the best lines for conformation in their own dogs pedigree it is however ever so wonderful to look back in history......:)