6 crucial information a dog pedigree reveals.

6 crucial information a dog pedigree reveals. Breeding dogs has nothing to do with luck and everything to do with genetics and heredity. Therefore, knowing how to read a dog’s pedigree is essential if you want your bloodline to be amongst the best. A close reading of a dog’s pedigree with a bit of detective work will give much information about a dog and how its genetic makeup translated in our practical world. Most genes only represent a potential that the dog’s environment and life experiences will express to a certain extent. Seeing how often a particular characteristic appeared in a dog’s ancestors can give you an idea of what can appear in your future litters. This goes with most traits that you seek to have or better in your own bloodlines. These traits may be the ability to perform a specific job (herding skills, or athletic performance for example), or a particular physical attribute that you are keen on (e.g. longer and more powerful legs, longer snout, naturally more muscular body, etc.) Reality is, undesirable traits may be more difficult to glean from a pedigree because not having a “CH” in front of a name of a dog doesn’t necessarily mean that the dog had flaws. And unless a dog is a champion or participated many shows, it will be hard to find relevant information for you to work with. Perhaps the owner never wanted to compete nor breed himself. Many fine AKC dogs with good bloodlines do simply serve as companion animals while many flawed puppies are registered by unscrupulous breeders just to be able to raise their price tag. Coat colors should appear on a dog’s pedigree when the color of the dog’s coat is one of the breed’s standards. For example, Labrador Retrievers will conform to breed standard with one of three colors: yellow, black or chocolate. The pedigree of a Labrador puppy normally shows each parent’s color indicated by the abbreviations ylw (yellow), blk (black) and chlt (chocolate). Many other breeds have allowable and disqualifying coat colors. Information about coat color is an important information on a pedigree to note, especially if you have a particular focus on your bloodline’s appearance. If the same coat color appears everywhere on the pedigrees of a mated bitch and dog, the puppies have an extremely high probability of having the same color. That is simple genetics. However, an ancestor somewhere in the family tree with a different color — even a conforming to standard one — increases the chances of a random puppy being born with a beautiful but potentially disqualifying mix of two conforming colors. The same goes for the different coat patterns and lengths.