How working breeds are lost

[Margaret M Wheeler]

Melissa,

 

Great point regarding the limited number of good pet homes. I believe that most non-working border collie breeders try to select for a "pet temperament," and in fact market their pups on this basis.

 

If one selects for work before temperament one could have a red circle dog who is too shy to be a suburban pet and who would not be too shy to be a candidate for breeding. Available pet homes for this dog's offspring would need to be fairly numerous to allow for careful placement I think.

 

Originally posted by mellissad:

Besides selection, you need expansion to maintain a healthy gene pool. Otherwise, you are inadvertantly selecting against rare beneficial alleles that get lost by chance when the breeding population is small enough.

I'm very curious about "expansion." Are you talking about maintaining an acceptable level of heterogeneity in the breeding population?

[mellissad]

Temperament is a very important quality for a working dog. It cannot be neglected in selection for working dogs. True there are some dogs too driven to work who would make unacceptable pets, but that quality (in the right hands) would insure a spot in a working home. Proper whelping environments and handling of pups especially with exposure to children can help stave off most temperament problems that would make pups unacceptable pet candidates. CAVEAT: This is hand in hand with considering temperament when making breeding choices. If I had a shy dog who was an incredible working dog, I would select a breeding partner mainly for my aims in their working ability, but I would decide between two *otherwise equal* candidates on one who was more outgoing. When you keep the working gene pool large enough, you have these kinds of options.

 

I said expansion, meaning expansion of the population size. I could've just said a stable population size, but in the ideal situation, you would expand the population to insure heterogeneity remains.