Introduction

The breeding of domestic animals is one of the most fascinating of human activities and of all the domestic animals, the breeding to type of purebred dogs is perhaps most satisfying. There are several reasons why this should be true, the first and best of which is that of all the animals the dog is recognized to have been the first brought under domestication and its attachment to man and man's attachment to the dog are closer bonds than exist between man and any of the other animal species. Man has utilized the dog and made him part of his work and his play. However, human dependence upon the dog is for much more than mere utility. A man rightly looks to his dog for an unalterable and inalienable loyalty such as he can hope from no other creature of his own or any other genus and species. The very dependence of the dog upon the master, which has made the homeless dog an object of proverbial pity, endears them mutually to one another. Man and dog fulfill a reciprocal emotional need.

One may allege that a man's wife is a wanton, his son a sot, his mother a narcotics addict, he himself a thief, and the man's resentment may not be great. If, though, one hints that his dog is a cripple or a coward, one engenders an eternal enmity. Though men do not love their dogs with the abject, unutterable, and unquestioning devotion with which the dogs love their masters, the love of a dog is one of the finest affects of which the human spirit is capable.

It is not the affection alone between man and dog that makes the members of Canis domesticus so adequate a medium for the breeder's art. The wide diversity of canine breeds enables the breeder to choose for his purposes a variety congenial to himself with respect to size, appearance, function, and temperament. The tiny Chihuahua, the tremendous Irish Wolfhound, the Mexican Hairless, the shaggy Old English Sheepdog, the sledge dog of the Eskimo, the racing Whippet, the perky Pomeranian, and the dignified Bloodhound, all are equally dogs, and he would be difficult to please who could not find among the recognized breeds one that fulfilled his concept of the kind of dog he would like to keep.

Moreover, the dog matures rapidly and reproduces itself with great rapidity. The breeder can advance a generation in his breeding of dogs every year. Of the human species a generation requires a minimum of sixteen years and in actual fact is generally reckoned as being twenty-five years. A horse must be at least three years old before he is used for breeding and is seldom used so young. Hamsters, because of their greater and more rapid fecundity, might serve even better than dogs if one's urge to breed animals was purely experimental. Vinegar flies, of which one can obtain a new generation of a hundred flies from a single breeding pair in some ten days, are in that respect even better than either dogs or hamsters. But who could take pride in a perfect hamster or a fine vinegar fly?

Hamsters and vinegar flies have taught us much that we know of the science of breeding animals and much of the contents of this book is due directly or indirectly to experiments made with them. While they are not to be scorned, they are hardly the species of which any large number of people would undertake the breeding as a matter of pleasure and self-expression.

Not only do dogs reproduce themselves at an early age, but bitches ordinarily produce numerous puppies at each pregnancy, the number varying from one to ten or twelve, according to the breed, the individual bitch and the fortuitous circumstances of the pregnancy. This writer has had whelped in his own kennel as many as fifteen puppies in a single litter and there are many well authenticated cases of litters numbering twenty or more puppies. This multiplicity of puppies at a pregnancy serves a double purpose: it gives the breeder a numerous choice for his future breeding operations and leaves him puppies to be sold.

The cost of establishing and maintaining a kennel of dogs need not be great if discretion is used and many breeders who have only one or two bitches, not so much to save the cost of kennels for them as for the mere pleasure of their companionship, keep them in their own living quarters as a part of the family. A large kennel requires labor to care for it, but a breeder who has only a few dogs will derive pleasure and recreation from the care he devotes to them.

A breeding kennel of purebred dogs should at least pay its own way if conducted without undue extravagance. The sale of stock and of breeding services of the male dogs of popular breeds are in many cases quite profitable. There are single dogs that yield their owners comfortable livelihoods. The Pointer Fishel's Frank is declared to have earned more than fifty thousand dollars for his stud services in his career, and an owner of a comparatively small kennel in Texas declared that in one year of the depression, 1934, he was taking in an average of one thousand dollars a month for breeding fees in addition to his stock sales.

Despite that there may be profit in the breeding of dogs, it is not for pure financial gain that it is here suggested that the avocation be undertaken. The successful breeder of dogs breeds dogs not for the money to be made, but for the love of dogs, their improvement, and the pride he derives from the ownership and breedership. Undertaken merely for the money to be made from it, the breeding of dogs either will fail of that unworthy purpose or will degenerate into merely turning out great numbers of dogs without regard to their merits or the betterment of their breed. That is not breeding dogs at all. Breeding dogs is not an industry but is a hobby. It should surely pay its way, and if it be enough of a hobby and intelligently ridden it should yield its profits.

The possession of a good dog—especially if one has bred it oneself—is a ticket of admission to the inner shrine. At a dog show, millionaire or ditch digger, preacher or racketeer, socialite or scrub-woman, all meet on the level of equality of interest in dogs.

There is one drawback in dog breeding about which a note of warning must be given and that is the tendency to permit it to run away with one and to keep more dogs than one needs. Dogs, if healthy, are prolific breeders and from a single bitch and her daughters and granddaughters one may soon have a kennel (at least a collection of miscellaneous dogs) of such numbers that it is an unwieldy burden.

One must resolve to dispose of all dogs which do not promise to be useful for the breeding operations of the kennel or do not fit into the proposed breeding program. It is not vast hordes of dogs which make a kennel successful, but rather the excellence of the few. In the large kennel of whatever breed, the most excellent progeny will have come from a limited parental stock. Great numbers of dogs in a kennel are usually indicative of the owner's failure or lack of courage to clean out the culls that are mere parasites upon his good stock and his food bill.

In the past there have been two kinds of books written which have been directed in part or in the main to the practical breeder of domestic livestock. In one kind of book there is usually a single chapter on breeding, although there are a number of books in this category in which a good deal of space h devoted to the breeding and maintenance of dogs. For the most part in "the space devoted to breeding" the information is either impractical or partly true, which makes it completely untrue. The theories advanced were scientifically superseded long before the books were written; the principles espoused are off-hand observations from a limited number of cases; the hoary superstitions and old mid-wives' tales that fill the pages have hampered the breeding of animals since man first domesticated them.

Such barnacled volumes of misinformation are worse than useless. Even those books which do contain some true statements and useful knowledge are so contaminated with phony science and seventeenth and eighteenth century surmises that it is impossible to separate the grain of truth from the chaff of falsehood.

While the other kinds of books are true and useful, they are written by scientists and their practical truths are not infrequently obscured in a welter of technical verbiage from which few dog breeders would care to bring them to light. The long, painstaking researches of the great geneticists from Gregor Mendel through Hugo De Vries to Thomas Hunt Morgan have practical connotations which, when properly applied, will enable the breeders of animals to approximate more nearly to the perfection of their hearts' desires.

To paraphrase Solomon, go to the vinegar fly, thou breeder; consider her chromosomes and be wise.

Even though it may seem like a far cry from the breeding of vinegar flies to the breeding of Great Danes, the fundamental principles that apply to one apply to all. Hummingbirds or elephants, the laws of biological inheritance are equally valid.

It is the purpose of this book to restate these laws. To sift out of the available information only such of it as may be applied to the breeding of dogs, to strip it of its technical jargon, to show how the discoveries of the workers in pure science may be used by the practical breeder of animals, that is the task before us. It is impossible to reduce this information to words of one syllable. However, we do feel that it is possible to state it so that it may be understood rather easily by readers with only an elementary knowledge of biology. Even though it cannot be concentrated, predigested and sugar-coated, it can be at least cooked and seasoned for palatability to the practical breeder of dogs.

Of the statements made herein, none of them is at variance with the truths which the workers in the great science of genetics have discovered and which they accept themselves. From the whole of genetic truth we have abstracted only those parts which are of direct application to the breeding of dogs.

While it is necessary to include in our cast of characters such performers as the garden pea and the vinegar fly, they are merely incidental. They exist as instruments of research to lead to our true hero, the purebred domestic dog. It is not that we are uninterested in other species but, rather, that they serve us herein only so far as research with them has contributed to the knowledge which enables us to breed better dogs.

Some of the chapters of this book may appear at first consideration to be of no practical worth, mere description of scientific phenomena which have nothing to do with the union of two animals to produce a third and better one. Many readers will want a short cut to the "end" without any curiosity about the "means." However, it is only in the light of the "means" that the "end" can be read.

There is no denying that good dogs have been produced by breeders ignorant of the laws and principles of heredity. We would submit, however, that the recent rapid progress in the breeding of good dogs is due in large part to the ever-growing acquaintance of breeders with fundamental laws and principles of genetics. And we would further maintain that many more good dogs can be bred by substituting scientific biological procedures than by the rule-of-thumb practices which determine the breeding of dogs in far too many kennels today.

The misconceptions and mistaken theories which determine the breeding programs of so many dog breeders are not so harmless as they seem. Not only do they hamper the breeder in his application of genetic laws, but they constitute countless hours of wasted effort. The superstition that causes one to refuse to sit thirteen at a table may not only prevent one from enjoying the meal but may also force one to go without one's dinner. In brief, it is just as necessary to remove the false theories as it is to know, to accept, and to apply the reliable and valid knowledge of genetics.

The dog breeders whom one meets are, as a lot, people of intelligence who profess a deep interest in what is for many of them a paramount hobby. Yet it is appalling to find so large a number among them who know so little about even the most simple of scientific principles of reproduction. They have been so interested in the trees of their own kennel that they have failed to see the vast forest of biology.

For the sake of argument and because we are not here concerned with the subject, let us concede that it may be very well for wild dogs to breed by instinctive selection of mates. But in the breeding of domestic dogs, to obtain the best progeny it is necessary to choose the breeding stock with discriminating knowledge and to mate the individual bitch with the available dog most suitable for her.

The purpose of this book is to provide the breeder of dogs with the knowledge that will show him how those choices may best be made.

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