Originally posted by K9soul
The inbreeding that goes on with AKC show breeders is something I do know about and I find it disgusting and alarming. Some people try to go to a "reputable" AKC breeder in order to get a quality dog of a particular breed, probably not realizing how polluted the bloodlines often are, though I believe some breeds are worse than others, and again not all breeders participate in inbreeding.
A recent study showed that every Sheltie on Earth is the genetic equivalent of a cousin. Using a scale called the Coefficient of Inbreeding, a process I won't go into here (do a Google search for an explanation), one can figure out how closely bred our animals are. Most AKC dogs are highly inbred.

The racing greyhound is one of the most genetically pure breeds because it is bred to a performance standard rather than a written breed standard. I study the methods of the great thoroughbred breeders like Federico Tesio. He claimed that if one crossed a TB with a Standard Bred horse it would take 20 generations to bring the progeny back up to the level of the TB in that mating.

Over the centuries all sorts of crosses were attempted to add certain traits to the greyhound, the most famous of which were Lord Orford's Bulldog crosses in the 1700s. All were miserable failures despite claims by some that our present-day greyhounds descend from those crosses.

If one looks at photographs of the great 19th century coursing dogs and compares them with contemporary AKC or NGA dogs, it's pretty clear which has remained true to type. Throw a racing blanket over one of those old coursers and it would not look out of place in the Post Parade at Derby Lane. AKC greyhounds, on the other hand, look to me like statues of greyhounds stylized by the sculptor to suit his artistic whim. To my way of thinking, they represent a genetic dead-end for the breed while the blood of the great coursing dogs flows through every racer.