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Have a female Griffon. The breeder I got her from wants to breed her to my dog's Grandfather. I read some stuff on the net and also talked to a vet. I had never heard of line breeding before. My vet said it was a bad idea and I think so too. Vet said he gets dogs with eye, hip, heart, etc. problems from this practice. Breeds genetic defects. However, my vet said you could never convince the people that are pro line breeding that it wasn't a good practice. Any comments?

Line breeding keeps the blood. New blood runs the risk of recessive genes and lost traits. As long as there are no defects now, line breed, but don't ever inbreed.

Line breeding is what developed distinct breeds and accentuated the qualities that admirers of the breed covet. The practice of breeding within a family is taboo in all but a few southern states and people tend to allow the distaste of the practice in humans to translate to the animal world. While strict line breeding can and does seem to see more gentetic defects occuring, going back one time is unlikely to do so. However, if your dog is line bred back into the same line many times you may want to forego the breeding, as it is in cases of that nature that the defects are most often found. Line breeding is a common practice in horses as well, when a little common sense is used the results can be outstanding. Like everything else, it is when common sense is thrown out the door that troubles arise.

Line Breeding is not to be confused with Inbreeding.

Line breeding is the mating of dogs having many common ancestors or mating to a slightly removed relative, e.g. granddaughter to grandsire, uncle to niece, ...

Line Breeding is a method that breeders will use to improve upon and try to eliminate structural and health problems from their dogs.

Line Breeding may be used to acheive a life time goal. Bad pups or substandard pups must be put down.

Line Breeding is not for the novice or greedy.

line breeding when done correctly is fine, as ranger said its how the various dog breeds have been developed........when done wrong its very bad......i would ask to see how its being done by this individual.....if its alot of grandsire to grand daughter kinda stuff and good records kept on defects and minimal show up its likely perfectly fine.....if the guy isnt keeping any records thats a #1 warning sign.....if its lots of daughter to father/son to mother kinda breeding its likely being very poorly done......you want to see some sorta fresh blood being introduced on a fairly regular basis, a distant cousin being brought back into the fold and that kinda thing.....

good answers so far,but clarification as to inbreeding/linebreeding

linebreeding is as was stated before and is the fastest way for responsible breeders to propagate their line.Culling must be ruthless as there is likely to be as many negative double recessive genes occur as positive.but that's how it works,you keep the good and dump the bad and with time you end up with what you are after.
inbreeding is the name given to linebreeding by people who don't condone or understand the methodology.
"grand daughters of" is the tightest mating that shows desirable results.I've seen it in different dog breeds as well as horses.

remember tho,it's your bitch so there has to be something substantial in it for you.all the breeder is contributing is semen.you will have the ultimate responsibility in the end.Who gets the litter?who is responsible for evaluating and culling?
what age does he want to breed her at?
if you do agree make dang sure your bitch is mature herself before you have her bred!

My Grandfather maintained the integrity of his line of Walker Foxhounds for close to 50 years. The problem with some breeders is that don't have the heart to cull as needed. I would ask the breeder what traits he is trying to enhance. If he doesn't know, don't let him breed. Line breeder is not for the puppy mill types. It is for the died in the wool serious breeder who is trying to improve the blood. When my grandfather quit, he had hounds that had as many as 20 representations of the same dog in a 8 generation pedigree. He was VERY selective of choosing a dog to out cross with. In the end, he could get close to 100% color, conformation and specific tone (fast high tenor chop) of voice.

just wondering which "few southern states" condone incest and how much time you have spent in the south......

It was a joke - spent a few years between NC, GA, and KY (and a few short stays in FL & LA) while in the Army. Nice place to visit, can't say I'd care to live there - snow and cold cuts down on the riffraff (not to mention spiders, snakes, & gators). I would have to say that I met more toothless people on the average in KY than anywhere else, not that they weren't the salt of the earth. Coon hunted with an old hillbilly in KY that could skin a coon in minutes with an old jack knife and a chunk of rope. NC and GA were my least favorite of all the places I lived, nothing but pines and sand... actually sand was a recurring theme in most places I spent time. The South is an interesting area to be sure, but the frozen north is more my style.

ok ranger1, sorry, just have to stick up for dixie.....

that mean yer movin to Canada..?

Kinda like me, hearts in the west, paycheck in the east.

My hounds breeding goes back to the 40`s. Gray`s Linesman,Gay Chase. Look in my kennel, and they all look alike, except for the tan bleaching out in the older ones. I pretty much know what`s going to hit the ground, when I breed. Even when I out cross, my genes will dominate. The last time I outcrossed, I ended up with two new traits. One paced all day in the kennel, like a bird dog, and the other would occasionaly back track (the one falt I detest the most) One was sold, and the other was culled. Too bad, they both could run the hair off a rabbit.
When I outcross, I will keep the whole litter until they are 18 mos. By that time I know what they are.

Born and raised within a couple of miles of Canada, live and work on the line today. Lived in the coldest spot in the lower 48 as a kid, now live in the coldest place in MT -- as frozen as the north gets in the lower 48. Canada wouldn't be a bad place to move to if it weren't for the gov't, as bad as ours is currently, it's a heap better than what I hear from Canada.

you got that right partner...but I think most places would be better off with no gov't...or the folks livin there at least.
sooner or later folks will get tired of being treated like dairy cows...I hope.

I used to raise and hunt foxhounds and Ive listened to many an old houndman tell me that some of the best hounds they ever had were bred daughter back to daddy,ya cant argue with success......

chances are that old houndman knew every lil quirk of his bloodline and had likely bred out most of the undesirable recessive genes long before then......if done right by the right person minimal bad things should show up so long as the father daughter thing aint done to often....if done by an amateur with dogs who he has no clue what his dogs great grandparents were like than some real bad can come of it........

Linebreeding, like any kind of breeding really, should be left to knowledgable breeders and not the "has your dog got papers? so's my bitch, let's breed them and make some money" crowd.

If it works, it's linebreeding, if it doesn't it's inbreeding.