In a message dated 1/7/2005 8:08:34 PM Mountain Standard Time, mgolant@xxxxxxxxxxxxx writes: Purely by laws of statistics and probability, the more similar the phenotypical manifestations of individuals, the higher the liklihood of genotypical similarity. ---------------------------- Sure...but Tom's idea that German dogs are closer in appearance than ours are has nothing to do with how closely related they are. It only has to do with who was in charge of the breed at any given time. Maybe my analogy wasn't 100% correct about African appearance <grin> but I'm sure that the German dogs--despite being very uniform in appearance--are NOT more closely related than ours our, simply because of the rule they have over there about not allowing closer than a 2,3 (or 3,2) breeding...except in very rare circumstances. Ours...well...lol...don't even need to go into that, I think. Liz in Utah Visit my website at http://hometown.aol.com/rckyiizard/index.html ============================================================================ POST is Copyrighted 2004. All material remains the property of the original author and of GSD Communication, Inc. NO REPRODUCTIONS or FORWARDS of any kind are permitted without prior permission of the original author AND of the Showgsd-l Management. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. ALL PERSONS ARE ON NOTICE THAT THE FORWARDING, REPRODUCTION OR USE IN ANY MANNER OF ANY MATERIAL WHICH APPEARS ON SHOWGSD-L WITHOUT THE EXPRESS PERMISSION OF ALL PARTIES TO THE POST AND THE LIST MANAGEMENT IS EXPRESSLY FORBIDDEN, AND IS A VIOLATION OF LAW. VIOLATORS OF THIS PROHIBITION WILL BE PROSECUTED. For assistance, please contact the List Management at admin@xxxxxxxxxxxx VISIT OUR WEBSITE - http://www.showgsd.org ============================================================================