Can Brother And Sister Dogs Mate And Inbreed?
Yes, brother and sister dogs can mate and inbreed.
Like any other animal, dogs have instincts when it comes to mating. The moment these dogs are sexually mature, there will be a tendency for them to mate with its sibling.
The process of mating your pups to their closely related species is commonly known as interbreeding. It can be a mother/son, father/daughter, and sibling/sibling mating.
Thus, inbreeding may occur after a sibling dog’s mate and produce an offspring. Dogs with relatives in common can also qualify for this.
In most cases, they are bred by owners to produce predictable positive traits of offspring. There’s an assumption that you will likely make one or even better excellent specimens if you interbreed dogs of the same litters. These remarkable specimens are sought-after by a lot of pet lovers for stud services.
However, interbreeding can stem from a great many potential problems.
This continued interbreeding may limit a particular animal’s gene pool and lose each breed’s potency in the long run. There is a high possibility that these puppies may develop known and unknown inherited disorders.
Brother and sister dogs’ mating and inbreeding can occur naturally and in a selective process. In selective breeding, dogs are likely created from an attractive mutation but small gene pool, resulting in problems.
For the natural occurrence, scientists have found out that once an animal is isolated together with its siblings by geographical and other factors, these animals can be inbred.
Benefits of Mating a Brother to its Sister Dog
Most people associate inbreeding with incest in humans which is both illegal and medically wrong. However, completely different standards apply in the canine species. Inbreeding in canines is often seen as beneficial and is still perfectly legal. Dogs lack emotional maturity, so a male dog will still naturally attempt to mate with his sister, without giving any thought to morals or repercussions. The copulatory tie will not require any additional assistance than it would usually. In fact, it might even be easier because the dogs are already known to one another; they should already be comfortable around each other and familiar with one another’s smell.
Brother and sister dogs are most commonly bred together to help produce puppies with predictable traits related to temperament and appearance. The general idea is that — in theory — if you have two dogs with exceptional health and aesthetics and you breed them together, they will produce one or more equally superb specimens.[pullquote-right]Breeding dog siblings is rarely, if ever, recommended.[/pullquote-right]
A brother and sister dog will share far more genetic material than two unrelated or distantly-related canines because they share the same parents. Therefore, breeding a brother and sister dog together can fix or homogenise certain superior traits in dogs by increasing the likelihood that they will be passed onto the next generation. Some believe that this is the most efficient way to strengthen a breed of dog because dogs within this bloodline will share more and more of the same superior genetic material.
This is how an official dog breed comes about in the first place — dogs with very similar traits repeatedly breed until a group of dogs have a certain look about them, then a breed standard is officialized, and the actual dog breed exists. Therefore, Labradors look like Labradors and Pomeranians look like Pomeranians.
This process of breeding a brother and sister dog together can be considered a lot simpler logistically. A dam owner can spend months seeking out a stud that complements their dam. They will then have to pay fees and sign a stud service contract to have access to the stud for breeding. If the dam can instead be mated with one of her brothers, the time taken to locate and secure a stud is significantly reduced.
Additionally, canine incest (if done by an experienced breeder) can sometimes provide some peace of mind. You will have more of an idea about what to expect from a litter. However, siblings or not, both dogs should still undergo genetic screening, so you can learn about all their genetic material, both good and bad. It is important not to become complacent or irresponsible or you may end up exacerbating any negative traits in future pup(s).
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!