Chapter 15 - Choosing A Brood Bitch

All the facts of science are of but little use until they can be and are applied to human activity. The sciences have advanced much more rapidly than has the practical utilization of the wonders which they have revealed to us. This is especially true of the breeding of domestic animals. In the breeding of dogs, which for so many of its exponents has been a sport or a pastime rather than a business or vocation, the lag is somewhat more marked than in breeding of other animals which have a recognizably greater economic value.

Most breeders of dogs have some vague conception that there is such a phenomenon as Mendelism, but it has remained little more than a word to them. There has been a doubt that it had any practical value in the production of better dogs. A simple exposition of it has been difficult to obtain, and expressed even in its simplest terms it requires some mental effort to comprehend. But that comprehension is worth that effort.

If a clear knowledge of the Mendelian phenomena and of the manner in which the genes behave serves no further purpose than to make the breeder cognizant that he is selecting genes rather than mingling bloods, he is bound to be a sounder craftsman than is one without that concept of the medium in which he works. The edifice of which the breeder is the architect is built up of individual stones, the genes, some black and some white. It is not a structure of poured concrete blended partly from one mate and partly from the other.

The practical breeders of other centuries, despite their misapprehension, accomplished much in the development of our handsome and useful races of livestock before Mendelism was ever thought of. Their empiric selection of breeding stock was merely the choice of the best individuals and the rejection of the worst. True, the method worked—in a way. It is still working—in a way. Present methods are but little different from the old.

But those earlier builders unwittingly rejected many a sound stone and included in their temple many a fragile one. They assumed that their stock was exactly what it seemed to be and made little, if any, distinction between what a given animal was and what he could transmit to his progeny—between the phenotype and the genotype. Those readers who have come thus far with us know how mistaken was that assumption.

The exhibition worth and the breeding worth of a dog may be and frequently are equal. The great show dog or bitch is often the most useful for the breeder. But many great show dogs fail miserably when they are set to reproduce their own excellencies; and, equally true, many dogs which could hardly win a ribbon in the show ring have proved invaluable as breeding animals.

Then how shall one go about the selection of breeding stock? How shall one apply all of this wisdom for which Morgan and other workers in the field of genetics have gone to the fruit fly and considered his genes?

The first concern of the dog breeder is the bitch. No kennel is stronger than its bitches. A single producing bitch may be, and has been more often than not, the very cornerstone of a successful strain of any variety of dog.

The reasons why this is true are not far to seek. The first and best of them is that the breeder must be the owner (or at least the lessee, and the best brood bitches are not easy to lease) of his bitches, whereas the best of the male dogs are at public stud and the breeder may employ the service of the best of them at a moderate cost and may continue the use of a dog which proves to be a satisfactory mate for a given bitch, or may change to another from which he anticipates better results without any disruption of his own establishment. He need make no investment in the ownership of males and may veer from one to another as his fancy and policy may please. His bitches are what they are and he must either continue his operations with what he has or scrap them and get others which he thinks are more useful for his purpose. His foundation bitches are a permanent part of his strain. Their germ plasma will continue to influence his dogs from generation to generation. It is unpleasant to part with such as fail as satisfactory breeders, in order to replace them with others, and we are prone to put up with the unfortunate genes we have in our bitches rather than fly to others of which we are by no means certain.

Thus, in acquiring a bitch for breeding purposes, one is casting a die. With her one may try one dog and if he is unsatisfactory may try another. The good brood bitch is a fixture of the strain.

The bitch contributes one of the two haploid sets of chromosomes which determine every zygote, and her influence on the puppies is exactly half. But even more care in choosing her is necessary than in choosing a male with which to mate her. Bitches produce but a limited number of puppies and if one is to judge a bitch by what she has already produced, one has but few of her progeny to be canvassed for the excellencies which one seeks to produce. This is especially true if she be young; and if she has never had puppies, one is forced to judge her ability to produce what one wants not by her progeny but by her appearance and her pedigree.

On the other hand, most dogs at public stud have a record as producers and it is much easier to evaluate their potentialities from the large number of their progeny than to arrive at a conclusion about a bitch from a consideration of a small number of progeny or none. It is, therefore, unwise to stake the fortunes of one's strain upon a bitch without a very thorough canvass of the traits she is likely to pass on to her puppies.

The breeder who has five thousand dollars, or even one thousand, to invest in a fine bitch may or may not be very fortunate. It is undoubtedly easier to obtain the right bitch if one is not to limit oneself as to her cost, but to do so, even then, requires some perspicacity; and the breeder who is not prepared to make so large an investment must make up in astuteness what he lacks in Bradstreet rating. There is, indeed, an added zest in having chosen well and wisely over having accepted the apparently obvious which may or may not turn out to be what one wants.

One wants a fine brood bitch. If one is prepared to pay a long price, the dealers are liable to foist upon one a great winner without regard to her ability to reproduce her own excellencies or those of her breed.

It is certainly true that many of the best brood bitches have been fine show bitches, too. The converse is also true, that many fine show bitches prove to be first rate breeders. But show worth and breeding worth are not by any means identical, some really great show bitches failing to transmit their own fine qualities to their puppies, and some of the great brood bitches being but mediocre specimens of their breed.

It is, of course, true that all other data being equal, it is wiser to choose the best individual to breed from, but that "like begets like" is not to be accepted as axiomatic. A bitch may fail in one particular aspect which with intelligent mating is not likely to appear in her progeny, and yet may herself be damned as an exhibition animal by that particular "out." She may be too large or too small; faulty in color or in coat; defective in ear carriage; or lacking in temperament or style, and yet may become the dam of paragons.

If she is seriously faulty in several aspects of the ideal of her breed, it is certainly hazardous to breed from her, and particularly it is desirable that the skeletal structure and proportions be approximately correct. If she be of too heavy or too light bone formation, and if she has not sprung from an ancestry of similar failing, with an intelligent mating she need not hand on such failings to any large proportion of her descendants. Especially to be avoided are stilty or proppy shoulders, improperly angu-lated quarters, long and slack backs, coarse, common skulls, and bad feet. These are faults of the skeleton and are very hard to eradicate.

Especially should the novice beware of the bitch with the long loin, recommended as being desirable because there is plenty of room in which to carry her fetuses. There is an utterly mistaken tradition that brood bitches with long loins should be excused that fault. There perhaps never was a bitch who did not have sufficient room for the development of all the puppies that she conceived. We know that the number of puppies in a litter is not dependent upon the length of the mother's loin, but rather upon the number of ova deposited in her Fallopian tubes. And, in any event, the true breeder is not so much concerned with the number of her puppies as with their excellence or lack of it.

The bitch as an individual is worth consideration. Figs from thistles are no more improbable than fine dogs from a malformed, scrawny waster of a dam. But the appearance of the bitch is important only as an earnest and outward manifestation of the genes she carries and is to transmit to her progeny.

The next consideration may well be the kind of progeny she has already produced. This, too, is but corroborative evidence that she harbors desirable genes, else she could not have given them to her sons and daughters. If she is young, her progeny is either none or few. If it is consistently high class, it is more important in the evaluation of what she is likely to produce again than if she should have produced a single paragon of a dog standing out like a sore thumb in a litter of mediocrities or less. That paragon may be a mere lightning stroke of the meeting of the best genes from both sides of the house, and lightning is not likely to strike twice in the same gene combinations.

In looking at her progeny, too, it is well to take into full account what dog was their sire and how much he may have contributed to the excellence or inferiority of the young. If the mating was a foolish one, the bitch is not to be too incontinently rejected because her young are no better than might be expected from such a union. On the other hand, if the sire of the progeny is one recognized as consistently able to stamp his progeny with his own merits and those of the line from which he sprang, the dam is to be given somewhat less credit for the excellence of her young. But if she has produced consistently well to a good sire, there is reason to believe that she may repeat the performance when mated to the same dog or to another of equal excellence as an individual and of equally good germ plasma . In this connection, it is especially to be remembered that to the wrong mate any bitch, no matter how worthy a breeder of fine stock, will fail as a producer.

The third aspect of the brood bitch to be looked at is her pedigree. Without excluding the importance of the animal as an individual or as a known producer of stock of a given degree of merit, the pedigree is perhaps of greater moment than any other single item.

The pedigree standing alone on paper and leaving the individual bitch out of consideration may or may not mean something. We have seen earlier in this book how it is remotely and theoretically possible that full sisters may be entirely unrelated and that an animal may have derived none of his chromosomes from one of his grandparents on either or both sides. This is a very rare circumstance and perhaps has never occurred. But it is practically possible and not rare that two full sisters or two full brothers are very distantly related, neither look alike nor behave alike, and are not reasonably to be expected to produce progeny which are alike.

A perfect pedigree, one showing a sufficiently long line of perfect ancestry, must needs produce a perfect animal, which, mated to another of equal perfection of type and ancestry, must needs produce perfect progeny. But such infinitudes of perfection are not to be found in living organisms and are seldom to be approached.

In the examination of the written pedigree of our prospective brood bitch, we are certain to find the names of animals whose attributes we would choose not to reproduce, and if we delve into the remoter ancestry many such names will appear. We cannot have perfection either of individual or of pedigree. If it should ever be achieved, the uncertainty and hence the satisfaction of breeding dogs would disappear. But a wise choice of breeding stock reduces that uncertainty to the minimum; and, since the satisfaction depends upon progress rather than upon perfection beyond which there can be no progress, good stock intensifies that satisfaction.

By comparing the pedigrees with the individuals, we may choose individual bitches which in their phenotypes manifest the desirable attributes of the ancestry and which abjure the undesirable. This is but an earnest, not an assurance, that the genotype may coincide with the phenotype.

If one possess the acumen and the money to recognize and buy a great brood bitch who has proved her ability in litter after litter to produce first rate progeny by various dogs, one need waste little further effort upon the choice of bitches. The foundation of the kennel has been laid. But such bitches, the very backbones of their respective breeds, are rare and the breeders wise enough to have acquired them are often too wise to part with them before their usefulness is at an end. Seldom are they to be acquired over the bargain counter. Of this kind, the pedigree is immaterial in the acquiring of a bitch: it will take care of itself. The ability to produce consistently good stock is a guarantee that the genes are right. The pedigree, of course, must be taken into account when one sets out to find a mate for her.

If one cannot have a bitch which has already achieved greatness as a breeder, one can usually manage to obtain a daughter of such a one. Even the unproved daughters are not cheap, especially if they are old enough to demonstrate that as show specimens they are worthy of their celebrated dam. But one can obtain a puppy from the nest or even contract for one before it is born. The delay entailed is not long and is justified by the anticipated results.

In any pedigree the chief name to be considered is that of the dam. There are dozens of dogs by excellent sires to every one from a superlative mother. This is true because the excellent sires serve many bitches, of which only a few are of superior quality.

If the dam is a recognized producer of fine stock and is herself of first rate ancestry, it matters not that she is not herself a great show specimen. The word "champion" before a name in a pedigree may mean very little.

A fine bitch, in the hands of an experienced breeder, will hardly have been mated to an inferior or unsuitable male, which is the reason why the distaff side of the pedigree should overbalance the male line.

Of course, the sire of the bitch is not to be neglected but if the dam is an outstanding one and if the breeder of the bitch knew his business, that sire can well nigh be taken for granted. It is well to note how intense is the inbreeding of that most desirable part of the bitch's germ plasma —whether her sire is on paper closely related to her dam. This may not be entirely apparent without a careful analysis of the pedigree, which may show doubling and redoubling of some particular ancestor, which at last focuses upon the individual under scrutiny, and, if the inbreeding is as real as it is apparent, makes her what she is.

It is still a prevalent belief that any purebred bitch is good enough to breed from. A bitch not good enough to exhibit is, in breeders' parlance, "just a brood bitch." This belief is rather gradually disappearing—but much too slowly. The facts are that really first rate producing bitches are quite as rare as are first rate show bitches, and it is very frequently true that the best show animals are the best brood animals. At very least, no bitch can be too excellent an individual to be bred from.

It is equally true that certain minor shortcomings, especially such as are not obvious in her ancestry, need not destroy the worth of the bitch, as a mother of fine dogs. Many such shortcomings are acquired rather than inherited, such as partial blindness from accident, torn ears, scars, accidental cripplings, and do not detract at all from the breeding worth of an otherwise desirable brood bitch.

The whole question resolves itself into a determination of the genes she has and is likely to transmit. If her gene complex were perfect, she would be perfect, and mated to a perfect dog, she would produce perfect progeny. But dogs and bitches are not perfect. What we seek is a bitch with genes as nearly perfect to produce progeny of the ideals of her breed as it is possible to obtain.

The fact that her dam habitually transmitted desirable genes to her offspring and that her sire transmitted desirable genes to his offspring offers us some assurance that the desirable recessive genes of her race will be present and that the desirable dominant genes will be pure dominants and not merely hybrid dominants.

This means simply that the bitch is purebred in fact—purebred in a Mendelian sense as well as in a stud book sense.

It may be argued that great dogs have not always sprung from great dogs; that the various breeds have had a gradual growth in the manifestation of the ideal. And, hence, it may be said that mediocre dogs are quite good enough to breed from, that we can never more than guess about what will result from any mating and that a good dog is a freak of nature.

It is admitted that there has been a gradual growth of the breeds and that our great dogs have sprung from an ancestry of less excellence. But this improvement has been a gradual, more or less haphazard, and all too frequently unconscious, sifting out of the bad genes of the various strains and the retention of the genes that make for what we want.

This sifting of the genes can be a conscious and deliberate practice which will enable the breeder to use his stock with a degree of assurance of what he will produce from it. That assurance cannot be absolute until one knows all about every gene in every chromosome of every animal one breeds from; and that is, of course, impossible.

However, the realization of the medium in which the breeder-artist is working—the fitting together of gene entities rather than the blending of bloods—enables him to go forward in the light much more rapidly than he can work in the dark. The breeder who will choose his breeding stock with an awareness that he is merely making a mosaic of genes will obtain good results better and earlier than will the one who adheres to the old empiricism, breeders' superstitions, and rule-of-thumb methods.

The choosing of the brood bitch may be approached from either of two angles—with or without having previously selected a mate for her. One may choose a male, either one's own or that of another, from whom he wishes to obtain a litter of puppies. In such an event, the bitch should be chosen, both as to her individual type and especially as to her pedigree, to complement the germ plasma of that male. This somewhat complicates the situation in adding another element to the making of that choice. She must be not only of great breeding worth herself but she must be a suitable mate for a particular male dog.

This method may be entirely justifiable since one may have chosen a male who is so consistently efficient as a sire of good stock that to fail to use him would stultify the breeder's program. Or one may own a dog in whose ability to sire fine stock one may have sound confidence, and for the purpose of offering him a chance to prove that ability one may go about selecting a mate for him. In either of such cases, the breeder predicates his operations upon the male of the mating.

The other angle of approach is that of merely a desire to produce fine dogs. This is, other things being equal, the better way. In it one sets out to obtain the most likely brood bitch and to predicate his breeding upon her germ plasma . Having her, he sets about to select for her the best and most suitable mate among all the many dogs available to which she may be bred. Most great strains have been established is such a manner—often fortuitously. And just as fortuitously, many of them strut their brief hour in the dog shows and degenerate to mediocrity through permitting in a few generations those pure dominant genes to pick up recessive complements.

Eternal vigilance is required to retain the purity of the germ plasma from generation to generation. To that end, both mates for every breeding must be as genetically pure as it is possible to have them. Because the bitch has been most frequently neglected, with the emphasis of choice laid upon the male, and because the breeder has a wealth of males from which to choose, it becomes doubly necessary to concentrate attention upon the choice of the bitch. Having the right bitch, the rest is comparatively easy.

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