Caralon's Phantom v Le Barland - Page 5

Thank you Prager, that absolutely answers my question & explains my fascination. I'm glad you are here, so many of our knowledgable folks have left us.

TIG- your comment about temperament sparked my question, so thank you! You have a wealth of knowledge! 

My friend Blitzen, I know genetics at about the 101 level, & have forgotten most of that, lol. But there do seem to be traits that aren't lost from generation to generation, & with the equation of 50% to 25% to 12.5% to 6.25% to 3.125% etc., you would think traits would be lost in dilution, rather than carried forth. Obviously, they are not lost; I suppose that is the effect of line breeding. These are, I know, very simple questions, but I just want to make sure that my basic understanding is based on correct information. And I'm not planning on breeding, I'm just trying to sort out my somewhat jumbled thought processes about blood lines & line breeding, etc. 

thank you for having patience with me!

jackie harris

 

To keep it short and simple, selective breeding/artifical selection plays a big role in the end results as well. I don't subscribe to the theory that dogs beyond the 5th generation have much if any influence on the current generation. I've never seen it and until I do I guess I'll continue to be the odd man out here .

The term "archetype" has its origins in ancient Greek. The root words are archein, which means "original or old"; and typos, which means "pattern, model or type". The combined meaning is an "original pattern" of which all other similar persons, objects, or concepts are derived, copied, modeled, or emulated.

I posted the following on a previous thread dealing with bicolors and I think it is appropriate to this discussion and the idea of an archtype or "line2" etc.

"Here is an interesting thought. The Russian fox experiment hypothesis is that behavior creates biology which creates an external look.  I wonder if the reverse might be true - i.e. external look created by biology creates a behavior. Check out http://www.pbs.org/wnet/secrets/previous_seasons/case_amazon/clues.html which tells the story of an archeologist who found an important dig which appears to have verified the true existence of Amazon warrior females. History and myth tells us that they retreated to the East - some think to Mongolia. Since the Amazons appeared to have a distinctive physiogamy , the archaelogist went in search of descendants because she had heard of such childfren born among the Mongolians. She did in fact locate one - the blond girl on the linked page above- born to two Mongolians and low and behold her DNA was almost identical to the female warriors from 2000 years earlier.  This suggests to me some type of syndrome where the genes are pulled together and pass as a distinct package irregardless of race etc. ( think Down's syndrome, pygoria etc). Perhaps the confluence of these genes which produce the Amazon type also created a more adventureous/aggressive   woman? entage

Now using the model of only the first three generations are important because the percentages are too small after that, how do you explain the bolded sentence above.

I have a good friend who started out strongly  believing in the 3 generation only rule and she and I have had many a discussion about the influence of the past. She now sees the archtypes once they were pointed out to her and while for her the up front will always  be more important she has modified her views over the years. As I try to explain to her, will knowing what's in the "back 40" tell me if blue eyes will be produced - unlikely BUT it's like a painter creating a picture on the canvas. There are broad strokes that create the setting and the structure and the point of view, then the details are added. For us the details are the info from gen 1-3. The "back 40", archtype, line or what every designation you give it are the setting, structure and point of view not only will it tell us the breed of dog we will produce (GSD) , it can help predict the style of GSD we will produce.

Dallas was often called a German style of dog. Well hello look a his extended pedigree. Time and time again he goes back to Yoncalla's mike and Cobert's Melissa or dogs heavily linebred on them ( this =Bernd Kallengarten in fact Melissa was inbred 2-2 on him) or Galywynds Symphony thur Quick and Crunch which is also just more of Mike/Melissa. Symphony represents Grief Elfenhain and Klodo Erementklause a combination I always felt brought great working ability and ethic. the Kolbrook lines brought in lots of different German lines. Look not only at the extended pedigree her but check out the 7 generation linebreeding - Bernd 10x http://www.pedigreedatabase.com/german_shepherd_dog/dog.html?id=403781-kolbrooks-rainy-lake  Look at GV Kismet's Impulse (Ernie Loeb put him up as an old dog and the saying goes he said he damn well was going to have a GV that lived longer than 5 yrs of age. I believe Impulse was 7 at the time). His dam side is virtually a total German pedigree. I could go on and on about virtually every dog in the 5th, 6th and 7th generation of Dallas's pedigree. Including Lance by the way who had a very german pedigree and was line bred on the R litter Onasbrucker Land. The reality is Dallas'  "back 40" is incredible massed on dogs from the 60's, dogs that were heavily if not primarily German bred. Dogs for the most part with good balanced moderate structure and good working abilities. Now who did Dallas most resem ble and produce the dogs in the first three generations of his pedigree or the archtype that is massed behind him? I think one of the great mysterys we still have in genetics is why some genes click on or off at a given moment in time and how because of that an animal or human girl can look, act and have DNA that is almost identical to an individual lost to the mists of time while not at all representing her immediate heritage.

Food for thought, I hope.

I'm not so sure many German showline breeders would consider Dallas a "German type"  I  got myself into some trouble for saying that.

He's bred 4-5 on Magnum. If you look at the photos of the dogs in his pedigree, they are for the most part an unbroken line of very similar type and structure. A testimony to the power of selective breeding IMO.  

 

Shalom, We'll agree to disagree or at least somewhat disagree.

I'm from the school that it's all important and selection obviously has/can have a huge influence. Like I said you need to look up from the paper and see the dog(s).  Unfortunately sometimes what is being selected for is the title (VA, Select, WUSV) or the dog's color or the dog's owner and his/her influence. I think in some cases like this that then nature does step in and have a hand. I also think that our schemes oft go astray ( can't do the Scot dialect thing) and nature again does it's own thing. That's why you get clicks and disasters and sports -none of which can be reliably predicted from any pedigree but most epecially not from a 3 gen pedigree. (If it could we would have a Triple crown winner evey year or at least with less than 28 years in between). We select, we do the best we can but since it's a living breathing organism and not a toaster there are often surprises - which is for me the adventure, the fun, the intriguing aspect of breeding.

Plus some selection is inadvertent as opposed to purposeful but still powerful. I use as an example the supposed "death factor" which was present in many American Showlines in the 70s and 80s and may still be for all I know. Some of the dogs chosen in the post Lance era ( grandchildren, great grandchildren) were chosen for their great beauty or sidegait (ex. scorpio of shiloh gardens) but carried within them the legacy of early death from bloat, torsion, heart problems, immune problems. The death factor was basically a third of the litter died before 1 yr, a third died by 2 or close to and the rest you got what you got ( note ernie Loeb's comment above). The human selected for the great beauty and inadvertently selected for the death factor because the reality was they started breeding the males as young as 5 mo, , they chose for early matruing dogs that could finish their championship sometimes from the puppy class but often by 18 mos of age ( as opposed to dogs from the 50s & 60s where Open dogs where 5-7 years of age). So if he dies by two that's ok cause we've bred the heck out of him and besides it's time for me to move on to the next dog I want to finish. So the initial selection - great beauty, early maturing also held nature's surprise of the seeds of death and then that was reinforced yet again by human behavior. Which brings me back to what I think was the orginal intent of my comment about math and percentages - its complex, it ain't easy and it's hardly every a case of 25% of this or that.

Hint for breeders out there -start asking about longevity in the pedigree and select for healthy long lived dogs. It will increase the longevity in your lines and very quickly too. Note an easy way to do this is to breed to healthy old dogs ( 10-12 yr old) especially ones with lots of living siblings rather than the latest 3 yr old sensation that we don't yet know what he'll produce. I added that factor into my selection back in the late 70s and most of my dogs have lived to a healthy 14 , sometimes longer.

Anyway, Blitzen, shalom. I think we can learn a great deal from each other and from disparate points of view.

I think one of the great mysterys we still have in genetics is why some genes click on or off at a given moment in time and how because of that an animal or human girl can look, act and have DNA that is almost identical to an individual lost to the mists of time while not at all representing her immediate heritage.

Well, the new epigenetics seem to provide a way to understand, "throwbacks". Which is what I think we might be talking about, in a way? Also, TIG, that was very interesting, the mystery of the blonde Mongolian descendent of the Amazon warrior!

Epigenetic inheritance is an unconventional finding. It goes against the idea that inheritance happens only through the DNA code that passes from parent to offspring. It means that a parent's experiences, in the form of epigenetic tags, can be passed down to future generations.

As unconventional as it may be, there is little doubt that epigenetic inheritance is real. In fact, it explains some strange patterns of inheritance geneticists have been puzzling over for decades.

http://learn.genetics.utah.edu/content/epigenetics/inheritance/

This theory needs us to agree that we can put aspects of "temperament" down just by observing the actions from what a dog(parent) experiences. But, this also means, that it is an impermanent thing. So in theory, nervy dogs, (and their epi-marker tags) are not necessarily going to be permanent. It would explain different outcomes in observations. It is a new theory brought to my attention from another thread. I have since been thinking, that it has some points that make sense out of conflicting observations. It certainly gives one something new to think about on inheritance.

Re Dallas: let's not forget he dropped dead at the age of 9. If I understand it correctly, he was perfectly healthy one day and dead the next. No one has ever said what he died from.

Does this worry me? Yes, I have a Dallas grand-daughter!  :(

TIG good post. 

Being a dog nerd has it's challenges, TIG . I love it when I meet someone who can make me think out of my box  I hate it when I think I might not know it all. Damn it!!!

by firethorn on 01 April 2007 - 01:04 Posts: 66
Joined: Mon Dec 06, 2004 05:50 am

I had the great pleasure of knowing Dallas very well. He and his owner trained with me the to earn his herding titles. This dog was awesome. One of the best tending dogs I've ever worked with. He easily could have done HGH had his owner been interested. As it was he is the only Best in Show winner in America that has a working trial title, he earned his HSCs at age nine. He had wonderful stock sense, incredable work ethic and that willingness to please that characterizes a great tending dog. And he could take a hard correction, responding with "oh that is what you meant" Great temperment. He has produced a number of progeny that are tending sheep as well. He also has changed the look of the AMerican dog to one of much more type, better feet, less angulation, improved secondary sex characteristics. He sired about 120 litters, produced at least seven select animals, about ten best in show dogs and more conformation champions in the US than any other dog ever. His death was very hard for his owners as he was their house dog. He did pass in his sleep, they found him dead in the morning when they got up. His sire passed away at seven, however his dam lived to be nearly 15 and his half brother Heart Throb is still around and is fifteen. Susan