[boopster]

I've been reading a lot of posts on the subject of mixing breeds and have a philosophical question. I don't plan on ever being a breeder and I would not buy a designer dog so I'm not in any danger of supporting the industry but... Isn't the Yorkie a designer dog? Bred from several different ancestors to include the " best" qualities of each breed? What is the difference between the interbreeding of the 19th century and earlier and today's selective breeding practices? If you could breed out a hereditary condition by adding a new gene pool to the mix wouldn't that be a good thing?

I'm not talking about puppy mills that are churning out Yorkiepoos... I think most of us agree that repeadly breeding dogs that spend their entire lives in cages is bad. But what about the breeder who does everything by the book - except they mix breeds for a specific purpose? At some point, if breeders only mate Yorkies with Yorkies, aren't they going to eventually be so inbred that all of the hereditary problems we all dread will appear with more frequency? Not in the next twenty years, perhaps, but generations down the road?

Hope you don't consider this question heresy, but I really would like to know what responsible breeders think.