So many breeders today are zooming in on pedigrees, and honestly, that’s great — you should know your lines, you should know what’s behind your dogs, and you should be paying attention to longevity. But here’s where people are going off the rails: if one dog or one ancestor in the fourth generation died young, the knee-jerk reaction is, “Nope, eliminate the entire branch.” That sounds safe… but in reality, that’s how you quietly destroy genetic diversity. When you start excluding dogs purely bec