Acadia Kennels

02/05/2026

https://www.instituteofcaninebiology.org/blog/twenty-key-elements-of-a-successful-breeding-program

By Carol Beuchat PhD

02/05/2026

Why You Need Population Genetics:
the "Elevator Pitch"
by Carol Beuchat, PhD
1) All the useful genetic variation your breed will ever have was in the dogs that founded the breed. This genetic diversity is finite.

2) Each generation, alleles can be lost by chance (this is called "genetic drift") and also through artificial selection by breeders, who select for dogs with the traits they like and remove other dogs from the breeding population.

3) Because the stud book is closed, genes that are lost cannot be replaced.

4) So, from the moment a breed is founded and the stud book is closed, loss of genetic diversity over time is inevitable and relentless.

5) You cannot remove just a single gene from a population. You must remove an entire dog and all the genes it has.

6) You cannot select for or against a single gene, because genes tend to move in groups with other genes (this is called "linkage"). If you select for (or against) one, you select for (or against) them all.

7) Breeding for homozygosity of some traits breeds for homozygosity of all traits. Homozygosity is the kiss of death to the immune system. And, as genetic variability decreases, so does the ability of the breeder to improve a breed through selection, because selection requires variability.

8) The consequences of inbreeding (in all animals) are insidious but obvious if you look - decreased fertility, difficulty whelping, smaller litters, higher puppy mortality, puppies that don't thrive, shorter lifespan, etc. Genetically healthy dogs should get pregnant if mated. They should have large litters of robust puppies with low mortality. Animals that cannot produce viable offspring are removed by natural selection.

9) Mutations of dominant genes are removed from the population if they reduce fitness. Recessive mutations have no effect unless they are homozygous. Consequently, rare mutations are not removed; they are inherited from one generation to the next, and every animal has many of them.

10) If you create a bunch of puppies from your favorite sire, you are making dozens of copies of all of the bad mutations in that dog (which were never a problem before because they were recessive; see 9) and dispersing them out into the population. Now, a (previously) rare mutation will become common, its frequency in the population increases, and the chances go up that a puppy will be produced that is homozygous (has two copies of that bad allele) - and homozygous recessive alleles are no longer silent.

11) So, genetic disorders caused by recessive alleles don't "suddenly appear" in a breed. The defective gene was probably there all along. Make a zillion copies, and suddenly you have a disease.

12) Using DNA testing to try to remove disease genes from the breed will not make dogs healthier (see 2, 5, and 6).

13) The breed will continue to lose genes every generation (by chance or selection) until the gene pool no longer has the genes necessary to build a healthy dog.

14) At this point, the breed might look wonderful (because of selection for type), but it will suffer from the ill effects of genetic impoverishment - inbreeding depression, diseases caused by recessive alleles, increased risk for cancer, etc.

15) The health of individual dogs cannot be improved without improving the genetic health of the breed. The only way to improve the genetic health of the breed is to manage the health of the breed's gene pool.

16) Population genetics provides tools for the genetic management of breeds or other groups of animals. Breeders CAN improve the health of the dogs they breed if they understand and use them.

Copyright (c) 2013 Carol Beuchat
This document may be reproduced without permission if accompanied by the copyright information.

Last revision March 2015.

08/28/2025

Swayzi from this morning

06/06/2025

06/02/2025

03/07/2025

LESSON ONE IN THE WORLD OF DOGS

Lesson One in the world of dogs is that if you put anything above breeding for utility, you will start to lose working abilities.

Work is a tough task master and it shows no favoritism. Fox and pheasant do not judge "up the leash" nor are they taken in by fads. Quarry is not much interested in nose or eye color, the set of the ear, or the "expression" on a dog's face as it creeps up a hedgerow.

In working dogs, utility is beauty, and "beauty is as beauty does."

E.L. Hagedoorn, a Dutch consulting geneticist to dog breed societies around the world, believed the show ring would ruin working dog breeds, and time has proven him right. As he noted in his 1939 book:

"In the production of economically useful animals, the show ring is more of a menace than an aid to breeding. Once fancy points are introduced into the standard of perfection, the breeders will give more attention to those easily judged qualities than to the more important qualities that do not happen to be of such a nature that we can evaluate them at shows. Showing has nothing to do with utility at all, it is simply a competitive game."

A noted breeder of alpacas said much the same thing, noting that when farm stock is judged on the basis of wool or meat it is a different standard than that used at shows:

"Breeding animals for the shows is a very peculiar business, because of the fact that it is wholly competitive. Whereas the breeder of utility sheep or utility pigs produces something that has a certain market value, which is not changed very much even if ten of his neighbors start in with him to raise the same sort of sheep or hogs, breeding animals for the shows can only pay the man who succeeds in producing such stock as is pronounced by the judges of the moment to be the most beautiful and the most fashionable."

The "judge of the moment" in a show ring may know very little about real terrier work.

In the AKC, for example, most judges are experts in a half dozen breeds. In the terrier ring, it's almost a guarantee none has ever owned a deben collar or cut a shoulder into a trench in order to get down another two feet. As a rule these authorities are experts by dint of having spent far too many nights in bad hotels attending show trials. In 20 years of owning dogs, they have logged a thousand miles bouncing around show rings in plaid skirts and blue blazers. They may have driven to the moon and back to pick up rosettes, but few have driven 10 miles out into the country to even see a fox den, much less put a dog down one or dig to it.

A few will claim expertise because they have bought an airplane ticket and attended a mounted hunt or two in the U.K.. They have seen "the real thing" they will tell you, and know what is required of a working dog thanks to their two-week vacation in Scotland! Just don't ask them how to extract quarry from the stop-end of a pipe or how to treat a bite wound.

Theory always ends where reality begins, and it always seems to have been this way.

The very first Kennel Club shows occurred in 1873 in the U.K., and 1874 in the U.S.. By 1893 Rawdon Lee Briggs was writing in his book, "Modern Dogs," that:

"I have known a man act as a judge of fox terriers who had never bred one in his life, had never seen a fox in front of hounds, had never seen a terrier go to ground ... had not even seen a terrier chase a rabbit."

——————-

Note: This was written in 2022.

02/25/2025

My sweetest, calm, favourite house dog just might have some drive deep down in her genes. 🥰 This is Puzzle’s first time showing any interest in the tug. I like that she has a naturally hard bite and is clear headed and stable. Maybe there is some Protection sport potential here. Thanks KAT Belgian Malinois .