Hey everyone.  This is the longest post I have every made but hey I had some free time and my pup is sleeping so: So Zendog what exactly are the issues that I am avoiding? 1) Breeders are show idiots.  Yes some are.  Possibly many are but I dont associate with them and I would not buy one of their dogs.  That is not something I ever questioned. 1a) Breeders are field idiots.  Yes some are.  Again possibly most are but I dont associate with them either and I would not buy one of their dogs.  That is not something I ever questioned either. 2) Health testing improves breeds.  Yes it does.  You are dead wrong here.  OFA and CERF will help improve the hips and eyes of breeds that have a high incidence of problems in those areas.  The exact numbers for HD are in the OFA data_base_ which you can access over the net.   Screening for any disease with a genetic component improve breeds like screening for vWD, thyroid hormone levels, PRA, among others.  If you dont understand this than....fine....we shall speak no more of it.   For anyone who cares: Even if you dont know the exact gene or genes that cause a particular disease syndrome it/they can be bred out.  This is simply done by not breeding (culling) individuals that express that phenotype.  If you have a genetic test (DNA test) then do not breed individuals that express that genotype.  If you breed healthy idividuals of the same breed together you are likely to get healthy pups.  How closely you can breed is determined by how clean you lines are of genetic defects.  You breed too closely you risk exposing the defects that are already there.  In general you will not create defects by inbreeding, you will only expose defects that are already there.   Outcrossing may help eliminate one defect but is likely to be the cause for bringing others.  It is always better to work with known genetic backgrounds (line breed) when you want to select for specific traits that you like and keep out others.  If your starting material is good (foundation stock) then careful breeding will improve it and not allow any less desirable alleles to get in there.  Most breeders have figured this out.....line breeding is better than outcrossing.  The only principles you need to understand this are independent segregation, independent assortment, and recombination (actually _link_age).  Those have been known since Mendels pea plants except the recombination for which the credit goes to Morgan in the 1900's working with fruit flies.  You with me Zendog?  What about this issue am I avoiding?  The scientific termininology I have used here is minimal so please explain yourself by calling my statements babble.   3) Line breeding and inbreeding (done after #2) are more efficient at eliminating genetic defects than outcrossing.  Yes they are.  To put together 2 well defined genomes from defined lines and you are likely to have healthy pups.  Most (if not all breeds that I know of) do not need to reconstructed.  Careful breeding of healthy health tested individuals that are able to perform can be used to improve any existing breeds.   Further more outcrossing is likely to reveal more genetic defects than correct the one you are trying to fix. Also see #2.  What about this am I avoiding?  So you are probably wondering why crossing 2 different breeds would not do the same thing?  Keep reading.  You will get to it when I talk about how you are restating Muller in a way. 4) There is no natural selection in domestic animals unless you are letting them run free which would be against the law.  We decide who breeds....not nature.  I think you refer to this as show idiot selection.  You will have to tell me again why their selection is so horrible if they are doing all the health checks and their dogs can still perform because I forget.  I am not asking for an opnion....I want to know how this makes their dogs less fit or more unhealthy or full of disease. 5) Breeds do not need to be reconstructed.  I was no able to get your post of which breeds you thought needed to be reconstructed.  I think my account is working again so please post which ones a why.  I dont think any need to be reconstructed.  I think that all breeds (including mixes) have their problems but as I have stated in the past I have easily been able to find stellar examples of every breed I have ever looked at (Goldens, Labs, Rotties, Dobes, Ridebacks, Filas, ABDs, Collies, ACD, and many others).  AND I did not look very hard. Other unrelated points: Do you have a problem with the price of pure bred dogs or something?  I thought one (or both???) of your dogs is pure bred? Did you get them from some puppy mill or bad breeder to hate pure bred dogs so much.  If cross breeding is so much better why not get all your dogs from the shelter?  There are plenty of F1s there from known parents.  If you believe there is some hybrid vigor in dogs then why not get all your dogs there?  Be careful I did not claim that there is or there is no hybrid vigor in dogs.  I dont have enought information to make a claim like that.  I want to know why you think there is and what your evidence is. I'm in grad school because it is fun.  I really like it.  I dont use it as a status symbol and no one will ever have to call me doctor.  The _title_ is something to strive for because it is a challenge.  BUT I do not define myself by it.  Most people on this group have seen me post here for about 2 years and can decide for themselves if I my statements are worthy of their respect.   Curiously, I have lost more than 200 straight 1 on 1 basketball games; many to my wife, junior high kids, high school kids, profs., lawyers, doctors, people over 65, short people, tall people, University of Delaware and University of Pennsylvania basketball p_layer_s. You know why?  I really suck at B-ball. You know why I still play?  Because I really like it and dont really care about what other people think of me on the court.  It is not going to make me any money anyway. I also contracted Polio when I lived in India,  bad knees from football, a reconstructed ankle, back(disc) problems,  and you could time me in the mile on a sun dial AND I cant jump.  BUT thankfully none of those things has anything to do with my ability as a graduate student in biology.   What what about your atheletic ability or writing ability makes you a good dog trainer?  I thought most training was done using you brain and communicating with dogs at a higher level or something like that? I think I remembered who the author was that brought up some of your points (about outcrossing and doing intersubspecific crosses) was.....I believe it was Muller (sp) in a work done around 1910-15.  Sorry I cant be more specific but I dont have time to dig throught literature that old.  It is about 6 levels deep in the library and I'm scared to go down there!!!!    I'm sure I have read it at some point in the past or it may have been a review.  If I remember correctly the outcrossing for fitness hypothesis was one that he had and proved to be incorrect (himself) in flies.  This has been more recently repeated in mice.  The currrnt term for this is allelic incompatibiilty.  Which means you can take 2 good copies from 2 different populations and the 2 together (by cross breeding) can be nonfunctional or cause lethality or sterility.  This is real problem for genes that code for proteins that work in multisubunit complexes. Graphically, population one only has aaBB and population only has AAbb.   Both are fine in the genetic background (breed) of the isolated populations.  But then you cross breed and get AaBb.  In this case A and a can be incompatable or B and b can be incompatable resulting in a less fit phenotype, sterility, lethality.  Too many scientific words or did you get it?  This is not the same principle behind hybrid vigor.  Do not confuse the two.  Hybrid vigor is MUCH more complicated. Where did you get your dogs?  If you are in the Philly area I would like to see them.  Do you train other peoples dogs?  If you do I would like to see that too.  You make some pretty big training claims on your web site....if you can back them up I would love to see it.  This is not intended as a rip...I really want to see and I happen to live in the area.  I hope you notice I rarely (if ever) insult your ability as a trainer.  I joke about it because you have not shown me anything yet but have made some pretty grand claims.  The reason I have not ripped you   is that I have never seen you work and you could be good.  I have questioned your understanding of genetics but that is because you have made claims that incorrect.   Constantly saying that I babble is not the same as having some proof.   The fact is you have not shown any proof of your understanding of genetics.  In fact you have done just the opposite and made some of us here laugh pretty hard.   I guess you make some people angry but I like you.  You are the source of a great deal of entertainiment for me.  You see, in grad school my life is not all that exciting so sometimes I check back just to see if you have posted.   Unfortunately, you have done a really poor job of marketing (which I could have helped you with and even possibly got you some funding) you site.  If you keep it up nobody will listen to you and that is a problem.  The instigator angle works really well when you can provide small bith of proof here and there....like taking a attack trained 80lb Pit Bull used for fighting with a a human aggression problem from Camden train it to be gentle and not dog or human aggressive in say under 10 minutes.  Now that would be impressive.  If you could do a demo like that I think people form this group would fly out just to see it.  You could sell your book and video right there.  Some of the people that I know frequent here are quite well
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