Goals

I've decided as my first foray back into the PC after nearly a decade away, I'm going to undertake the Non-Inbred Dalmation Project, to breed my own 8th gen line of purebred Dalis (all inspired by the projects at Gingerade'z Brewery, Just Dandy, and RhoPetz to name a few). Follow along with me below, and don't forget to check back for more updates!

Phase 1

8/22/23: Starting this feels like the most daunting step. After some careful studying of NIB Dali Projects come before me, I've calculated that I'm going to need 128 1st gen dogs. That's a LOT of dogs. I've decided to take notes from Penny at Just Dandy and name them all according to themes. So far, I've got my first block of dogs, all named after different countries. Now just gotta rinse and repeat 15 more times...

It seems like organization is going to be my friend, so I'm going to use Crush @ Crushing's spreadsheet for keeping track of my generations.

(Pictured below, some of my 1st gen babies!)

Phase 2

8/23/23: I feel like I've just had a manic episode. This challenge is NOT for the faint of heart lol. I ended up dividing my first two Blocks into four groups of eight 1st gen dogs each. They all then bred down into 2nd gen, 3rd gen, 4th gen, and so on.

In the spirit of organization, I kept them all sorted in files and added in a picture of each dog and their genome file from GenePoolz (LIFESAVER!!!!) so that I could reference them easily. It's way too much to remember, and this has helped keep straight what I'm breeding for in each group.

And speaking of: my most important takeaway so far has been to have a good idea of what you're looking to get out of each group as you go (i.e. a specific eye color, coat color, eyelid color, etc). Otherwise you get Generation 4 of a section and you're like wait there's no way I can actually get what I want out of this group...lol.

Anyway, without further ado here are my first four 4th generation Dalis! From left to right, meet Mali (M) and Ghana (F) from the countries set, and Milo (M) and Scarlett (F) from the celebrities set. So far I'm loving the eye color variation, especially the icy blue, pink, and orange, and the spot patterns are cute too! Ideally, I'd like to have majority selife lids and so far I've been doing a good job at keeping it pretty dominant in the line.

This has been CHALLENGE to say the least (and I think I may need therapy afterwards lol) but it's been fun doing something different with Petz and I think that the pride I'll feel at the end when I look at the painstaking work I put into creating my own purebred line will make it all worth it.

Phase 3

8/24/23: I have my first Gen 6 grandparent!!!

Meet Merkana <3

I'm so pleased with how her genome turned out...my goal for this section of the family tree was double white selfie lid, white coats, and one pink and one blue genome, and it worked. I could cry!!!

Now, I just have to figure out what my goal is for the rest of the grandparents, and my eventual end goal for the parents. But, that's still a long way off, so one step at a time. Whew!

Phase 4

8/31/23: Well, I think I may have spoke too soon with how well everything turned out, because I definitely ran into some hiccups in Phase 4. I realized fairly quickly once I had all of my grandparents bred that I'd made a major mistake, being you can't have both end goal eye colors on the same side of the family. Lol. I ultimately wanted lots of blue and pink eyed babies at the end of this project, with double white eyelids, and with the way I'd bred my family trees, no amount of swapping around was going to make that possible. And trust me....I tried. I even scrapped Merkana up there from Phase 3 and rebred some of my lines, but no. It was either going to require me re-breeding half of my entire line, or just accepting compromise.

In the end, I was finally able to come up with a set of solid grandparents that had the desired eye colors, but wasn't able to completely eliminate black eyelids in the genome. And spot variation?? We don't know her. She got sacrificed somewhere along the way. Oh well....maybe for my next line!

From left to right: Hurricane x Cyclone, and Wildfire x Earthquake

Final Phase

8/31/23: And then there were two! After lots of mix and matching, some gender swaps, and a whole lot of frustration, I finally ended up with my last pair standing for Generation 7!

Top: Rain (F)

Bottom: Thunder (M)

I'm aptly calling this my Stormcloud Line, because we've got a lot of grey, a lot of blue, and not much else lol. Ultimately though, that's fine with me! I'm not a huge fan of darker eye colors, so this worked out great. After I decided on Rain and Thunder for my final pairing, I bred about 40,000 puppies and finally ended up with my dream litter!!

Without further ado, my Generation 8 pups...

From left to right: Cirrus (F), Nimbus (F), Alto (M), Stratus (M), and Cumulus (M)

I'll be adding all of the pups to my crew, but the Pick of the Litter is my sweet girl Cirrus, who I'll be using to continue my line. Look out for us soon in a show ring near you!!

Closing Thoughts

All in all, this project was a lot of fun. Starting it, I had absolutely zero knowledge of breeding, geneaology, or any of the apps used in the community. That was never my focus when I was in the PC last time, and I don't think I'd ever even OPENED GenePoolz! So, to say that this was a learning experience is an understatement, and I don't think I could've gotten through it without all of the resources put out by the community's projects before me. And an extra special shoutout to Szmantha @ Szmantha's Kennel for coaching me and offering step by step guidance when I was doing WAY too much in those earlier generations!! Whew. You saved me, lol.

There's definitely some things I'll change for my next breeding endeavor, but for now I'm going to enjoy my very own 8th Gen NIB Dali line, and try my hand in some other areas of the community.

To finish, here's some cuties I bred along the way that didn't quite fit into the aesthetic I was going for in my final line, but were too fun to pass up! Catch them in a Tamsin line near you soon ;)