
I believe that too many inexperienced people use close matings as a quick fix to "stardom".
They see experienced breeders to do so and see the resulting progeny and go oh that is how you get nice puppies, easy!
I myself don't like too close matings, having seen what can happen when the illness is in the lines but not known by the experienced breeder who did the mating!
I had a bitch with close breeding background (not as close as full sisters though) and two out of 4 puppies had problems...
Puppies from the previous litter that was line bred with a different dog but similar pedigree were fine themselves but have passed the problem to their cildren/grandchildren...
None of the "parent dogs" or their relatives were known to have this illness so it came out of nowhere but now firmly sits in the lines.
People having bred on from the same lines are only now, 3-5 generations later starting to believe there is a problem.
There were many top dogs of that time in the pedigree so now many inexperienced people are lining back to those dogs as they see the titles but have not got the full picture!!
Obviously we could have been unlucky and had the illness even if the pedigree was not so "close" but it is a known fact inbreeding will bring out good and bad in the lines...
Surely if you pick good examples of the breed that have a solid good background (generation after generation) you will end up with dogs looking like the past generations even if they are not a result of a sibling mating?
I would imagine with most breeds you do not have to go back that many generations to get the same dogs popping up anyway, without the need of having the same names in the 5 generation pedigree?
Does it matter if all puppies are good examples of the breed but do not look exactly the same type?
My family is not inbred but we all still look the same :).
Must be because of "breeding" with people who have similar looks to us and now it seems the family look comes through even if you get put together with totally different look :) :) :)
In genetics the small variation of the genes is proven to be bad for the species so I don't quite understand why we should do very close breedings generation after generation with our dogs as in the end if everybody does this won't we end up with very limited genetic background?
We might have great dogs now but what about the future of the breed?
So many less popular lines have already been lost over the fashionable lines well at least in my breed...
Excuse my awfully incorrect terms and don't shoot me :) I'm only questioning to understand better!