jlw034,
It would be impossible for anybody to give you good advice on this situation without having intimate first-hand experience with the sire, dam and several other closely related dogs. In many breedings like this, you may be lucky enough to find one or two people qualified to give a valid opinion. There are also many very tight breedings where there really isn't anybody (including the breeder) who has enough experience with enough dogs from the line to be able to provide valuable input, yet these breedings still happen. Even if you do get good input from somebody who truly knows the dogs, you are still rolling the dice. Even the best breeders are going to get results that were not exactly as they expected.
With that said, I will still throw out my opinion based on the limited information that was provided.....as dangerous as that might be!
If I were a breeder that has accepted that he/she is going to go through a number of dogs to find a few great dogs for breeding, then I would take a chance on this inbred litter on two highly talented individuals.
If I were Joe Hunter and going to keep the dog forever, no matter what, I would probably choose a different litter. Joe Hunter is looking for a healthy, above average hunting dog and a 1st generation tightly inbred litter (I am making the assumption the parents are outcrossed or loosely linebred) just has more risk.
Many people assume that inbreeding or linbreeding produces consistency - and with generations of breeding like dogs from the same family - yes, that is true. But, you are really linebreeding on a
dog's genetics (genotype), not the
dog itself (phenotype). So, if you inbred on an outcrossed dog made up of several different types of dogs, it is anybody's guess what you will get, and it it certainly possible to get offspring much different than the inbred parent when you double up the recessives hiding in the background.
Also know that hybrid vigor is a myth. I see a large number of mix breeds at the clinic that have inherited genetic faults from both parents. My own shar pei lab mix struggled with allergies his whole life and died of a rare cancer at the age of 7. They are now coming out with studies finding that mutts are no less affected than their parents.
Misskiwi67,
I disagree that hybrid vigor is a myth, but it surely is not a magic bullet for breeding two inferior individuals to begin with. I think inbreeding, linebreeding, and outcrossing all have their place, but I agree with Calvin that it is hard to make genetic progress with continuous random outcrossing. Hybrid vigor seems to come into play the most when breeding two tightly linebred animals of different genetics, but similar type. If these linebred parents are still exceptional animals, you often get offspring better than the parents. You don't get quite the same hybrid vigor "boost" from simply outrcrossing every generation. Outcrossing two inbred families is pretty common recipe with beef cattle (i.e. angus x herferd), other livestock, racing pigeons, etc.
