I'm just looking to give a shout-out and ask if people have used or have considered using inbreeding as a way to refine traits in order to breed better future generations.

Not saying going all out and trying to breed successfully with a degen 3 specimen, but breeding wisely with inbreeding to double up on traits within one grade of degeneration to breed with new blood and provide better chances of genes being passed in fewer generations than, say, breeding conventionally with only fresh blood/unrelated pairings.

Anyone have any input or experience on this?

I haven't tested it out yet, but I've considered the possibility as well, particularly since I personally am rather fond of a little inbreeding here and there. It does seem that in breeding GP 2 or 3 pets, the easiest way to do it by far is with at least one grade of inbreeding, and the GP bonuses should more than balance out the degeneration problems as long as there aren't horrible recessives at play to begin with.

I haven't tested it out personally but I have a degen 1 pet I got from the pound that has good genes and no reds at all. http://beastkeeper.com/pet/40063

I'm going to breed a few of my pets now who have good recessives to their realitives to test this idea out some now after I got this cub on accident. xD http://beastkeeper.com/pet/83154

Even for gene breeding, intentional degen is pretty useful, just kind of annoying due to gene changes. Each degen grade gives 10% to the chance of getting new negative genes that didn't exist in the parents for each category (muscles, bones, etc.) There are 8 categories (doesn't include color genes) which makes about a 43% chance to get a pet that doesn't have any gene changes for a degen 1. So with degen 1 offspring, it takes about twice as many breedings to get the specific offspring you're looking for. I don't recommend going to degen 2 since the 10% goes up to 20% = ~16% chance of no gene changes... and the offspring of a degen 2 with an unrelated mate will still end up degen 1. 

Dropping into degen 1 is useful for making a specialized pet without a large gene pool: Spectre (You can see how short his pedigree is, but he was also the 10th child of the parents - which was ridiculous since his parents were genetically the same puma) Having a small gene pool though, you still have a problem of finding/making the right mate for your degen pet.

For large gene pools, I prefer not dipping into degen. I just find that I don't need to since there are mates everywhere. Also, its real easy for recessive negative genes to propagate throughout the population... they spread like the plague -.-;

Inbreeding will increase the likely hood of bad recessive being dominant, but it also does the same to good genes! So if the genes are all fantastic like that... It's really not to bad to dip into level 1 degeneration. You can then breed a few generations out and make some fantastic descendants. Like I said I'll probably be doing this for my gryphon skin project as I've seen very few people breed for them...

EDIT: Thanks to Inbreeding, I got this girl :D Just check out her genetics, yes, inbreeding is a very helpful tool n_n

I've been working a lot with inbreeding for my unicorn proyect. I'm trying to get an unicorn with dominant magic horn, quickmind, agile paw, fragance and gracefulnessand I'm quite close to achieve this thanks to inbreeding, if not it will be almost impossibe.

I got this guy who has very tidy genetics, I only need to add gracefulness to increase the chances to use counterstrike, but he is very good in battles the way he is. I believe he is the only unicorn with that combo of genes right now, but he won't be a good breeder as he is grade 2.

I just went a little more ambicious and wanted to add regeneration to the dominants I'm breeding for. This will be impossible without inbreeding... so far I got this guy and this girl, and I'm hoping to see what can I do with them xD