Sibblings have mated

RINKY54 · Mar 29, 2007, 01:31 PM

My friend has let his dogs breed but they are brother and sister he says this is fine but I think that the pregnancy should be terminated as I thought this produced defects in the puppies or illnesses in later life who is right and what could happen if she has the puppies

labman · Mar 29, 2007, 10:14 PM

Mating siblings is a way to bring out any recessive defects. The odds favor, but do not guarantee defective puppies. I would defer on this to others, but I am not sure there is a good way to terminate a litter of puppies.

I also wonder if your friend is contributing to the problem of slaughtering 10,000,000 puppies every year for lack of homes. That upsets me greatly.

RubyPitbull · Mar 30, 2007, 06:44 AM

I know this sounds cruel but a number of vets will terminate the pregnancy and spay the female at the same time when something like this occurs. If your friend plans on keeping both dogs, it would be a very wise move to spay the female and neuter the male.

Ask your friend how he would feel if one or two of the puppies were born with a physical birth defect that made it impossible for the puppy to live a normal life? He would have to euthanize the puppy. That is a pretty heartbreaking situation. You are a good hearted person. Please continue to do whatever you can to convince your friend that this is a big mistake. He is playing russian roulette with mother nature. This coupling can possibly cause any number of physical or mental defects.

If you have a local ASPCA or Humane Society, call the shelter manager and talk to her/him about this. Maybe you can formulate a plan to convince your friend to visit the shelter with you. Then, you can bring the question up together with the vet on staff.

If he refuses to listen to you, advise him that if he plans to sell the puppies to people, he needs to let them know that the parentage is a brother/sister deal and warn them of possible problems. If he doesn't do that and sells a dog whose defect doesn't show up until a later time, he could find himself being slapped with a lawsuit. If he is honest and does tell people, he will probably be stuck with a bunch of puppies that he will either have to keep or have euthanized. Neither of these scenarios is a good one.

sleeper · Mar 30, 2007, 08:29 AM

The only time you should do that is if you have two A+ dogs and are in a real breeding program,most people do this just to get one A+ puppy out of the litter to do it agene and agene
Its not good but can't stop people,and to tell you the truth my dog is from father and daughter and I can see some bad in her like the teeth are to small for how big she is and she snores very loud lol... ok bye

Jessyfay · Mar 30, 2007, 10:03 AM

It is NEVER OK for a brother and sister to mate. NEVER OK!

Jessyfay · Mar 30, 2007, 10:12 AM

NO NO NO! It is never OK to mate siblings.
You should ask your friend, would she/he mate with their siblilngs, than why are you doing that to your dog?
Because I volunteer at a animal shelter I see what happans with imbred. With cats who are imbreded they are born with defects, like a broken tail, brittle bones and teeth, and other defects, both mental and physical.
Vets can terminate the pregnancy, animals can have abortions too. If I were you I would take the dog in myself and terminate it.
I have a imbreded cat that I rescued from a breeding house, where the animals were mistreated and she has a really hard time with trust and getting along with the other animals.
When the dog does have pups, and he finds homes for them, they might be problematic and their owners might not be able to handle them, and they might just end up in a shelter or be put down. Has he thought of the big picture here?

labman · Mar 30, 2007, 10:45 AM

It might have been better for Sleeper not to have brought up the exceptions, but there are times when a well run breeding program will breed closely related dogs. It is done so with full knowledge it may produce at least some defective dogs that will have to be destroyed.

Yes, as a routine thing, it is wrong.

RubyPitbull · Mar 30, 2007, 11:39 AM

Originally Posted by Jessyfay

If I were you I would take the dog in myself and terminate it.

Jessyfay honey, it is not a good idea for Rinky to do this. Although we all are tempted to do stuff like that when we know people who do this, if Rinky does this without his/her friends' approval, he can, and just, might sue her. It could cost Rinky a few thousand dollars if the guy's plans were to sell puppies. Unfortunately the law is not on our side when it comes to stuff like this. Rinky needs to do everything he/she can do to convince her friend to abort the pregnancy. We need to try to give her as many ideas as we can to convince this guy to do this on his own. I came up with some. Labman, Jessfay, or anyone else online, do you have any additional ideas for Rinky that might get this guy to do what Rinky wants?

sleeper · Mar 30, 2007, 09:35 PM

labman,, I understand what you are saying but my dog is awsome I got it from a good program this dog is last pick to and is about all you can look for in a #1 pitbull very nice etc

RubyPitbull · Mar 31, 2007, 06:19 AM

sleeper, what do you mean by a "good program?"

sleeper · Mar 31, 2007, 08:06 AM

I will give you the site and you can take a look for you self OK that would be easyer then to tell you about it..

froggy7 · Mar 31, 2007, 09:22 PM

It's not a black and white question. Breeding closely-related animals will increase the chance of recessive traits appearing, yes. But that's only a bad thing if the recessives are detrimental. Blue eyes are recessive in humans, but I doubt that anyone would claim that having blue eyes is a terrible fate. So, if you have animals with a known genetic background, and there are no indications that there are detrimental traits in the line, there's really no harm in doing it. Heck, realistically, if you took two related animals of unknown genetic backgrounds, the odds of their mating resulting in genetically defective animals is probably not that much higher than mating two unrelated animals. For a human example, having kids when the woman is over 35 more than doubles the chance of having a Downs syndrome baby. Sounds spooky, but really it means that the chance is something like .27% instead of 0.11%. So the potential that you, specifically, have one is still very low.

tickle · Apr 1, 2007, 03:11 AM

Is your friend carrying on his own experiments, or did he really get a kick out of allolwing this to happen. The only example I can give of a situation like this is one time I had a lovely puppy half airedale and half lab, grew up fine on our farm but just would not stick around. She would never follow commands, run off constantly with a pack and most of the time I couldn't find her. I went back to the farm where I got her as a five week old and found out she was the result of siblings mating. I am not saying that this happens all the time, but is a good example of what can happen. Genetically she was unfit.

If you can possibly avoid this, you should not let it happen. Maybe nature will take its course.

RubyPitbull · Apr 1, 2007, 06:20 AM

Ay, Yi, Yi. What a can of worms! You are all making my hair stand on end! Look at my pic if you don't believe me!

Froggy, the depth of your knowledge amazes me. Although, I am a fierce opponent to backyard, puppy mill, and certain selective breeding practices, such as the one you have outlined here, when someone posts calm, rational, and logical thought and explanations, they will always gain my respect and admiration. That being said, I doubt very much that Rinky's friend was selectively doing this to create an outstanding breed. I very much believe from Rinky's posting, that it had more to do with ignorance and making a quick buck. As, I suspect you understand. I am pretty confident you were giving us this information from a purely biological and scientific viewpoint. Please correct me if I am wrong.

The biggest problem with doing what sleeper is talking about and what you have outlined here, is that you may get one A+ puppy in a litter where 7 other puppies are defective or just not a high enough quality for the breeder. You can have a case such as Tickle has outlined above, or a puppy born with missing limbs, fused jaw parts so it is unable to eat, brittle bones as Jessy points out, and a host of other defects, blatantly detectable, some undetectable, or negligible such as the ears aren't quite long or wide enough, or the color patterns are off. Where you and I might not care about that, the selective breeder does. With that in mind, the odds are more in favor of a defect than an A+ puppy. And, a person who is fully into this type of selective breeding practice, is well aware of and accepting of this, and will not hesitate to euthanize the remainder of the pups in a litter. Frankly, I find the whole concept disgusting and abusive.

The bigger question on my mind at the moment is, where the heck is Rinky in all of this? We haven't heard back from him/her. So, Rinky, if you are getting these updates, please post back as to how you are faring with getting your friend to do the responsible thing.

As labman has pointed out in many of his posts, 10,000,000 dogs a year are being euthanized in shelters for lack of homes. When someone irresponsibly breeds, they are contributing to these numbers. If we could get all these people who are more interested in lining their pockets with money, to understand this dire situation, we can make a dent in these numbers. Until they work in a shelter and see loving dogs and cats who need to be put down due to lack of space and forever homes, until they witness what is actually done, with the bodies piled into a stack until there are enough to fire up the crematorium, they will never understand how cruel, selfish, and irresponsible they truly are.

froggy7 · Apr 1, 2007, 09:19 AM

Hello Ruby!

Yep... I was just pointing out that it's not a given that these puppies are going to be terribly deformed. I don't believe in backyard breeders, simply because there are too many dogs and cats already. People tend to do it for a quick buck, and even in a good, well-planned breeding program, things can go wrong, and cost a lot of money. But I was willing to give Rinky the benefit of the doubt, since it says he "let" them breed and not that he deliberately bred them. In which case, I'd let the pups be born, re-home them, and then get her spayed. I'd have already had the male fixed at this point, since there's no need to wait on his part.

But the reality of trying to maintain a defined breed is that you are dealing with a certain set of genes, and you need to do a certain amount of inbreeding to fix traits. Scottish fold cats, for example, all trace back to one female cat that carried the mutant gene. Some breeds allow out-crosses to other purebreds to help prevent genetic problems. Generally though, line breeding involves father/daughter mother/son crosses. And, if the genetic pedigree is well-documented, then line breeding is actually less likely to result in deformed animals, because you know what the potential genetic combinations are. So the only thing you have to worry about is random mutations. Bring in an animal with an unknown background, and you can introduce a recessive trait that won't show up for a couple of generations, at which point you now have the difficulty of trying to breed it out of the line.

Of course, I am assuming a relatively healthy breed, and not one where you are breeding for a heterozygous trait (where the pure dominants don't have the trait, the pure recessives tend to be sickly/lethal, and the mix of the two is the one that you want). Sickle cell trait is the canonical human example of that. If you are pure recessive, you have sickle cell disease, and tend to die without treatment. If you don't have the trait at all, you are normal. Have just one gene for it, and you don't show the signs of sickle cell disease, and get an increased resistance to malaria. The problem is that two heterozygous parents have a 25% chance of having normals (who die from malaria), a 25% chance of sickle cells (who die from that) and a 50% chance of having more heteros, like them, who likely to live.

And for people who are looking at this from a moral perspective, animals don't care about family relationships when it comes to sex. If you take an unaltered pair of cats and drop them off on an isolated island with no other cats, and come back a few years later, you will find a thriving cat population, assuming that the environment will support them.

Plus, I read science fiction, and one of the questions that gets discussed a lot is how many people are necessary to establish a healthy space colony, and how long it would take for random mutations to start showing up. It seems to be around 100, assuming that you do genetic screening beforehand.

RubyPitbull · Apr 1, 2007, 10:15 AM

Originally Posted by froggy7

But I was willing to give Rinky the benefit of the doubt, since it says he "let" them breed and not that he deliberately bred them. In which case, I'd let the pups be born, re-home them, and then get her spayed. I'd have already had the male fixed at this point, since there's no need to wait on his part.

This is the only thing I will disagree with you on. Due to what we both have stated and labman has stated many, many times, if Rinky can convince the friend to get rid of the litter, it should be done. Spay the female. Neuter the male. The friend, and others like him need to be responsible pet owners, not only to his pet, but to the rest of society. We don't need any more accidental breedings. The vet can assess the situation and if he/she feels it can be done without undue hardship or death on the female, it should be done.

Don't be mad froggy. I still love you. ;)

froggy7 · Apr 1, 2007, 10:59 AM

Originally Posted by RubyPitbull

This is the only thing I will disagree with you on. Due to what we both have stated and labman has stated many, many times, if Rinky can convince the friend to get rid of the litter, it should be done. Spay the female. Neuter the male. The friend, and others like him need to be responsible pet owners, not only to his pet, but to the rest of society. We don't need any more accidental breedings. The vet can assess the situation and if he/she feels it can be done without undue hardship or death on the female, it should be done.

Don't be mad froggy. I still love you. ;)

Ah, no hard feelings. That's just a personal thing of mine... If this were my dog, I wouldn't feel like this litter of puppies should be killed, just because of the owners mistake. Yes, I know it's not logical, and means that some other litter of puppies is going to be killed, because there's simply not enough homes for them all. But I'm not responsible for those puppies, and I am for these ones. (Theoretically, of course, since it's not my dog at all. My cats were spayed at 8 weeks, and one was adopted already spayed.)

I remember hearing from a shelter worker that one of his hardest jobs was deciding which puppies in a litter would live and which would be euthanized. They figured it was better to have 8 puppies of different breeds and types, than to have one litter of 8 pups of the same type. So when 4 people brought in litters close together, they'd have to look at each puppy and assess which ones they were going to try and adopt out, and the rest of the litter would be killed.

labman · Apr 1, 2007, 11:00 AM

I would just as soon as this thread drifted off topic it would have expanded into other abuses of back yard breeders than the acceptable exceptions for inbreeding. By the way, if she is being allow to run loose, she may have mated with other dogs and the puppies may or my not be the brothers.

Were those dogs certified for hips and eyes? Often hip problems don't show up until the dog starts to lose muscle tone and can no longer compensate for the lack of bone structure. Allergies, temperament, other health issues, etc.

I question suggesting a common problem such as a dog that wants to roam came from mating siblings. Could have as easily come from the premature removal from the litter, poor early socialization, or just their father being one more roamer.

I am very disappointed in a number of members in this forum who claim to be caring people that know and love dogs. Yet they don't speak out on the issue of backyard breeding and spay/neuter. I am tired of seeing questions showing little except that the OP has an intact dog and never bothered to learn anything about responsible care. As a highly trained person sharing what I know here and elsewhere, I feel obligated to use my position to educate the public on this. It seems we have one member here that cares more about the women with the Dachshund than all the dogs leading a short miserable life before it is often ended in inhumane ways.

RubyPitbull · Apr 1, 2007, 11:49 AM

As always, I agree with you on this topic labman.

I was trying to be tactful here and bring the discussion back on point. I guess I was being way too subtle Froggy, when I was talking about creating a thread in the rep I gave to you. I was trying to be as polite as possible to get you to understand that this was a discussion we should have on another forum, such as Issues and Causes. Labman is right in what he is saying. I should have been more straightforward in my request to you. This is not about personal choices here. It is so disheartening to read so many posts from people who are actively looking for information on breeding. Labman knows I have trouble answering them. I have too many conversations in my day to day life, face to face with those kinds of people who just don't get, or rather, don't want to hear, what I am saying about breeding. I assume my admonishing them on this web site will have an even lesser impact. The thought of not getting through to someone, coming up with an result of someone stomping their feet in anger at my impertinance, makes me avoid it altogether.

I do speak my mind if misinformation is given, or if an assumption is made, and I can be very vocal about that. But I am having trouble with how to effectively get my opinion heard on this issue, while staying true to the format of this web site, which is to give answers to questions to the best of our abilities. I struggle daily with trying to figure out how to find the proper balance. Do we not have to worry about Administration being upset with us? Can I truly speak my mind without fear of retribution? If that is the case, than I will be much more vocal on this issue. And, I hope that others here, who do claim to care about the plight of the animals, will join in on this cause.

RINKY54 · Apr 3, 2007, 02:20 PM

I still haven't been able 2 convince him that this is wrong and he is willing 2 take the chance and see what happens when the puppies are born I have 2 staffies myself and one has just been diagnosed with epilepsy and it is heart breaking 2 think these puppies could have problems later in life that could be avoided I have explained my feelings and he refuses 2 see sense I am seriously considering reporting him to the rspca