Re: [PyrNet-L] SAS. threat to Pyrs??

[Kshoffman@aol.com]

In a message dated 12/21/99 1:47:22 PM Eastern Standard Time, 
JGentzel@aol.com writes:

<< You are not going to have a line with only outcrosses. You cannot study it 
 at all. >>

First of all, with the help of my computer, all the other wonders of modern 
communication, and DNA testing tools around the corner, I most certainly 
*can* study it. There will simply be a higher number of ancestors in the 
pedigree to "study" and as a result, it will be more labor intensive for me, 
that I will admit. I'm not afraid of hard work.<g>

Secondly, while I may not have a "true bloodline" per se, I will have a 
program that increases my chances of producing healthy, fit, long-lived dogs 
that conform to the standard and my interpretation of breed type. They may 
not all look like identical "cookie cutter" versions of the same, but as you 
said in an earlier post, that would be kind of boring, wouldn't it?<g>

If breeding "cookie cutter" dogs is the idea, then why not just clone?  The 
technology is right around the corner.  How many breeders are going to give 
up breeding dogs and just start cloning their favorites?  Cloning doesn't 
bring to the table the inherent problems that linebreeding and inbreeding do. 
 So if one's primary goal is to produce a certain "look" with a high rate of 
consistency, then cloning would be the better way to go.

Has any breeder so far recreated Estat, or Estagel, or Ibos, or Lorvaso, or 
Impresario, via the use of inbreeding and linebreeding?  Not to my knowledge. 
You yourself, Joe, have stated in the past that Mary Crane "lamented" in her 
later years not having established a true bloodline.  I've read in more than 
one piece of literature that Marjorie Butcher of Cote de Neige did not 
develop a true bloodline per se.  Yet both of these ladies in my opinion had 
a significant positive impact on the breed via the methods they chose to 
pursue.  Mrs. Crane's efforts to import specimens from as many representative 
original bloodlines as possible in her an effort to establish the breed in 
the U.S. may quite possibly be the reason Great Pyrenees as a breed seem to 
have fewer health problems than a vast number of other breeds with a much 
smaller and less diverse founding base.

Kelley Hoffman
kshoffman@aol.com