Who says a sire cannot mate his daughter or who says an offspring cannot  breed their parents and vice versa?  I have seen where people frown when you mention that your dog is of known pedigree. This is because their canines are of unknown pedigrees and they are also unethical breeders. They believe by saying your dog is of known pedigree, you are claiming superiority of your dog over theirs. Some people usually say that pedigree is just the family tree of the dog. Yes, they are very right, but it is more than that in the real sense. If dog breeding is an art and a science, then you have to know what you plan to achieve with each breeding. Just like an artist will know what to expect at the end of his drawing,painting, mosaic or sculpture,so you should in your breeding.

Furthermore, when a chemist adds iron sulfide to hydrochloric acid,he excepts a chemical reaction and a final product(s). The end products cannot be sodium chloride since it is not among the reagents. You will expect to get components of the reagents; iron chloride and hydrogen sulfide.There should be something you target to achieve by making two animals copulate and produce offspring. Pedigree of a dog is the lineage up to at least four generations. This will guide you in correcting faults in your dogs. Also to improve the overall health and conformation of the offspring to meet breed standards through careful selection of the breeding partners.

Now to the bone of contention. Father-daughter mating, son-mother mating, siblings mating and so on are frown at in animal breeding and husbandry. This is inbreeding.  The holy books and various traditions also supported that it is not good among human too. It is incest. Kindly tell me if you do not engage in this in your breeding after reading the story below:

My name is Okafor Okeke. I was born on 6th June 1967, a month before the Nigeria civil war, in Onitsha, eastern part of  Nigeria. I was born twins; the other half was a female. My mother and my late father told me how the war was tough and how we were lucky to survive the war. About a year into the civil war, the federal troop invaded our village. The then Brigadier Olusegun Obasanjo led the invasion. He later became the military head of state and subsequently two times civilian president of Nigeria. It was a terrible night. My mother strapped my twin sister to her back while my father held me on his shoulder with hand, and a cutlass on his other hand. We made it out of the village along with many villagers to a safe place. When we got there, my mother could not explain how my twin sister disappeared from her back. She cried her heart out and after sometime, life went on.

In 1987, I was admitted to the University of Ibadan, in the city of Ibadan, the largest city in Africa, to study Mechanical Engineering. One evening, after 3 years of studentship at the university, I met a lady at the cafeteria. Her beauty hypnotized me. I thought she was not a human being because of the extraordinary beauty I saw on display. She gave her name as Asake Olabusuyi, a student in the humanity faculty.

We became friends, which later blossom from platonic friendship to love despite our different ethnic background. The affection was so much that we would fall sick whenever school was on break because of separation as we had to return to our parents who resided several kilometers apart. Telecommunication was not this rampant then and it takes ages to get to destination when you send letter. We got married 5 years later in an elaborate wedding at Eruwa, Oyo State, western part of Nigeria.

We could not have babies for 2 years and we sought medical attention. In one of the tests recommended by the team of gynecologist, we needed to have our DNA checked. We had too much similarities in our DNA. The doctor read the result to us in his office and we both echoed , “how the hell will that be possible. I am from the east and she is from the west”. The doctor asked us to call our parents. To cut the long story short, it was then that Colonel Patrick Olabusuyi(Rtd), my wife’s father,said that he found my wife in the bush during the operation to liberate our village from Biafran army sometime in 1967.I felt my heart pounding against my ribs and wanted the ground to open and swallow me. My twin sister is married to me!

Let’s go back to our dog breeding now that you have read the story. The dog that you cannot trace its pedigree, how do you know that the father of your bitch is not the one mating her? How do you know that the dog rendering stud service to your bitch is not her son? Please tell me how you will know that you are not breeding two litter mates to themselves unguided? You cannot ascertain that you are not guilty of inbreeding as the case may be if  you do not know the details of the dogs in your breeding program.

The pedigree of your dog will help you to plan your breeding. It will show you the combination(s) you can make to improve on the offspring by pointing you in the direction to improve desirable traits and eliminate the undesirable traits in them.  When you analyze each dog in the pedigree carefully, you will see the good, the bad and the ugly traits of the pedigree. This will assist you in selecting breeding partners that can improve or eliminate the undesirable traits.

If you are buying a dog of known pedigree, endeavor to get at least the kennel issued pedigree details if the club’s Pedigree Certificate is not available. This will enable you have an idea of the dogs in the lineage of your dog. It will be one of the handy tools in your breeding. I have heard cases whereby you buy dog from Mr. A and in some years later, he will deny the dog because he cannot remember anything about the transaction.

We recently received a dog in our kennel for stud service. We sold the dog as a puppy to Abuja from Lagos. The puppy was later sold as an adult back to Lagos by the first owner. We were to mate her back to the father if no microchip was implanted in her skin before we sold her as a puppy. We scanned the bitch as usual and the reader picked up a number that we cross checked on our microchip registry. We discovered that the bitch came from a litter we bred in 2016 and the stud we initially planned to use was the father. The new owner agreed we use another stud for the bitch.

In conclusion, if your dog is of unknown pedigree, you cannot preach to anyone not to mate a direct offspring back to the father or mother and so on as there is no yardstick to determine their relationships.  This Okeke twins’ story could be that of the dog and bitch you are pairing in mating now. Good luck as we all strive to improve our canine friends in terms of conformation to breed standards and health.

Note that the Nigerian Civil War story here is fictional,including the names of people and places mentioned.

Written by Olumide Makinde

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