This really is an interesting article, thank you for sharing

As someone who has bred dogs long enough to have a pretty far-reaching hindsight, I have long seen traits skip a generation in dogs, really innumerable times. Although I do not have technical training in genetics, I do have enough experience breeding my own line of dogs to say with 100% certainty that the most powerful portion of all that reading was contained in the last 3 sentences of paragraph 8:

"A pedigree, whether for dogs or horses, always contains many influences and variables. We dog breeders tend to be impatient and are disappointed when an outstanding male does not immediately reproduce his excellence. Remember the maternal-grandsire effect, and wait a generation."

It would be my opinion that 99% of the people breeding dogs do not have the patience ever to be successful as bloodline breeders, precisely because most people cannot handle the fact that key traits very often skip a generation. I have gotten rid of enough dogs I didn't like, only to realize that those dogs ultimately produced good dogs down the road, to learn the big mistake of making rash decisions on any stud dog "right away." The dead game Truman was an example of the above, where almost all of his offspring *sucked* ... and yet the two times I double-bred on Truman (and Miss Trinx) ... using his sons to his daughters ... or Poncho to his daughter ... I got all-game (or nearly all-game) litters. I have seen things happen like this time-and-time-again, with my dogs as well as with other people's, and so it is nice to see some scientific study that shows us "why" things like this can and do happen.

Everybody (myself included!) always wants "instant results" with the breedings we do ... but sometimes the best results won't happen in "that" generation ... but they will happen in the next generation ... and so the breeder who ultimately learns patience ... and who learns to double-breed on the right dogs/genes ... will always produce a better overall average litters and overall results than the guy who is always doing "experimental crosses" and only looking at the present litter ... and who will (for the most part) always give up and move on to something else if his big "blockbuster" doesn't happen (which it seldom does).

This consistent reality of key traits skipping a generation may not always be because of "The Maternal Grandsire Effect," but very often it is. This particular phenomenon might also explain why so many experienced bloodline breeders believe in father/daughter ... as well as father/granddaughter breedings ... and why dogs of this breeding pattern always seem to be such high-percentage producers, when inbred on the right father/daughter.

Jack