Non-Inbred Tamsin Breeding Project
Ah, the tamsin. A favorite of the PC since all the way back in 2001, when the selective breed standard was created by Star @ Starswept, long before I joined the PC or had even heard of Petz. The concept of a tamsin, a dalmatian-shaped dog with mutt patches, took off and quickly became one of the most popular types of petz in the whole community. Their popularity has persisted for over two decades, with no sign of fading anytime soon.
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At least, I hope it doesn't fade, because my newest breeding project aims to add a lot more of these guys to the PC!
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My goals for this project are:
- to breed a line of non-inbred tamsins
- to select against most mutt physical features: brown eyelids, brown ears, and all mutt body parts
- to select for all dali physical features (and personalities, if possible)
- to select for mutt patches and dali spots
- to see what interesting colorful coats pop up (aiming for red, orange, blue, gray, and cream)
- to see what interesting colorful eyes pop up (aiming for recessives: blues, pink, greens, etc.)
- to ultimately create an 8th-generation NIB tamsin litter with a full pedigree
- to have fun breeding some cute and patchy tamsins!
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This project was started on November 23rd, 2024. Click the links below to jump to different entries!
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11/24/2024 - A Patchy Prelude - Pre-Project Thoughts
12/04/2024 - Millions of Mutts - Generation 4
12/05/2024 - "Just Squishing 'em All Together" - Generation 5​
12/06/2024 - High Chances - Generation 6
12/06/2024 - Speed Run - Generation 7
12/08/2024 - The Final Chapter - Generation 8
12/08/2024 - A Patchy Postscript - Final Thoughts
November 24th, 2024
A Patchy Prelude
These dogz won't be the first NIB, 8th-gen tamsins in my crew: that honor belongs to the lovely Lena (sitting pretty on the right), bred by Rho @ RhoPetz! Her tamsin breeding projects and her posts about them, as well as those of Szmantha, are huge inspirations for this project.
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Learning from Rho and Szmantha, I decided to set out to create my own line. It looks like my forerunners began mixing dalis with mutts at around generation 4 or 5, so that's what I'm going to to as well! I'll grab sets of AC dalis and mutts, breed a few generations of purebreds, then begin mixing them together. It's a long road, but I think it will be worth it.
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The hardest part of my breeding projects is never the breeding itself; thanks to tools like Prism's PetzA Fork and Thor's genetics checker, breeding has become a breeze. No, for me, the hardest part has always been coming up with names for all of these dogz! I could number them, but one of my favorite things is looking back through family trees and seeing the names people gave their petz. I want to give each of these pupz unique names.
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Because I separate my petz into groups of 8 AC dogz, I like to name those groups and their offspring according to themes. For this project, the theme is emotions and langauge: each group will be named after a feeling, translated into a bunch of different languages! For example, for the Love group, I would have Ai (Mandarin Chinese), Amour (French), Mahaba (Arabic), Liebe (German), etc. It's an easy way to separate the groups and give them unique names, plus I might learn a few cool words in the process! Google Translate will be my best friend for this project.
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The other difficult part will be selecting AC mutts that are up to my standards. I want them as patchy as possible, so all AC mutts must have at least one foot patch, at least one tail patch, a face patch, and a chest patch. I know I'll be going through a lot of mutts, but I want to give this project the best chance of success. Wish me luck!
December 4th, 2024
Millions of Mutts
At least, that's what it felt like! As I previously speculated, the hardest part of reaching Gen 4 wasn't the breeding itself (although more on that later); it was getting AC mutts that I felt were up to my standards! I was very aware that the markings I select now are the markings that will be reflected in the final litter, so I was very, very particular with the mutts I chose. And I went through a LOT of them! I wasn't counting, but I estimate that for every mutt I brought home from the AC, there were at least 20 I sent back through the door.
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This did lead to a couple of fun surprises: mutts with no patches at all! I sent the first few back, but jokingly mentioned it to Thor how frustrating it was to get a mutt with no patches when I wanted ones with all the patches. She informed me that completely patchless mutts are super rare, and she's right: my favorite vintage Petz genetics resource, Intron/Exon, estimates just a 1.2% chance to get a completely patchless AC mutt! I started keeping them and offering them for adoption due to their rarity, and they all found homes. Just goes to show that one person's send-back pet is another person's new best friend!
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But even once I had the mutts, breeding was no walk in the park. One of my least favorite things about the mutt breed is the coloring. I just really dislike the Petz brown! It always looks a little too yellowy to me, so the brown ears and eyelids irk me to no end. I knew I wanted to get them out of the gene pool ASAP! The ears were less of a worry, since I knew eventually I could have the dali black cover it up (and I didn't want to risk losing patches!), but those brown lids needed to go.
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My first few pairings, that's all I looked for: black eyelids, either in the 30s range or 244. Then I made sure that the next generation carried two copies of the black eyelid trait, so I would never have to worry about it again! Then and only then did I start looking for interesting eye and fur colors.
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Overall, I think it worked out pretty well! My Gen 4 mutts can only pass on black eyelids, and while I still have a decent amount of tan coats and a couple of teal eye traits still there, overall we've got lots of interesting colors and patches to work with. Meet the Gen 4 mutts (left to right): Corajosa, Fanahiana, Haine, Laska, Mir, Siranya, Usizi, and Xeravala!
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And of course, we can't forget about the dalis! These guys were much easier; all I was looking for in the AC was lots of spots, and my only goal with these guys was to get some fun color mutations. And if you're breeding 100 pupz per pair, you'll have more mutations than you know what to do with. Meet the Gen 4 dalis (left to right): Chiyembekezo, Jingxi, Somnoliento, Teko, Varadakaru, Xiyue, Zemerimi, and Zhir!
Now all I need to do is breed the dalis to the mutts... and then then real fun begins!
December 5th, 2024
"Just Squishing 'em All Together"
A (paraphrased) recent conversation with my beloved partner:
Penny (excitedly showing Boyfriend multiple color-coded spreadsheets): "... and then, eventually, I'll breed those seventh-generation dogz together to create a final, eighth generation litter with all the traits I want following the standard I told you about, descended from over 200 ancestors!"
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Boyfriend: "So you're just taking all these dogs and just squishing 'em all together?"
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Penny: "... yes."
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Which is technically true, but he makes it sound so easy! I'm sure he knows it's not easy, though, because he's seen my laying on the floor in front of my laptop for hours at a time, muttering to myself about eye colors. He keeps bringing me water to hydrate my brain as I think very hard about these dogz. Petzers, take my advice and get yourself a partner who gives you drinks while you go on a breeding frenzy, it's great!
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And with his love and support, I made it to Gen 5! These guys were actually pretty easy to get; I knew I couldn't prevent the mutt traits from passing, seeing as one mutt parent means that these pupz are 50% mutt no matter what I do. I'll fix that later! For now, I was looking for patches, spots, black ears, and fun colors!
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I think I did a pretty good job, honestly! Meet my Gen 5 dogz (left to right): Direidi, Mourning, Nachtmarrie, Pathos, Suriru, Vakarerevaki, Versoen, and Veryse!
December 6th, 2024
High Chances
Okay, so I'd been dreading this part. When I started this project, I anticipated that Gen 6, when I started to combine my mutt-dali hybrids, would be the most difficult. After all, what are the chances of getting a dog that just happens to have full dali body parts but with mutt patches and dali spots?
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Apparently, those chances were pretty high.
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But let's backtrack a bit to the pairings! As you can see from the group photo above, there are a few traits that are pretty common. I'm talking about orange fur and green eyes, of course! I wasn't doing this intentionally, but six of the eight Gen 4 dogz have at least one copy of a green eye color, and four of the eight have at least one copy of orange fur. Hey, I like orange and green, okay?
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But I want a bit more variety in my final litter! For example, I also really, really love those black eyes that popped up, and I want to keep those for the final litter! I'm also loving the dark gray-blue eyes! I chose my pairings to ensure that my favorite traits would have a chance to shine in the final litter. And so I present my pairings: Vakarerevaki x Nachtmarrie, Pathos x Veryse, Versoen x Direidi, and Mourning x Suriru!
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As I mentioned, I expected to have to do a lot of breeding to get a dog with two copies of every dali body part, plus dali and mutt markings, plus no brown ears (hidden but still lurking in the genes sadly), plus no weird color mutations that I don't want.
But to my great surprise (and relief!!) they popped up fairly quickly! In less than 100 dogz per pairing, I found the true-breeding tamsin of my dreams. Meet Devosyon, Hereilla, Hjartsukin, and Ishayisana!
And yes, okay, I just said I wanted color variety, and they've all got green eyes and two have orange fur. But they also carry dusty and cream fur, 177 blue eyes, and those lovely 244 black eyes that I love so much!
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Now that I have these four, I am so, so close to Gen 8!!! I think I'm going to speed run the rest of this, so hold on tight while I do some more breeding! I'll be back soon!
December 6th, 2024
Speed Run
I'm so happy I put in all that early work to get rid of traits I don't like, because now breeding is so easy! The hardest part is choosing just a single dog from all of the cuties! But I think I finally narrowed down my two choices for my Gen 7 pairing. Meet Synaisthimata and Synkinisi!
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Between the two of them, they carry some of my favorite eye and coat colors: 131 green, 244 black, and 177 blue eyes, and dusty, cream, steel, and orange coats! And look at those spots and patches... ah, I'm so happy with how this project is working out!!
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And now all that's left is to breed them and get that final litter! I could make a new log entry about this... but I'm just too excited! And anyway, this is a speed run, so let's speed it up! Puppies below!!!! I'm writing this in real-time as I breed so you can tell how excited I am by the number of exclamation points in my writing, which has been steadily increasing over time, haha.
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Okay, get ready for Gen 8!!!
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December 8th, 2024
The Final Chapter
Okay, I guess I can't really count this as a speed run anymore because my speed run was two days ago. Technically, all of these guys were born on December 6th, 2024. Just late at night, and once I had bred these cuties, I got really sleepy, too sleepy to write here! But now I am no longer sleepy, so the final chapter of this breeding project can be written!
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And what a happy ending it is. Meet my Gen 8 NIB tamsins! Introducing Brazen, Deja Vu, Delight, Ennui, Hygge, and Suffering!
I spent a decent amount of time breedin these guys! Deja Vu and Delight came first, but the birth of Suffering changed everything. That black fur mutation with the black eyes was just so beautiful! I decided to see what other mutated traits I could get in this final generation. I was thrilled with the eye color mutations in Brazen and Hygge! Ennui technically carries green and black eyes, but that fluke silver was too good to pass up.
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I'm so thrilled with these six! They make stunning adults as well, and as soon as I come up with more show names, I'm sure they'll make great show dogz! But even more than their future in the show ring, I'm excited to have created a new tamsin line just because of the history behind the selective breed and the knowledge that these guys' siblings will go out into the PC. It makes me feel part of something bigger... and isn't that the reason we have the community in the first place? To bring the game beyond just the game and to build friendships with others who love Petz.
December 8th, 2024
A Patchy Postscript
Another breeding project done! I feel like I'm getting pretty good at it now! Of course, the resources I have available are absolutely indesepensible. Specifically, Prism's PetzA Fork with batch breeding and Thor's genetics checker for finding hidden mutations have absolutely saved my life on this project, as did Amanda's awesome Guide to Sensible Breeding Projects graphic. I actually printed it off and wrote on it for some of the later generations!
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Overall, this project was surprisingly easy. I got true-breeding tamsins waaaaaay faster than I expected, but that's almost certainly because I was able to breed like 200 at once with the PetzA fork and use the genetics checker to find them. Honestly, this makes me want to do another project! Maybe NIB tamsins mixed with some other breed for interesting markings? NIB halfie tams, maybe? A new selective breed? We shall see!
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But for right now, I'm going to sit back and relax. I had a great time breeding, and I hope you had a great time reading!! Thanks for following along on my NIB tamsin journey! And help yourself to a stamp!
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