Hmmm, it's a difficult issue.
I am certainily against breeding for novelty and looks, but I think this applies equally to many breeds of pedigree dogs as it does deliberate crossbreeds. Dogs are being and have been breed with looks alone in mind for a long time now and we are seeing the knock on effects through breed specific genetic diseases.
Genetics is a lottery thats for sure but I firmly believe that the only traits we should select for are temperament and health - everything else should come way down the line. I read an article about pedigree dogs and although I cant remember the exact figures it was something along the lines of if in 1900 you closed the stud book on 6 individuals, by the year 2000 the offspring would have been inbreeding by something like 25 generations - basically the take home message is that all pedigrees are inbred or getting there! I think there is something to be said for carefully introducing new 'blood', but the keyword is carefully!
We could also gradually breed out the aggresive tendancies of fighting dogs while keeping their looks roughly the same - may be hard but it's a possibility over many years.
This may be harder than you think. There was a breeding programme on foxes where from every litter the most tame were selected and put back into the programme-the researcher was selecting for 'tameness', the end result was over the duration of the programme more and more black and white floppy eared foxes were born who were v tame (the original fox was the typical red fox) - basically the 'genes' associated with tameness were also somehow linked with colour and other superficial physical traits. It's such a mine field!!!
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