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For example, the Standard poodle has an excellent COI of 2.3%, with the miniature and toy poodles a respectable 4%. Perhaps now is a good time to point out purebred poodles are a relatively healthy group anyway. OK, so this is good news for blue fur and square ears, but very bad news if the coding is for hip dysplasia, progressive retinal atrophy, or heart disease.

The higher the COI then the more likely both parents share genetic coding for certain traits. The ideal score is zero, which means the dogs are not related and is great for genetic diversity. Long story short, breed brother and sister together (a bad idea) and their COI is 25%. This is what the Coefficient of Interbreeding (COI) measures, as a safety net to avoid inter-related matings that are a bad idea. This means they’re likely to be related, even if somewhat distantly. However, since blue, square-eared dogs are unusual, you don’t have a lot of potential parents to choose from. To increase the chances of getting blue, square-eared pups you would breed together parent dogs with those traits. Let’s imagine you wanted to create a new purebred dog whose main characteristics were blue fur and square ears. Unfortunately, this is at odds with how a dog breed is created. If geneticists had a motto it would be: “ Diversity is good”. But are mixed breeds healthier than purebreds? Let’s take a balanced look.

Is it those irresistible teddy-bear looks or a deeper reason to do with good health? Indeed, one benefit of owning a hybrid dog is that they’re said to have fewer health problems than pedigree dogs. The ocular, nervous, and circulatory systems were the most commonly affected across both the purebred and mixed-breed dog populations in the study.What’s your reason for choosing a poodle mix? For example, X-linked severe combined immunodeficiency, a mutation originally found in Basset Hounds, appears to have been eradicated. The research also indicated that through healthy breeding practices, which often include genetic testing, some diseases appear to have been eradicated from breed pools. Approximately five out of 100 purebred dogs were at risk of becoming affected, and 28 out of 100 were carriers for at least one of the diseases. On the basis of 152 diseases tested, approximately two out of 100 mixed-breed dogs were at risk of becoming affected, and 40 out of 100 were carriers for at least one of the diseases. "This DNA-testing–based evidence shows that while mixed breed dogs are in fact less likely than purebreds to develop the recessive disorders evaluated in the study, they may still be carriers." Cindy Cole, general manager at Wisdom Health, in an announcement about the study. "There has been a long-standing perception that mixed breed dogs are less disease-prone than purebred dogs," said Dr. Disease mutations tested included those for progressive retinal atrophy, hyperuricosuria, Collie eye anomaly, multidrug sensitivity, and von Willebrand's disease. The study examined the DNA of 83,000 mixed-breed dogs and of 18,000 purebred dogs representing 330 breeds, types, and varieties. Wisdom Health and Genoscoper Laboratories, which offer genetic tests for dogs and cats, published "Frequency and distribution of 152 genetic disease variants in over 100,000 mixed breed and purebred dogs" on April 30 in PLOS Genetics, an online journal of the Public Library of Science. American Veterinary Medical Foundation (AVMF)Ī study has identified genetic diseases that mixed-breed dogs are likely to develop, also finding that fewer mixed-breed dogs than purebred dogs are affected by the disease-causing mutations tested.American Journal of Veterinary Research (AJVR).Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association (JAVMA).AVMA Center for Veterinary Education Accreditation.AVMA Congressional Advocacy Network (CAN).Donate to American Veterinary Medical Foundation (AVMF).
