Traits that can't be separated?

[RogueRowan]

Has anyone else noticed certain traits can't be separated from others?

In creating my spaniel, I desperately tried to rid it of the poodle personality but to no avail. Anytime the poodle personality was completely gone (not kept as a hidden or visible trait), the poodle ears would disappear too. It wasn't that I couldn't have a dog with visible poodle ears without a visible poodle personality. But any dogs with poodle ears always carried the poodle personality regardless.

Also, I attempted to make a smaller version of my Terrier by crossing it with Chis. Same situation with that, however. When I would get terriers of the proper size, they still had a Chi head hidden trait. I got literally every other trait perfect, but not the size or head because breeding out the chi head always took the chi size with it, leaving me with just my normal Terriers.

I bred 50+ times and mathematically, I should have gotten SOMETHING I wanted. Either a dog that only had the proper size, but both heads. Or a dog that had the proper heads but both sizes. Or a dog with the proper head AND proper size. But none of that. I only ever got dogs that carried BOTH heads and BOTH sizes OR Dogs that carried ONE head and ONE size, but not the head or size I wanted together.

I don't know if this makes any sense but it's endlessly frustrating lol. Certain traits just seem completely linked to each other so you can't breed them out while retaining what you want.

[audaxity]

I just finished a Himalayan breed that I'll post pics of later, but I had something very similar I noticed! Even if both sets in Genepoolz  had Meezer markings, and ONLY Meezer markings, the parents were still throwing unmarked babies! After a little while, I happened to notice that ALL the unmarked babies had Persian coats, while all the marked ones had Meezer coats. Something about the Persian coats refused to allow the markings to express! I glanced in LNZPro to see if anything stood out about the way the traits were linked or something in the breed that could be causing it, but whatever it is, it's too advanced for my poor little brain.

So in the end, I just had to totally breed out the Persian coat. It was definitely an experience to put it together after being so confused at first. I knew Petz genetics were fairly complex, but this really opened up my eyes to how much we may not understand about the system!

[RogueRowan]

Oh, some markings are 100% related to the coat.

You can't have calico markings with a non-calico coat. Or the paw markings of the PW shorthair without the BW shorthair coat. Learned that the hard way when I also had to breed out a persian coat to get the final result I wanted rofl.

I hadn't looked into the Siamese markings, but I'm not surprised it's the same.

It is a lot of trial and error to figure out what can and can't be done lol

[RogueRowan]

Well... I think I bred a dog with only poodle ears and no poodle personality.

It was amidst another project, unrelated to that, so I'll do some tests once this project cooperates lol. Right now, I'm trying to get bulldog legs into a breed and it just... isn't working.

[audaxity]

I have the worst time getting dog breedz to cooperate, so I feel you. There are so many more unique traits that you want to mish-mash a bunch and it's sooo hard to keep ONLY the traits you want without a bunch of other random nonsense too. At least with catz, one body is pretty much as good as another!

Very interested in the results of your Poodle experimentation, though! Everything that comes to light here will make selective breeding easier for everyone down the line, after all!

[RogueRowan]

I have a line now that has poodle ears but bulldog personalities lol.

I tried to get it to switch to great dane personality, but I don't think I managed it. Genepoolz says great dane, but LNZ says bulldog and I think it is bulldog.

At least now I can mix poodle ears in my breeds without adding poodle personality lol. But I'm not sure how I feel about having bulldog instead... It's a start, though!

Once my hands recover from my... really massive project I just finished... I'll do more testing. But for now, I'm probably gonna not do any breeding for a while. This last project took more breedings than most of my Selective Breeds combined and my hands hurt.