Dog breeding

Dog breeding is the practice of mating selected dogs with the intention of maintaining or producing specific qualities and characteristics. When dogs reproduce without such human intervention, their offspring's characteristics are determined by natural selection, while "dog breeding" refers specifically to the artificial selection of dogs, in which dogs are intentionally bred by their owners. Breeding relies on the science of genetics, hence a breeder who is knowledgeable on canine genetics, health, and the intended purpose of the dogs attempts to breed suitable dogs.

Quotes

• THESEUS
  My hounds are bred out of the Spartan kind,
  So flew’d, so sanded; and their heads are hung
  With ears that sweep away the morning dew;
  Crook-knee’d and dewlap’d like Thessalian bulls;
  Slow in pursuit, but match’d in mouth like bells,
  Each under each. A cry more tuneable
  Was never holla’d to, nor cheer’d with horn,
  In Crete, in Sparta, nor in Thessaly.
  Judge when you hear.
  • Shakespeare, Midsummer Night's Dream, IV, i, 123–131

• If you would have your Kennel for sweetness of cry, then you must compound it of some large dogs, that have deep solemn mouths, and are swift in spending, which must as it were bear the base in the consort; then a double number of roaring, and loud ringing mouths, which must bear the counter tenor; then some hollow plain sweet mouths, which must bear the mean or middle part: and so with these three parts of musick, you shall make your cry perfect. ...
  If you would have your Kennel for loudness of mouth, you shall not then choose the hollow deep mouth, but the loud clanging mouth, which spendeth freely and sharply, and as it were redoubleth in the utterance : and if you mix with them the mouth that roareth, and the mouth that whineth, the cry will be both the louder and smarter; ... and the more equally you compound these mouths, having as many roarers as spenders, and as many whiners as of either of the other, the louder and pleasanter your cry will be, especially if it be in sounding tall woods, or under the echo of Rocks.
  • Gervase Markham, Country Contentments (1623)
  • Reported in: A. T. Quiller-Couch, ed. The Oxford Book of English Prose (1925), no. 105