Breeding is how you build a line of dogs that are better than the ones you bought. This guide explains who can breed, what it costs, and — most importantly — what decides how good the puppies turn out.
Who can breed
You need a female and a male, and both must be adults with more than 50 health and nothing else to do. Puppies, juniors and seniors can’t breed.
Cost, pregnancy and litter size
Breeding costs $80. You can also watch a reward ad to breed once for free. The pregnancy runs in real time for the breed’s number of days — each breed page lists it. When it is over, you collect the litter yourself from the breeding screen.
Every litter has at least the breed’s minimum number of puppies. Each extra place above that minimum is rolled separately: the first has a 60% chance, the second 36%, and each further place is less likely again.
After the birth the mother loses 30 energy.
During the pregnancy
While she’s pregnant the mother can still train and enter competitions, but she can’t be sold until you claim the litter. The father’s stats are locked in when you confirm the pairing. After that he isn’t needed: the game remembers his genes and traits, so selling him has no effect on the puppies. A reward ad takes 2 hours off the pregnancy, with a 2-hour wait between ads. With medals you can skip a day for 10, or finish straight away for 25.
Each puppy is a male or a female with equal odds. Its coat colour comes from one of the parents, half the time each; if that colour doesn’t exist for the puppy’s breed, it gets a random colour of its own breed.
How puppies get their potential
Each stat has a ceiling — the highest value it can reach through training — and the parents decide the puppies’ ceilings. Every puppy in a litter from the same parents gets the same ceilings; only their starting stats and the rare bonus differ. Most of a puppy’s potential always comes from its parents’ potential, however much they have been trained.
The rest depends on how far the parents have been trained in that stat, compared with their own ceiling. Trained to exactly half of their ceiling, the parents pass on their potential unchanged. Above half, the puppies gain potential; below half, they lose it — and the loss is three times steeper than the gain.
| Parents trained (share of their ceiling) | Puppies’ potential compared with the parents’ |
|---|---|
| 0% | 30% lower |
| 25% | 15% lower |
| 50% | the same |
| 75% | 5% higher |
| 100% | 10% higher (the maximum) |
There are three upper limits: a litter’s potential can’t go more than 10% above the parents’, more than 15% above the parents’ breed maximum, or above 99. In practice, the 10% limit is the one that applies first. What counts is what the parents have earned through training — a temporary penalty from hunger or missed walks doesn’t hurt the litter.
Advice: train both parents before you pair them, in the stats you care about most.
Keep training the mother while she’s pregnant. The litter gets her stats as they are when you claim it, and the forecast on the pairing screen doesn’t include that training. There’s no deadline to claim, but your kennel runs one breeding at a time, so the slot stays busy until you do. Train her, then claim.
The pairing screen shows a forecast that uses the same rules, so you can compare pairings before you pay.
Starting stats and rare bonuses
A newborn puppy starts at 5% to 15% of its own ceiling in each stat. In 5% of puppies, one random stat gets an extra 10 to 20 points.
How traits are passed on
Congenital traits are checked one trait line at a time.
- If both parents have the same trait, a puppy gets it 80% of the time.
- If only one parent has it, the chance is 40%.
- If the parents have opposite versions, the puppy gets the positive one half the time, nothing 30% of the time and the negative one 20% of the time.
- If neither parent has a trait in that line, a new one can still appear: 5% of the time, or 15% in a crossbreed.
- A puppy keeps at most three congenital traits.
An inherited trait can also go up or down a level.
Crossbreeds
Pairing two different breeds gives a crossbreed puppy. It gets a 5% bonus to its potential, and it carries its mother’s breed. Crossbreeds are also three times as likely to gain a brand-new trait.
Browse the breeds to compare stat ranges before you choose a pair.
