Yep, it will be a tight line to walk. You get what you select for and most everything else goes down hill. Maybe genetic testing will be available to help the pure bred dogs and future snakes too. I would think that the technology is here now if only the will and the money where to eliminate most of the worst problems in pure bred dogs with genetic testing. If all breeders where tested for all known genetic defects and only the few that are clear where breed you could make a lot of progress in a hurry. Genetic testing could produce a score for a potential breeder and then economics would see that the best are bred.



However I can’t imagine we’ll ever be able to identify every undesirable gene much less the exceptional ones so out breeding will always be a good if difficult thing. If, 50 years from now my granddaughter has a line of quadruple recessive ball pythons that regularly lay 20 egg clutches but is prone to repertory infections and missing eyes it will be hard to outbreed and then try to recover but I hope someone is willing to do it. Just on the quadruple recessive part you are looking at a 1 in 256 hit to get back to the quadruple homozygous when breeding quadruple heterozygous animals.

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