Can a mother dog have puppies with her son?
Unfortunately, the question of whether you can breed a dog with its parent isn’t straightforward. If you want to be technical, then yes you can. The two dogs can mate and even conceive.
Dr. Marie is a veterinarian who practices in a busy animal hospital in Ottawa, Ontario. She created Ask A Vet Question as a resource for good, accurate veterinary advice online. Dr. Marie treats dogs, cats, hamsters, guinea pigs, and rats. She has been a vet since 1999.
Is an online vet visit just as good as a trip to your veterinarian? No! But, many times, asking an online veterinarian a question can help save you money. While Dr. Marie cant officially diagnose your pet or prescribe medications, she can often advise you on whether a vet visit is necessary. You can also ask Dr. Marie for a second opinion on your pets condition.
Selective Breeding
Artificial isolation (selective breeding) produces a similar effect. When creating a new breed from an attractive mutation, the gene pool is initially necessarily small with frequent matings between related dogs. Some breeds which resulted from spontaneous mutation have been fraught with problems such as the Bulldog. Problems such as hip dysplasia and achalasia in the German Shepherd and patella luxation are more common in certain breeds and breeding lines than in others, suggesting that past inbreeding has distributed the faulty genes. Selecting suitable outcrosses can reintroduce healthy genes, which might otherwise be lost, without adversely affecting type.
Zoos engaged in captive breeding programs are aware of this need to outcross their own stock to animals from other collections. Captive populations are at risk from inbreeding since relatively few mates are available to the animals, hence zoos must borrow animals from each other in order to maintain the genetic diversity of offspring.
Inbreeding holds problems for anyone involved in animal husbandry—from canary fanciers to farmers. Attempts to change the appearance of the Pug in attempts to have a flatter face and a rounder head resulted in more C-sections being required and other congenital problems. Some of these breeds are losing their natural ability to give birth without human assistance.
In the dog world, a number of breeds now exhibit hereditary faults due to the overuse of a particularly “typey” stud which was later found to carry a gene detrimental to health. By the time the problems came to light they had already become widespread as the stud had been extensively used to “improve” the breed. In the past some breeds were crossed with dogs from different breeds in order to improve type, but nowadays the emphasis is on preserving breed purity and avoiding mongrels.
Those involved with minority breeds (rare breeds) of livestock face a dilemma as they try to balance purity against the risk of genetic conformity. Enthusiasts preserve minority breeds because their genes may prove useful to farmers in the future, but at the same time the low numbers of the breed involved means that it runs the risk of becoming unhealthily inbred. When trying to bring a breed back from the point of extinction, the introduction of “new blood” through crossing with an unrelated breed is usually a last resort because it can change the very character of the breed being preserved. In livestock, successive generations of progeny must be bred back to a purebred ancestor for six to eight generations before the offspring can be considered purebred themselves.
In the dog fancy, breed purity is equally desirable, but can be taken to ridiculous lengths. Some fancies will not recognize “hybrid” breeds such as the white or Parti-Schnauzer because it produces variants. Breeds which cannot produce some degree of variability among their offspring risk finding themselves in the same predicament as wolves and giant pandas. Such fancies have lost sight of the fact that they are registering “pedigree” dogs, not “pure-bred” dogs, especially since they may recognize breeds which require occasional outcrossing to maintain type!