All about German Shepherd Dog

by Dennis Fisher.

Note:  This article is one of many dealing with every aspect of the German Shepherd Dog - breeding, training, bloodlines, famous German show winners, and a great deal more, that appear on the author, Dennis Fisher's website. Visit  http://www.allaboutgermanshepherddogs.com or http://www.freedogadvice.com to see these articles.

Question about  "in-breeding"  and "Line breeding"

 Question:  What is in-breeding and what is line-breeding. What are the advantages and disadvantages of both systems?

Answer: The question requires quite a lengthy  answer, but briefly in-breeding  consists of very close family breeding - father to daughter, half-brother to half - sister, son to mother or, the very closest in-breeding possible full brother to litter sister.

The purpose of in-breeding is to stabilize type and ensure that the good points of an excellent specimen are retained and perpetuated..   It must be remember though that in resorting to in-breeding, which is not permitted by many breed regulatory authorities, there is always a strong possibility that the bad points might appear even more prominently than the good points.   It was practiced to quite an extent in the past and the results were often satisfactory but obviously where there is a large genetic pool of quality animals to breed from - as is the case with most breeds - it is quite unnecessary these days.

Line-breeding, broadly speaking consists of  breeding animals with a common ancestor. There may b e fairly close line-breeding when the ancestor happens to be  common excellent grand-sire or it might be more remote.

If intelligently followed line-breeding can be very successful,  If you examine the pedigrees of top show animals you will find that a certain ancestor appears a number of times in the pedigree of both the Sire and the Dam.  But obviously it is important to know a great deal about the animal  upon  which you are basing your line-breeding.  It is important to know the type of animal of animal he produced and also it is important to be aware of any faults  common in his progeny.