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Canine Genetic Diversity · Since 2016
The genetic integrity
of a great breed
doesn’t protect itself.
Most breeding tools tell you how inbred your dog is. BetterBred tells you what your dog contributes to the preservation of its breed. The first question is about your dog. The second helps decide what the breed will be like in twenty years.
Recently added dogs
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, function, and temperament. Keeping them that way means protecting the historic genetic variation underneath.
Other tools focus on inbreeding, which is important, but not enough. Allelic richness describes the original variation that still exists in the breed. More allelic richness means more dogs are less inbred and still have breed type. BetterBred helps breeders preserve the breed by keeping more allelic richness. A breed can be full of outbred individuals and still be losing the variation it needs to stay healthy, but a breed with well balanced allelic richness will not lose the variation it needs to stay healthy.
Breeders need data that turns into actionable choices in mates and keeper puppies. Waiting for research that might one day produce a single-mutation test doesn’t help us or our dogs now.
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 to help dog breeds.
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.
Breed management requires understanding each breed for its unique qualities: its origins, history, global range, working purpose, and the traditions of the people who have bred it for generations. A breed’s genetic diversity reflects all of that, so a strategy that works for a breed with much of its founders’ genetics still in existence will not work for one that was rebuilt from a handful of dogs after a war. Population genetics shows us where to go from here.
BetterBred will work with breed communities directly to get an effective first sample — and that takes understanding the specifics of each unique breed. Your breed isn’t exactly like all the others and your strategy shouldn’t be either.
“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.