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Originally Posted by Woogie Man  As I said, I don't know about the foreface, beyond what I've read, and that's about the same as you posted. My point was that you (and I mean you in general terms) can't assume all recessive traits follow through as the parti gene, and I was just using that for an example.
Your point about looking to the parents as an indicator of how a pup will mature is more true in line bred dogs than those with an open pedigree. With an open pedigree, there's no telling what will be expressed and I've even had surprises (a teapot from 5 pound parents) with line bred dogs. I've also had pups that had that happy mixing of genes where I thought they were better (for lack of a better word) than either parent.
Yorkies are such a fascinating breed. They never cease to amaze (and perplex) me. |
I wasn't talking about the parti gene, (really
) I never even heard of the parti gene until I came to Yorkietalk. I have studied a little genetics, and I'm just referring to the recessive gene in general. Genetics a fairly exact science, if you knew for sure, which genes were recessive and which were dominant, and if the trait is only governed by one gene, you can predict the results, of course even then we still we are only dealing in probability, but with the recessive gene, it's 100 % probability, and those are good odds. The problem is usually with the dominant gene on predictability, because that is the one that is displayed, yet there only needs to be one dominant gene passed to display the trait. Genetics hold true across species, and the first studies were done on plants, but genetics follows certain strict laws. I don't mean to imply that it's easy though, so many traits are ruled by more than one gene.
I'm not saying a breeder can't have offspring that are better looking than parents, in fact, that should be a goal, but I just don't think a buyer can count on that happening. If it did, I would think the breeder would want to add that dog to his/her breeding program and not sell it as a pet. Every piece of advice I've read on buying a dog, tells the buyer to look at the parents, and I believe that this is a good rule. Of course, I believe that you should find a breeder who looks at the whole line.