Breeding Better Dogs 101...

Thanks, I just wanted to throw some things out there that I think get overlooked since nature got brought up into the selection process. A few points of contrast can round off the rough edges of what I said but it would draw the thread way off breeding 101 for me to bring any of them into the discussion.

   I have read some interesting but opposing view points on this thread and both seem to have merit. Things such as line breeding often produces smaller dogs. From what I've come to understand, this holds water but Mr. Parker says no and points out his experience of the 70 litters originating from the 3 dogs. I'm assuming no out crossing was done for him to viemently defend such. Very interesting to me.
   I've pondered on things such as this and thought that line breeding will have an effect on size if the line gets too inbred. Mr. Parker would make one second guess this when regarding this as an absolute rule. I'm more into crossing bred dogs than pure breeds. Example: pit x dane for simplicity sakes. F1 tends to yeild some dogs of good size but they aren't all the same size as expected. Breed 2 F1's together from this litter or different ancestors but still pit x dane crossed dogs and the resulting litter tends to be smaller sized dogs than the F1's were. I'm sure this would stop at some point but when adding a large breed to a cross, your often doing it for size so taking the progressively smaller pups and line breeding them isn't taken very far. Not much cross breeding of this kinda nature is done here either to really have much of an effect on information gathering.
   I've been told that when out crossing a family of big dogs to bull blood such as the bull terrier, the bull terrier will consistently throw bigger pups than the pit. What the heck!!!??? Lots of guys have a little pit blood in there bay dogs now to get them grittier. Are these the dogs that are being line bred and getting smaller? Could it be something like this? Makes you wonder and want to investigate it a little but not enough info out there. Just something to think about like I do. I don't have an answere just questions that can't be definitively answered.
   On the flip side of this I bred two 80 pound dogs together. One was about 3/4 wolfhound but was small for her blood. The other was a stag on the smaller side. All the offspring are gonna be bigger than their parents and some at 9 months old are over 100 pounds and 2 inches taller than the tallest parent. This isn't surprising given the amount of wolfhound blood but I didn't see it coming to the extent it did on a couple of the big males.
   Have 2 bitches from a line of dogs. Wolfhound, deerhound, mastiif. They aren't huge and don't have much less wolfhound and deerhound in them than the pups I mentioned do, if any at all. Just a lot less matiff in the pups. The two bitches are not big dogs to me and the guy that has this line of dogs sees the size of the dogs decrease the tighter he breeds thus one of the reasons he has out crossed over the years.. No bull blood in his line either as of now. The pups will get smaller than any of the pure ancestors used in developing the line of dogs if he breeds to tight.
   It's very interesting how some people see the decrease in size dramatically while others don't experience it at all. Lots of variables and things not done the same between breeders. One might be breeding the biggest of the dogs from a litter while another might be trying to retard the size a little in the beginning. One might be working inside a pure breed and others might have crossed outside the breed.
Could the unintentional size retardation when breeding tight families be more conducive to one breed than another. Lots of interesting stuff to consider when giving a definite answere and coming to an absolute conclusion. I have enjoyed reading the different opinions and veiws but they kinda just add to the mystery.
   Anyone care to make a stab at sharing their thoughts on some of this stuff?