Japanese Spitz Inbreed Off-springs

[world2160]

Hi all,

Just purchased my first Japanese Spitz puppy and was shocked when I looked at the parents' pedigrees more closely after I got home. They have the same father and the mother is actually the mother of the father. (sounds shocking even when I am typing this.....).

The good thing is that the father is from a champion line and his blood line seems to be everywhere in the tree (5 champions in 3 generations). I guess this is one of those classic scenarios where the champion line is used to breed everything hoping that it would make good puppies.

Anyway, there is nothing that can be done now so can anyone please tell me what can go wrong in such close in-breeding? I've did a bit of research on the Jap Spitz and there aren't many known genetic problems (knee cap joint and eye tear). I am under the impression that close breeding will cause genetic problems to become apparent but no new diseases can be "invented"? eg. heart disease when they are not in the genes of this dog type.

Any advice is welcome!

ps. the puppy is 13 weeks.

[Paptacular!]

Someone a little more experienced than myself my have a better answer for you.

So the mother of the pups is also the paternal grandmother? This is a little close for my liking!

I believe as of sometime this year, mother/son, father/daughter and brother/sister matings will no longer be acceptable for registration.

Typically those sorts of breedings were done only by VERY experienced breeders, who were either seeing if a fault did show up somewhere, or to bring out a very favourable trait.

[lappiemum]

Your puppy is a result of line breeding, and as long as your breeder is experienced and knows what is behind their lines, I wouldn't worry.

[Diva]

I am struggling a bit to understand your description of the pedigree, it must be too late at night for my brain It sounds like you are saying it's a half-brother/half-sister mating with a mother/son mating somewhere in there as well - I hope I am just confused, as mother/son matings are very close and rarely done, let alone to double up still more.

If it is just a half-brother/half-sister mating then they are not common, but not that unusual either.

As you say, such a mating cannot produce any new deleterious genes but it is likely to surface, somewhere in the litter, any that the common parent has, including sometimes recessive genes which can come as a suprise to the breeder. You would want the breeder to be very sure of the genetic health status of the parents and grandparents before doing such a mating, but if they are there need not be any problem.

I wouldn't put too much stock in the champion lines though, they may say something about breed type but a championship title says nothing about health, except perhaps in that small number of breeds for which some health tests are mandatory before a litter can be registered.

Edited May 13, 2011 by Diva

[anna]

So the original dog produced a bitch who was then mated to her father to produce this other dog, who she was also then bred with? She's produced litters with her father and her son? That does seem OTT, even for line breeding.

[anna]

Oh, don't mind me and my misreading - mother is the paternal grandmother? That's not quite as close or alarming and I would have thought not completely unheard of.

[Diva]

So the original dog produced a bitch who was then mated to her father to produce this other dog, who she was also then bred with? She's produced litters with her father and her son? That does seem OTT, even for line breeding.

Very, if that is the case, and very much in-breeding. But I can't quite work out if it is what the OP means,

Edited May 13, 2011 by Diva

[lappiemum]

I think you would need to see the pedigree to work it out. More the point, I don't think this is the forum for discussion on a particular breeder's breeding strategy, not without they being able to comment, at least.

[Katie P]

Japanese Spitz don't have many health problems and breeders are usually very thingy about ensuring that problems such as patella luxation are not passed on. Most of the JS in Australia are related in some way, especially the ones in NSW.

Maybe discuss it with the breeder. I am sure they will have no problems telling you the reasons for their choice

Edited May 13, 2011 by Katie P

[dancinbcs]

Do you mean that the mother of your puppy was bred to her own father to produce a son, that was bred back to her, and is the father of your puppy ? If that is the case it is extreme inbreeding and I would be asking the breeder for an explanation.

The only time I have ever seen a mating like that in my breed, was a registered puppy farmer who produced a puppy with no hip sockets and this is in a breed with only rare hip problems.

Some breeders up to now have done mother/son or father/daughter matings but it is something that should only be done on one generation then you need to breed out, not back into the same dogs.

Edited May 13, 2011 by dancinbcs

[oakway]

It's perfectally normal to have line bred pedigrees.

Always remember that dogs that live a natural environment breed together.

Dogs that break away from packs and meet up 12 months later breed together and may be brother and sister.

Also remember that people have bred that way to.

Just go and read your newspapers and read about the many cases of incest and remember their is nothing wrong with the children. By all accounts they are leading normal and happy lives.

Even in closed communities it takes many many years of close human breeding before the problems start to appear.

[Miss B]

Trying to get my head around this... so it was a half-sibling mating, where the sire is also the result of a father-daughter mating? To me, that's too close.

[anna]

Just go and read your newspapers and read about the many cases of incest and remember their is nothing wrong with the children. By all accounts they are leading normal and happy lives.

Even in closed communities it takes many many years of close human breeding before the problems start to appear.

That's a bit misleading - there have been "many" cases of children born of incest having serious physical/mental disabilities.

[Steve]

The only way we got purebred dogs in the first place is by in breeding - its what we do.

You cant breed in problems that arent there by close breeding they have to be there in the first place and in breeding can be a

great tool for ensuring you get great dogs if the person doing it does so with knowledge.

[oakway]

The only way we got purebred dogs in the first place is by in breeding - its what we do.

You cant breed in problems that arent there by close breeding they have to be there in the first place and in breeding can be a

great tool for ensuring you get great dogs if the person doing it does so with knowledge.

+1

[sas]

I reccomend you call your Breeder and have them explain it to you. If it were a planned Breeding then they did it for a reason.

Some go along with the line of through that inbreeding with either give you your lines best traits or your worst and some breeders do test inbreeding to see what their lines holds.

Line Breeding is still Inbreeding, many will argue as to what Line Breeding is vs Inbreeding.

Edited May 23, 2011 by MEH

[sas]

Trying to get my head around this... so it was a half-sibling mating, where the sire is also the result of a father-daughter mating? To me, that's too close.

it would be too close for me to be interested in the mating but that is just my own comfort level, I personaly don't like close breedings but understand the importance of Line Breeding when done by someone who knows what they're doing.

[daesdaemarspitz]

Hi

Just found this topic. To be blunt, this pedigree is the result of convinience and not planning. It is inbreeding. There has been no outside influence in at least 8 years, if not more. I imagine there is a plan to try and introduce new blood soon, once these matings are outlawed.

[sandgrubber]

Inbreeding isn't a simple topic. I was amazed to see the Pedigree Dogs Exposed blog come out with a 'not necessarily' answer to the 'Is In breeding necessarily bad?' question. See

http://pedigreedogse...lways-mean.html

The answer has to do with how much genetic burden the sire and dam carry. If there are some nasty recessives lurking, or some improbable polygenetic combinations becoming more probable through concentration of certain alleles, inbreeding can be quite bad.

But then, in theory (using COIs calculated back to the founding dog population), if the whole breed descended from a single male and female, all breeding is close inbreeding . . . even if sire and dam are distant sixth cousins.

And it gets more complex if you go to some specific place. For example, genetic work on the Spitz done in the US may show low degree of inbreeding, but if you go to someplace island somewhere, you may find a few hundred Spitz' who have all descended from a few dogs imported in the 1970s.

Edited September 7, 2011 by sandgrubber