Dog height and weight

UnknownDreamland · August 2011

I am curious as to whether the height and weight of a pup is affected by their parents. Is it possible to breed larger or smaller dogs in height and/or weight by careful pairings? If so, does the breed standards play a large part in how much the height or weight can go up or down? For instance. If I want to breed great agility dogs and I want to use border collies, I already know that lower height is a bonus. Will I be able to lower the height by a great deal through careful breeding? And vise versa; am I able to raise it? It would seem odd if I couldn't, especially since things like height and weight do play a role in eventing, regardless of how big or small an impact it has on scores. Looking at other stats, I can raise all of them as much as I want, aside from the cap on aggression and loyalty. Which brings me to another question: If I can purposely breed for height or weight, will there be a max or minimum?

UnknownDreamland · August 2011

I ended up doing an experiment with Horse to check myself and to see if the results weren't obvious. First I bred two golden retrievers together. Mother's Height: 57.52 cm Mother's Weight: 33.3 kg Father's Height: 58.09 cm Father's Weight: 30.05 kg And then I looked at one pup and this is what I got: Pup's Height: 57.87 cm Pup's Weight: 32.45 kg While the breed standards are: Breed's Height: 58 cm Breed's Weight: 34 kg So from this experiment, it did appear that the height and weight were affected by both of the parents. The height and weight of the pup rested between the height and weight of the parents. •••••• From this, I was somewhat reassured, but Horse suggested I try mixing two breeds together to take it a step further. I took a chihuahua and a teacup chihuahua, two dogs of similar height and build, but not too similar, and bred them together. The idea was to see if the pups would reflect their parent's height and weight or the mutt's standard. Here is the Mother: <a href="http://virtualpups.com/index.php?r=dog/view&id=1984117"; target="_blank" class="bb-url">http://virtualpups.com/index.php?r=dog/view&id=1984117</a> Mother's Height: 16.94 cm Mother's Weight: 3.44 kg Teacup Chihuahua's Height: 17 cm Teacup Chihuahua''s Weight: 2 kg And here is the Father: <a href="http://virtualpups.com/index.php?r=dog/view&id=1106470"; target="_blank" class="bb-url">http://virtualpups.com/index.php?r=dog/view&id=1106470</a> Father's Height: 22.99 cm Father's Weight: 3.92058 kg Chihuahua's Height: 23 cm Chihuahua''s Weight: 4 kg Taking this and my previous experiment into account, I should I gotten pups with between 16.94 cm and 22.99 cm in height and between 3.44 kg and 3.92058 kg in weight. However, this was not the case. •••••• Obviously, I am breeding two different breeds and they will produce mutts. Here is just one example of the pups: <a href="http://virtualpups.com/index.php?r=dog/view&id=1985343"; target="_blank" class="bb-url">http://virtualpups.com/index.php?r=dog/view&id=1985343</a> Every single pup had the same height and weight, although they did have different stats(friendly, agg, etc.) and colors. Pups' Height: 23.31 cm Pups' Weight: 7.45353 kg This does not match up to my original experiment with the golden retrievers. It appears that the low height and weight of the teacup chihuahua did not lessen, let alone have any effect on the pups' stats. I then looked at the Mutt's standards. Mutt's Height: 30 cm Mutt's Weight: 15 kg This also does not match up, unless I consider the idea that one of the original pairing is dominant over the other(male or female) in the case of pairing breeds that are not the same. •••••• Hypothetically: The female with the lower height and weight could have been viewed as the dominant one and the coding viewed it as if she were breeding with a mutt rather than a chihuahua. The mutt's and teacup chihuahua's stats mashed together. If this is the case, we have a bug, glitch, or similar coding malfunction in which the coding does not take the mother or father's height and weight into account when breeding dogs that are not of the same breed. If this is not the case, it still brings up the question of how height and weight of a dog is determined. Careful breeding or random?

Aziu · August 2011

While I have not experimented as you have, I have noticed a few things about height & weight: *Pups from the same litter tend to all have the same height and weight as their siblings *The more gens I've bred, the closer the pups' height and weight get to the breed standard So, I'm not sure that it is possible to breed height and weight down (as in your example, for agility) even though it should be. If players would perform some extention of the tests you've done, we may get more conclusive results. If it is indeed glitched and breeding only leads to dogs closer to the breed standard, that may be something that needs to be looked at during the recode.

Alabama · August 2011

Hmm, I'm heavy into conformation on VHR, so probably have a larger understanding of that game's genetics than this, because I've studied how build moves over there. However, a lot of the same coding seems to have been used in various places on both games, so this is how it works on VHR, if anyone wants to use it to base an experiment on VP. Foals are generally born a median of both parents' size, if the parents are fully trained. If the parents aren't trained, but the foals are born with sponsor breeding bonuses, size will move towards conformation of the breed. If parents are untrained and the foal is born without sponsor breeding bonuses, it will be smaller. All foals born of the same parents, with the same bonuses, will be the same size. Untrained - sponsor = Smaller Untrained + sponsor = conformation Trained = Median The exception is cross breeding. On VP, crossbreeding results in mutts. On VHR, the foal will move toward the conformation of whatever breed it is. Example: A Quarter horse crossbred with a Thoroughbred results in an Appendix Quarter horse. If you breed a TB and a QH, the foal will move, in size, towards the conformation of an Appendix, somewhat disregarding the parents' sizes. It doesn't completely disregard parent's sizes, but the size is usually vastly different if the breed standard is much higher or lower than either parent's current size. I would suggest starting with 4 pairs of breeding dogs. First whelped on a novice account, or account without breeding skill before they are trained. Second, same dogs, bred on an account with 100 breeding skill. Third, train all stats to 200 and breed on an account without breeding skill and finally on an account with the skill. Then compare the pups. On VHR, you can train in driving to increase the size on the parents, thereby increasing size on the foals as well.

UnknownDreamland · August 2011

I'll definitely try to do some more experiments as changes should be done in the recode. It would provide an additional aspect into breeding. I've never really noticed every pup having the same height and weight, but then, I never payed much attention to it before, but I'll check that as well. If even one pup is different from the rest, that could be a glitch. The crossbreeding aspect of VHR is pretty similar to what happened with my crossbreeding experiment, then. Say I bred two dogs with completely opposite heights and weights(ie, teacup chihuahua and great dane). Would I expect to to be even closer to the mutt standards than it was in the breeding of the chihuahua and teacup chihuahua? I'll try that test though, Alabama. Also, Aziu. I looked at the teacup chihuahua mother's parents since her weight was quite a bit over the standard. Her weight is 3.44 kg. She is a second generation dog. Her mother is 4.11 kg. She is an import. Her father is 4.21 kg. He is an import. So taking two rather heavy dogs according to their standard actually lowered the female's weight, bringing it closer to the breed standard, like you said. I suppose the next step for her is to take a dog of her breed with similar origins and weight, breed them together, and see if the height raises or lowers. I did notice that her height did raise above her mothers, but stayed below her father's. Which makes it seem that I can sort of control height but not weight?

UnknownDreamland · August 2011

Alabama wrote:

Foals are generally born a median of both parents' size, if the parents are fully trained. If the parents aren't trained, but the foals are born with sponsor breeding bonuses, size will move towards conformation of the breed. If parents are untrained and the foal is born without sponsor breeding bonuses, it will be smaller. All foals born of the same parents, with the same bonuses, will be the same size. Untrained - sponsor = Smaller Untrained + sponsor = conformation Trained = Median

Still curious on this topic, by the way. I did come up with another question based on this though: If the only way to get a median of the two parents' height and weight is to train the dog, at what point does the game's coding consider the dog trained? Is it when skills are maxed or stats are maxed? Would the aggression effect whether or not a dog is trained? Would a dog that was groomed for 12 years be considered untrained since it only has 100 in discipline?

Alabama · August 2011

I've not found a correlation on actual training between VHR and VP.. On VHR, the game recognizes horses as being trained when they reach 450 total points in Speed, Strength, Intelligence and Endurance. The game confirms when that happens in the morning report (after you take a turn). VP doesn't have anything like that, so I'm not sure when a dog is considered trained by the game. However, once you reached 450 points, no matter how much further a horse is trained, it didn't affect height or build. For testing purposes, I would probably get at least str, speed, intel and endurance to 200. Friendly, Aggression, Adapt, Loyalty, Courage and Hyper seem more about eventing than breeding. On VHR, skill doesn't matter at all to basic breeding. To be absolutely safe, I'd say do 280/200. Grooming seems to mirror "rolling" on VHR. It increases the potential/stars of the pups/foals, though you can see potential change on VHR, but can't on VP, but that's a whole 'nother can of worms to test, that I'd been meaning to do and just can't seem to find the time. Rolling does not affect height or weight on VHR.

Howdy, Stranger!

Dog height and weight

Comments