Let us look at a cross-breeding from a biological perspective, with ‘breeds’ as the result of gene frequency. (Remember that we are selecting for appearance and performance, and thus the actual distribution of genes will not necessarily conform to the percentages. Close enough, however.)
There are many reasons why you may wish to crossbreed. My purpose was to produce an Afghan like dog with shorter hair and much less of it. I don’t particularly care about my dogs going back into the Afghan gene pool. However, if that is your goal, this is the recipe you would follow.
Take one Afghan hound, and a Saluki of the opposite sex. Mix well. The offspring will be 50% Saluki and 50% Afghan hound. This will produce puppies that are about halfway in type, some with more hair, some with less, some with almost none. If your aim is to regain more Afghan type, choose the puppy which is closest to an Afghan in appearance to breed on from.
Trinity, 50% Saluki, 50% Afghan hound.
Backcross your chosen 50% pup with an Afghan. You will have now dogs that are 75% Afghan and 25% Saluki (like the Wees), and they will lean more towards Afghan type (more hair, tail set, overall appearance.)
Backcross a dog like Domina with an Afghan, and you will get pups that are 87.5% Afghan. At this point they may already be indistinguishable from ‘pure’ Afghans.
Domina, 75% Afghan, 25% Saluki.
Backcross an 87.5% pup with an Afghan, and you end up with pups that are 93.75% Afghan hound.
In four generations we have produced dogs that are 93.75% pure. Keep in mind that 100% purity is an impossibility, because dog breeds are not magic. They are all dogs, and they all share genes with other dogs, (and other creatures as well, including their owners.) Believing that dog breeds have some kind of mystical differences that cannot be modified by breeding is, well, mystical.
Houdini, littermate to Domina.
At this point, continued backcrossing produces much smaller changes. A further backcross would produce dogs that are 96.88% Afghan. Not a big difference between the fourth and fifth generations, there. The visual differences at this time would be negligible, and breeding criteria would be exactly the same as breeding two ‘purebreds’ together.
Now, if we were really producing these pups for eventual inclusion in a registry, we would be selecting for appearance and performance, and if we were smart, for heterozygosity, if we want to include ‘new genes.’ Since this is a crossbreeding, we will be introducing new genes anyways, but by using more heterozygous breeding partners, we stack the deck a little in regards to keeping those genes as we progress towards ‘purity.’ The best way to do this at this time is by comparing our chosen dogs for mating using the Genoscoper DLA diversity (MHC) test, and the Mars Optimal Selection test. (Mars is supposed to be publishing a paper on this test, which I will be interested to read.)
Houdini
We hope you enjoyed this episode of Cooking With Jess. Join us next week when she burns water!
Note: I have no intentions of breeding my own 75% Afghans back to an Afghan. My goal is to keep the coat to a minimum, like the so-called ‘desert’ Afghans among the original imports to the West. Backcrossing once again would produce way too much coat.
OK, this is going to be controversial, but I think it wouldn’t hurt to cross in pit bull to your cross. Sight hounds are supposed to be able to chase and kill, and some pit bull would add to the mix nicely for power. By the way, did you ever read about Leon Whitney’s bull hound? It was a cross between bloodhounds and bullterriers. He said they were super smart, amazing dogs. I’m totally serious about this idea, by the way. On the other hand, not everyone wants a sight hound that can really do what it was designed to do, kill larger vermin, and kill wild canines.
Of course, anything can be abused. Protection dogs can be sent on innocent people as well as criminals. Pit bulls can be used for therapy dogs, hunting catch dogs, or for illegal pit fighting. Greyhounds can be raced for money, or raised in puppy mill types of conditions and then slaughtered when they don’t make the gambler any more money. Thus, this article is worth seeing: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2084794/Judge-condemns-badger-baiters-laughed-dogs-ripped-animals-apart.html
I don’t advocate breaking the law, or inflicting cruel treatment to wildlife. But, we use dogs for predator control. Flock guards are used to fight off wild cats and wild canines. Large sight hounds are used in Texas, in packs, to kill coyotes which prey on cattle and sheep by killing and not even eating. And all of that type of use is legal.
Very good post, no drama just good practice!
Have you used either the Genoscoper or Optimal Selection?
I have just sent off samples for 8 dogs for the Optimal Selection, have not got results yet. I am interested in what others thought about the test and how they were using it. Even just general comments if not first hand experience would be interesting. Ta
I have not used either test personally. I have a (tentative) purebred litter planned for next year and will likely do both tests, just to satisfy my own curiosity, as it’s an outcross with fairly recent desert blood on one side.
If I choose to linebreed at some point, I will definitely be using both tests. I really think that is going to be their true value.