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Canine Genetic Diversity · Since 2016
The genetic integrity
of a great breed
doesn’t protect itself.
Most genetic tools tell you whether your dog is inbred. BetterBred tells you something harder to know: what your dog contributes to the genetic conservation of the entire breed. Those are different questions — and only one of them preserves what makes your breed your breed.
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OI (Outlier Index) measures how much a dog contributes to its breed’s genetic conservation. IR (Internal Relatedness) measures how inbred a dog is relative to its breed. AGR (Average Genetic Relatedness) measures how genetically unusual a dog is within its population. New to these metrics? Take the free course →
BetterBred
actually
does
Genetic diversity is not a myth or a score.
It’s simply what makes up a breed.
Today’s historical breeds are recognizably themselves — in form, in function, in temperament. The work now is protecting the genetic integrity that makes each of them possible.
Other tools focus on inbreeding — how homozygous an individual is, how closely its parents were related. That is useful information. But inbreeding measures what happened to one dog. Allelic richness measures what the breed still has. The more, the better. More allelic richness means more dogs are less inbred, while still keeping their breed type. BetterBred is about preserving the breed, which means preserving allelic richness. Because a breed can be full of outbred individuals and still be losing the genetic variation it needs to stay healthy for generations.
Breeders need science-backed, actionable choices for breeding the dogs they have right now. Not theoretical frameworks for twenty years from now. Not research that might one day produce a test for a single mutation. That has always been breeders’ research dilemma.
Generations
In Standard Poodles, a group of ten exceptional dogs born between 1948 and 1952 make up, on average, fifty to sixty percent of every living Standard Poodle alive today. The Standard Poodle is not an exception. Every closed breed has a version of this story.
Pedersen, Brucker, Tessier et al. Canine Genetics and Epidemiology, 2015
Built for one job —
and nothing else.
Outlier Index & AGR
OI is BetterBred’s signature metric. Average Genetic Relatedness (AGR) asks the same question from a different angle, using a published conservation algorithm. They both estimate how much allelic variation a dog carries that needs more representation in the current breed population to maintain healthy diversity.
SubscribersEvery Dog Has Its Page
Log in and upload your dog’s diversity test results from UC Davis for free. Get basic genetic analysis back. Add a photo, health test results, titles, and temperament notes.
Free accountsOne-to-One Comparison
See how genetically related your dog is to any other public dog in its breed. See how close cousins truly are, and how dogs that seem unrelated by pedigree may not be. In a closed gene pool, you can’t know for certain without a genetic test.
Free accountsGenetic Relationships
One dog measured against every public dog in its breed. Shows pairwise Genetic Relatedness so breeders can identify candidates who are both genetically valuable and sufficiently unrelated. See which of your puppies most resembles which grandparent or ancestor.
SubscribersLitter Planner
Run a test breeding between any two dogs. See projected litter OI distributions, allele-level analysis, and a downloadable summary report before committing to a pairing. If you line breed, you can do it more safely. If you are avoiding inbreeding, you know for certain that’s what you are doing.
SubscribersBreed Profiles
Every enrolled breed has a population profile showing diversity status and the distribution of OI, IR, and AGR across all tested dogs. We show you the trends your breed has, and how they cluster. Subscribers can see where their dog sits within the full breed picture.
SubscribersNo two breeds
need the same advice.
Getting genetic diversity management right requires knowing each breed from the inside: its origins, its history, its global range, its working purpose, and the traditions of the people who have bred it for generations. A strategy that works for a breed with a large, native founder base will not work for one that was rebuilt from a handful of dogs after a war. The numbers alone don’t tell you that. Context does. Population genetics confirm what’s true — not just what we’ve heard about.
BetterBred works with breed communities directly — not just to enroll a breed, but to understand it well enough to advise it. Every enrolled breed gets a strategy that reflects its actual situation, not a generic protocol applied from the outside.
“The two times a breeder has the power to contribute to the breed are in selecting a mate, and especially in selecting their keeper puppies. They deserve to be well informed.”
Natalie Green Tessier · Founder, BetterBred
Is your breed
in the database yet?
If your breed is not enrolled, we want to talk. A well-stratified sample of 50 dogs is enough to build a reliable population baseline — and BetterBred coaches every initial enrollment at no charge.