How to read a dog's pedigree.

How to read a dog's pedigree.Most people have no clue on how to read a dog's pedigree. When buying a dog, either living or soon-to-be delivered, the pedigree is a goldmine of valuable pieces of information. Unfortunately, most people do not know how to figure them out. With a little bit of research, a pedigree will talk to you about... 1)Titles and Awards. 2)Inbreeding Level. 3)Patterns of Desired & Undesired Traits.4)Coat Types, Colors and Patterns.5)Stud Book and Ancestry.6)Health. Reading a dog’s pedigree is an overwhelming task for novice dog breeders. Often, you look at the chart and linked data without much of an objective. It’s hard to find a piece of information we don’t even know we are looking for. 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. In essence, a dog’s pedigree is its family tree (so yes, every dog has a pedigree). What people tend to mean by pedigree is a family tree where each family member was registered on a pedigree dog registration scheme — such as the Kennel Club, the International Sheep Dog Society, and there are plenty others. For newcomers in the dog breeding world, the pedigree is not clearly understood and a common mistake is to get a registered Dam and Sire and think it is a great start. Well, not really. Not at all quite frankly. Being registered does not mean, in any way, that the dogs are of high quality: it is just a record in a database. The simple rule is that all exceptional dogs are registered but not all registered dogs are exceptional. What makes the difference is who is composing the pedigree of a particular dog or litter. In short, you need to dissect it and research its family members to then study them individually. It is called the pedigree analysis. If they fit the characteristics are looking for, you then want to have a deeper look at them and see how well they performed in championships and shows. For example, if you are breeding herding Border Collies, you want to find a dog that has a line which demonstrated amazing herding abilities, either by reputation or by actually winning herding contests and championships. Obviously, the more champions there are in a bloodline or a pedigree, the more expensive the puppies produced will be. This is exactly why you really need to figure how much you are ready to invest.