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Pam Crump Shih Tzu |
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Champion Bloodlines |
One primary goal of quality breeding programs is to produce
puppies that will have the greatest possible conformity to the AKC Standards
for the breed since those standards define what that breed is supposed to look
and act like.
When a dog is judged in an AKC show, the judge is
evaluating the degree of conformity that the dog has to the AKC Breed
Standards. To become an AKC Champion, a
dog must have been judged by several different judges in several different
shows in which the dog was judged as superior to other dogs of the breed
shown. Thus, the recognition by AKC that
a dog is a Champion confirms the high quality of that dog in conformity to
breed standards.
Puppies can be found that will have excellent
conformity to breed standards even though they have no close ancestors who were
AKC Champions. However, the progeny of
an AKC Champion is more likely to inherit the conformation. While having championship bloodlines does not
guarantee good conformation, it is a surer route to excellent conformation.
Nearly all quality breeders talk about the number of
Champions in a dog’s pedigree.
Unfortunately, the raw number is of virtually no significance unless you
know how many generations back those champions were in the dog’s
pedigree.
Many quality breeders have adopted the use of the
5-generation pedigree to enable better comparisons between dogs when talking
about the number of champions. In 5
generations there are a total of 62 ancestors, so if you hear someone say their
dog has 86 champions in the pedigree, you will know for sure they are talking
about more than 5 generations. The
further back in the pedigree, the less significant the inherited genes are from
that champion.
The genes become diluted over the generations, making
any intelligent comparisons impossible when using just a raw count of champions. For that reason we have developed a formula
to calculate a score based on champions in the pedigree that will give
mathematically sound weight factors to the champion count by generation.
Using this formula, if all ancestors in the pedigree are
champions, then the score would be 200, regardless of how many generations are
included. Similarly if exactly half of
the ancestors in each generation of the pedigree are champions, then the score
would be 100.
Using this formula:
· Dog A has 14 champions in its pedigree, with all 14 of them in the fifth generation. The score is 8.
· Dog B has 14 champions in its pedigree, with all 14 of them in the first three generations. The score is 160.
So, saying simply that Dog A and Dog B each have 14 champions in a 5-generation pedigree would mislead to a conclusion that they are equal in championship inheritance. Yet Dog B has 20 times the championship inheritance probability of Dog A (an extreme example).
We have shown the scores from this calculation on our
breeding moms and dads. Some other
breeders have adopted this standard to facilitate intelligent comparison of
championship bloodlines.
This score should never be used to replace study of
pedigrees. There are other issues that
cannot be seen by simply looking at a count of champions, such as inbreeding or
breeding practices used for the dilute colors.
Additionally, not all champions are equal. Breeders should learn the differences, based
on the breeding lines (or kennels) and also on specific dogs.
We have included a calculator on our website, which
you are welcome to use. It is based on a
Microsoft Excel spreadsheet. [Since it
must be interactive, you may need to enable ActiveX controls on the Internet
Explorer browser to use it.] If you are
unable to use the one we have provided online, we can email the MS Excel
spreadsheet to you.