ESSAYS FOR THE DOG BREEDER

By Dr. Susan Thorpe-Vargas

A GENETICS PRIMER

Are you mystified by the genetic code? Do you blanch at words such as allele, dominant, and codon? Do you think of microsatellites as small orbs circling the Earth? The time is coming when such words will be part of the everyday vernacular of dog breeders. The study of genetics has previously been the domain of specialists, but it is rapidly becoming part of the responsible breeder’s repertoire. The study of genetics is much like learning a foreign language. It really isn’t all that difficult to become conversational once you master the rules and become comfortable with a new vocabulary.

The age-old problem for dog breeders of course is that the characteristics they are trying to breed for do not always materialize in a litter of puppies. Or some unwanted characteristic keeps appearing that even "careful" breeding cannot eliminate. Why does this happen and what can be done to eliminate at least some of the uncertainty a breeder faces?

 
Bio:
Ph.D. Immunologist who wrote for DOGworld for 15 years. Multiple Maxwell
award nominee and two time winner. She has also won the Eukanuba Health Award
twice and was  acknowledged in the recent NOVA documentary on dogs. She is owned
and loved by several dogs and has been breeding  for 21 years.