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Hi,

Just a question, my one dog has a low sop for the breed but a perfect head, where many dogs in this breed are ranging 9.8-10.2 for head. Should I consider keeping him and trying to breed him for his head, the top trait in the breed?

www.showdog.com/dog.aspx?id=13335044

It probably depends on how low he is. Personally, I would probably keep him though- in my lines when I breed a 9.8 head to a 10.0 head a majority of the puppies end up with a 10.0 head.
You can always repeat the breeding in hopes of a higher sop dog with a 10.0 head too, though it's not guaranteed to happen.
Congrats on the 10.0!!

I would keep him, and hope he passes that beautiful head down to at least one pup.

Congrats on that head!

Keep him. Something like this happened in my breed. The SS wasn't as low but the dog continued to produce 10 HDs with dogs that had 20SS as well. Just try it, worst case scenario, he doesn't produce well and you FH him and his litters.

Definitely keep him

I did this with my Anatolians in my Ariege kennel and it worked really well. I basically bred him once to each bitch - then kept the best 10.0H pups with 20SS from each litter and went from there Now I have heaps of high SOP with 10.0H

Awesome, thank you sooo much for your help and info! Greatly appreciated!

I would keep him. His low SOP is mostly because of his low SS - if he had a 20 for SS, his SOP is 87.05, which is just fine for PP's. He probably wouldn't do very well showing with that low SS (I find anything lower than 18 for SS really struggles in the ring, no matter how good the other traits are), but he's worth keeping for that head.

Thank you so much for that I've decided I'm going to keep him and try and pass that head on.