Dalmatian Breeding Project: Take Two!
Welcome to the progress page for my second purebred, NIB dalmatian breeding project! I had so much fun last time, I just had to do it again. But this time, I have two new and incredibly powerful tools in my belt!
​
The first new tool I'll be using is the PetzA fork from Prism Mirror Lens @ The Rat Shack. This awesome update to every Petz player's favorite program has some features that make breeding projects more achievable than ever, most importantly batch breeding. I played around with it a bit before starting this project, and oh my goodness, it's so fast! Dozens and dozens of dogz in just a click! I'm excited to use it for a new project.
​
While the new PetzA will allow me to breed quickly, the Petz Looks Checker from Thor @ Thor's Petz helps me know who to breed by creating a .csv file of genetic information for each pet in its folder. This is incredible! No more missing hidden mutations!!! And that will be useful for me because...
​
My goals for this project are:
- to breed a line of purebred, non-inbred dalmatians
- to select for lots of spots, white coats, white ears, and white eyelids... or maybe black coat with black eyes? Maybe both?
- to finally, FINALLY achieve the black (244) eyes that I couldn't manage last time
- to ultimately create an eighth-generation NIB litter with a full pedigree
- to have fun breeding cool dalmatians... again!
​
This project was started March 13, 2024 and completed March 28, 2024. Click the links below to jump to different entries!
​
03/13/2024 - A Statistical Prologue - Pre-Project Thoughts
03/14/2024 - Begin Again - Generation 1
03/18/2024 - Seventh Time's the Charm - Generation 4
03/25/2024 - Adorable Gen Four - Generation 4
03/26/2024 - Daydream Dalis - Generation 5
03/27/2024 - Worth Every Click - Generations 6 & 7
03/28/2024 - A Spotty and Trotty Ending - Generation 8
03/28/2024 - Final Thoughts - Project Completed
03/28/2024 - I Can't Believe They're Not Inbred! - A Postscript
​
March 13, 2024
A Statistical Prologue
I have several goals for this project, but honestly, my main goal is those black eyes. Oh, those elusive black eyes!! I didn't quite get them last time; the closest I came was Fiction (right), whose black eyes are a fluke hiding different, brighter colors. The lovely Gin @ Gin'z Brewery gifted me Diaresis (left), a gorgeous PB NIB 8th generation dali with real black eyes, and her beauty makes me want to make one of my own! These two are just so lovely, I think they need another friend.
Black eyes are one of my favorite eye colors, but the mutation is rare. This chart to the right (created by Reflet @ Yabiko; a lot of what we know about pet genetics comes from Reflet so major credit to them!) shows all possible natural eye color mutations. Unlike a color that comes in a range (like blue, green, or orange), there's only one true black, number 244. Out of the 93 total possible eye color mutations, there's exactly one I want. Every time there's a mutation in eye color, assuming the color is chosen randomly from the possibilities, there's only a 1.075% chance of that color being black.
But how often does eye color mutate? How often does anything mutate, for that matter? I couldn't find anything on the forums. I know Intron/Exon, an early (and now sadly defunct) Petz genetics site, had estimates of 5% based on a variety of multi-generation breeding projects, but that was pre-GenePoolz and pre-Petz Looks Checker.
​
But I have those things now, so I decided to test it. I grabbed a pair of AC dalis and used the batch breeder to create 100 pupz. Back in the day this would have taken hours, but now it just takes a click (accompanied by the sound of my old laptop's fans spinning). Within seconds I had 101 Dalmatians, Petz Edition! Well, technically 102, counting mom and dad. Still, that's a lot of spots!!!
Of course, this method doesn't account for a mutation where the new number chosen was the same as the original number, but it gives us a good idea of how often mutations might occur. It also is a relatively small sample size; 100 petz isn't really that many. If I wanted this to be a better representation of how petz mutate in general, I would repeat this a few times (maybe 10 batches of 100 offspring per breed?) with a few different pairs and all of the different breedz... but I don't want to overheat my poor laptop, so I'm sticking with 100 for now! Mom Adeline, skinny and exhausted after birthing 100 pupz, is very happy that I'm stopping there.
Petz have two sets of traits, with one inherited from each parent. There are a few different traits I'm looking at, namely the ones that are able to mutate: Eye Color, Lid Color, Fur Color 1-5, Marking Factor, and Spot Factor. The Checker outputs a file with the two sets of traits for each pet, so it's very easy to mark everything that isn't the same as the AC dali traits.
​
And it's the traits I'm interested in, not what's visible on the petz themselves. Because I have access to tools like the Checker and GenePoolz to identify carried traits, a pet with a carried black Eye Color trait is just as valuable for breeding as a pet with visible black eyes.
​
Okay, so we have the petz, we have the caveats... let's see some numbers!
​
Of those 100 petz, for a total of 200 copies of each trait...
There were 9 instances of mutated (non-teal) Eye Color (none were black, but wouldn't that have been great??).
There were 7 instances of mutated (non-black) Lid Color.
There were 10 instances of mutated (non-white) Fur Color 1.
There were 9 instances of mutated (non-white) Fur Color 2.
There were 6 instances of mutated (non-white) Fur Color 3.
There were 8 instances of mutated (non-white) Fur Color 4.
There were 9 instances of mutated (non-100) Marking Factor.
There were 12 instances of mutated (non-100) Spot Factor 1.
There were 0 instances of mutated (non-white) Fur Color 5 (I included this because I assumed it could mutate but found 0 instances. Also, none of my late gen PB dalis have anything but white for this trait... can this even mutate? More investigation needed!).
​
There were no instances of the same trait mutating twice for the same pet (for example, no pet had two different Eye Color mutations). However, there were pets that had multiple mutations of different traits (for example, a pet with mutated Eye Color and Fur Color 2).
​
These numbers match up pretty well with the 5% visible mutation rate proposed by Intron/Exon, which was based on visible trait mutation only. Fur Color 1 matches this estimate exactly; although 10 petz carried mutated Fur Color 1 traits, only 5 petz out of the total 100 had visible non-white Fur Color 1.
This also matches up with the hypothesis that which of the two versions of a trait is displayed is completely random 50/50 (except for eye color, which has dominance dynamics; the 50s, 60s, 90s, 100s, and 120s will always show up over other eye colors). I'd like to do more tests and increase my sample size, but based on what I've seen here, I'd say the mutation rate is around 10% for traits able to mutate. For every 100 dogz, I would expect 10 of them to have a visible or carried mutated Eye Color trait, 10 of them to have a visible or carried Fur Color 1 trait, etc.
​
What does this mean for me and my quest for black eyes?
Well, every time I breed a new puppy, there's a 10% chance that dog mutated to have a different eye color. Since there are 93 possible colors, there is a 1.075% chance of that eye color being black. So, multiply that together, and we get... 0.1075%. Yep, percent. Out of 100 pupz, zero-point-one of them will have black eyes. I'd have to breed 1,000 pupz to have the chance of having just one (well, 1.075) pup with black eyes.
​
So... yeah. Ouch. The odds are not great, which is probably why I had a heck of a time getting them last time.
​
But! I have a few things going for me. First, I can breed a crazy amount of puppiez in minutes with the batch breeder. I can easily check every single one of them with the Looks Checker. And just as important, I know the end result of a PB, NIB, 8th gen dali with black eyes, white lids, and white ears will be worth every single click!!!
​
Thanks for reading that super long prologue! You deserve a stamp for reading about math.
March 14, 2024
Begin Again
Here we go! As last time, my first step is adopting 16 sets of 8 AC dalmatians, which I will then breed to create the second generation. That's a total of 128 dogz, and a lot of visits to the adoption center!
​
And that's also a lot of names to think up! Everyone has different naming conventions for their breeding projects. Some people number them; last time I did themed sets of names (like Greek Mythology or Vegetables). But with a total of 15 dogz in each set and 16 sets... oof, that's a lot of names by the time you hit Gen 4!
​
This time, I decided to make it easy on myself. I'm naming everyone in a group by letter, starting with A and working down to P. I'm sticking mainly with names that I think are interesting or fancy, but there's really no scheme other than sticking to the first letter! It's a bit easier to think up names this way.
Still, the process of adopting dogz out from the AC took a while. It just takes a while to click through everything! But in the end, I finished with 16 sets of 8 alphabetically named dalis. Meet the first set of my first generations (in no order because I cannot tell them apart in this photo): Adeline, Alejandro, Alexandria, Aurelius, Alia, Axel, Azalia, and Azariah! They're going to help me make the black-eyed beauty of my dreams.
March 17, 2024
Seventh Time's the Charm
Okay so I know I just spent a whole gigantic essay telling you about how unlikely it would be to get black eyes... but I just got them.
​
So there I was, only on Group B, breeding my seventh pairing of my total 64, when I pull up the genetic info file and see this:
*cue heavy breathing*
​
Are you serious??? Black eyes so soon??? Maybe my math was off, but I am THRILLED that I got my goal color so quickly!
Although I guess I was breeding each pairing more than once with 100 pupz each time, so I was kind of tipping the odds in my favor... breeding 100 pupz 3-ish times each with 7 different pairs is a lot of dogz! I've bred at least 1000 at this point.
Still, I am really happy at how soon black eyes showed up! This is Basilius, a Generation 2 dog. GenePoolz shows that yes, those really are black eyes, even though he displays the AC dali teal.
The only problem? This boy's got no spots!! I really love dalis with white ears but a ton of spots. Basilius has black ears and he's heavily spotlacking. Which is a cool look, but not one I'm searching for right now! My minimum requirement for all AC dalis was that they have at least one spot on their faces, and he has not a one!
Can breeding Basilius with super spotty dalis counteract his lack of spots? We shall see, because he and his black eyes are certainly moving on to the next generation! A sneak peek at some of his puppiez below... I am absolutely losing it over how darn cute those black eyes are!!!
March 25, 2024
Adorable Gen Four
Done! Done at last!
​
I mean, not quite, but I'm done with the hard stuff. By that I mean that I finished breeding all of my Gen 4 dogz! No more AC dalis for me! No more endless seas of teal eyes! And I've finally gotten all of the beautiful eye colors that I'll make sure to pass on down to the eighth generation: a bright blue (175), a gorgeous green (130), an outstanding orange (60), and a brilliant black (244). Plus white eyelids, white ears, and plenty of spots!
I'm so excited to see the cute pupz that come next!
March 26, 2024
Daydream Dalis
I am fully in Petz Obsession mode right now! I'm spending my days at work daydreaming about dalmatians... so when I came home, I bred these guys! Meet the Gen 5 dogz I'm most excited about: Effervescent, Kindle, Alphabet, Meaning, and Poetry.
You may notice that the dogz in this set have the same eye colors as their Gen 4 ancestors highlighted above, except for Kindle, who sports a pair of subdued gray eyes. Kindle is here not for the coloring, but for a different trait: trotting!! I was so happy to see a pup run out from the pet door with that classic trotter run. I wasn't planning on having trotting dalis, but I knew I couldn't pass up such a wonderfully cute surprise.
You may also notice that I've switched from the letter naming scheme to something a bit different. Once I started combining the letter sets (Set A, Set B, etc.) I was faced with the problem of what to name my dogz, after parent A or parent B? I settled on a new naming scheme: writing-related words! I think it's a fun callback to the original alphabet style naming and gives me a decent amount of flexibility in coming up with cool names. Now I just need to breed some dogz to fit them!
March 27, 2024
Worth Every Click
Okay, you guys better hold on, because we're in the endgame here!
​
Still daydreaming about Petz at work all day, I hurried home and bred my Gen 6 dogz, the grandparents of my final litter. Meet the lovely Manuscript, Anthology, Encyclopedia, and Literature.
And because I have no self-control, meet their Gen 7 pupz, Fable and Folio. Fable carries blue (175) in addition to her orange (60) eyes, and Folio's black (244) eyes conceal a bright green (130).
It took A LOT to get to this point! Well, not so much for Folio; I think he was the second pup to come out? I took one look at him, checked his genetics, and called him good to go!
But Fable was much, much, MUCH harder. There were just three things I knew I wanted this dog to have/carry: orange and blue eye colors, white lids, and trotting. Even though that combination of traits should have been possible given the parents' traits, it proved so hard to actually obtain! In the end, I bred over 1500 dogz to finally find Fable. And she was worth every click!!!
March 28, 2024
A Spotty and Trotty Ending
As previously mentioned, when it comes to Petz, I have no self-control. It is for this reason... that I stayed up past midnight to breed the eighth generation of my purebred, non-inbred dalmatian line!
​
And the lost sleep was worth it. Meet the final litter: Ellipsis, Novella, Metaphor, Calligraphy, Epilogue, and Storytime.
​
Yes, I'm totally keeping three black-eyed pupz! They were the whole reason I started this project, and I couldn't choose just one. They're just too darn cute!!!
Speaking of cute, I did indeed manage to get the trotting to pass on all the way to Gen 8. Both Novella and Storytime are trotters, just like mom Fable, grandma Literature, and great-grandma Kindle! It's a family tradition at this point! Here's a fun little family portrait of the trotters showing off that spectacular strut.
This final generation isn't just cute as pupz; they make stunning adults as well.
Overall, I am thrilled with how this breeding project turns out. I set out to breed some cute, spotty, 8th generation dogz with black eyes, and I did, and I found a few wonderful surprises along the way!
March 28, 2024
Final Thoughts
Now that the project is completed, I want to think about my goals and how this 8th-gen NIB project compared to my first.
​
In terms of goals, basically, I blew it out of the park. I'm talkin' black eyes in the second generation, baby!!! Plus bright colors too, white lids and ears all around, and tons of spots.
​
Honestly, this is much less of an accomplishment on my end as it is an accomplishment of the awesome tools I was using. The batch breeding function in modded PetzA and Thor's genetics checker utility allowed me to breed a ridiculous number of dogz and easily identify interesting mutations.
And I do mean a ridiculous number. I hadn't been keeping count as I was breeding, but I went back into my recycle bin to figure out just how many dogz I bred and... uh... set aside, let's say (they're nice and safe and cozy in the recycle bin, I promise!!). In my recycle bin I have a staggering 12,745 Spot.pet files. Which... wow. I really didn't realize just how many dogz this project created until right now? Oh my gosh that's a lot of dogz. That is an incomprehensible number of dogz. Can you imagine 12,745 real dogs all playing in a dog park somewhere? They would stretch horizon to horizon.
​
But despite the massive number of pupz produced, this project went a LOT faster than my first breeding project. Start to finish, this project took just 15 days, 4 of which were spent vacationing away from my laptop. My first breeding project took me 108 days to complete. The first project took me a long time because breeding started to feel like drudgery; I remember the tune that plays when a newborn pet comes out started to make my eye twitch by the end. Now that I'm able to breed 100 dogz in one click rather than 100 clicks, though, and check their genetics all at once? Breeding is a breeze.
​
And I'm excited to do it again!!! Not right away; I still need a break. But something I was considering when I started was a black-furred, black-eyed dali... maybe that will be my goal next time!
​
But until then, I'll have a lot of fun playing with these absolute cuties. And as always, hit me up if you also have a NIB dali line! I'd love to breed some Gen 9 cuties with you!
March 28, 2024
I Can't Believe They're not Inbred!
I took a lot of pictures of these dogz, and not all photos can be glamour shots. Some pictures, though, go beyond just a bad photo. Some might make you wonder, hey, are you sure these things aren't inbred?
​
And I can assure you, they are not.
.png)
... probably.