A Sign of a Wounded

 Breeding, Genetics, Swedish Vallhund  3 Responses »
Apr 192012
 

Over the course of the last year I have been assembling information on the Swedish Vallhunds. The starting point was my own dog with a five-generation pedigree. At first the state of the breed seems to be relatively positive with low Co-efficient of Inbreeding (COI) once I have plugged in data, provided through SVPedigrees maintained by Sharon Donaldson in Australia; using Microsoft Excel and OpenOffice Spreadsheet at first then later BreedMate PedX. However, there were many holes in his pedigree.

A much more comprehensive dataset was extracted from Worldwide Swedish Vallhunds – Västgötaspets Pedigree
Database once kept by the now-deceased Leone Darling. It is rather a shame due to the death of a predominant breed historian, the domain will one day be taken down once it expires since the information is much more complete with far fewer errors. Using the dataset from Ms. Darling provided a much clearer picture.

When Christopher Landauer revealed one must go back to the founders to get a more reliable calibration of a dog’s COI, a graph of why it is not enough to look at the COI(3) and COI(5) was produced. With Riley, we will take a look at the COI(29).

Distressed by the relatively high COI, more information on the founders and popular sires and brood bitches was needed. To understand why such a high COI was procured, we must first understand what a pedigree collapse is. However the entire tree is relatively compact and there are a few noticeable collapses at a glance. The good news is they are not frequent. The bad news is not all the known founders are included in his complete pedigree. This hints the possibility several lines died out.

Pedigree tree highlighting repeated ancestors generated with PedX.

When inquiring numerous breeders about this issue with Riley, it was learned he is very typical of the breed. In fact, he is a relatively accurate sample of the Swedish Vallhund population.

So what happened? The modern population of Swedish Vallhunds, in which there is approximately 500 registrations world-wide every year, once had a more diverse ancestral base. A great number of potentials were rejected due to poor understanding of recessives and lack of knowledge of concepts essential to population genetics and quantitative genetics such as allele frequency and polygenes when the breeding program first initiated even though the rejects had obvious influences or characteristics. Ontop of the inability to recognize suitors, many of the progeny were sold unregistered and only the ones who were seen as ideal for breeding were registered for many decades after the founding of the Swedish Vallhunds. In addition, there were a few kennels between 1960s and 1970s producing surpluses of puppies which coincided with the extinction of several dam-lines and a a couple of sire-lines in the 1970s and 1980s. The bleeding of the breed slowed down when the Swedish Kennelklubben mandated entire litters must be registered in the 1980s, and a rule was passed in the 1990s stating a sire cannot contribute more than 5% of the existing gene-pool. As the result, conductor was able to slow down the train to hell.

However using pedigree software are quite limiting and they don’t tell us a great deal of information. There are quite a few of them out there. One of the easiest software to utilize, often used in population genetics, ecology and conservation biology for visualization, although the original purpose of the software was for discovering new relations between proteins in biochemstry and genomic laboratories, is an open-source network analysis program such as: Cyptoscope, Gephi, Pajek, BioLayout Express3D. There are plenty of software floating around on the Internet which regurge useful information.

In the next post, an illustration using a node-mapping software will be provided and explained. We will walk through as we add more information to the dataset and change how it is processed, different interpretations arise. We will also explore why in a competitive world where everyone is more concerned with their self-image, a pedigree record is rather limiting. A pedigree is a tool which only becomes more useful as more hard data is added.

A Dog Amongst Giants

 Swedish Vallhund  3 Responses »
Oct 282011
 

Do you see any ducks? Sheep? No? What the heck are these giant animals? There is no way such a low-to-ground dog could handle such beasts! Oh, yes, it’s a Västgötaspets: the cattle dog of Lilliput, brought to Sweden by dear Gulliver.

Swedish Vallhund Working Cattle (Photo: G. Smedberg, 1987)

Okay, okay. It’s hard not to relish defying intellectual dishonesty and denialism and rubbing these photographs into holier-than-thou so-called “working” people who don’t depend on livestocks as a lifeline.

Images

Vallning  http://www.fjoseskennel.se/vallning.htm (accessed March 16, 2011). [Photo: G. Smedberg, 1987]

The Bastard Child

 Swedish Vallhund  2 Responses »
Sep 092011
 

Meet Jesper.

It is said one can still find unregistered Swedish Vallhunds, Norrbottenspitzes and Finnish Spitzes in the countryside. Somehow it is dubious. However there is merit to such rumours.

It was not uncommon for Finnish hunters to travel to Russia in search for a quality hunting dog since, in their opinion, either the native strain is either too specialized in upland games; or they were watered down by the show rings. However in Russian territory, these red dogs were not registered as Finnish Spitz by the  Russian Kynological Federation (RKF), yet the unregistered dogs still have FKC pedigrees behind them. In fact, some of the buyers truly thought they were purchasing FKC-registered dogs, but returned home to find they weren’t. This created a bit of a problem. So it became common for dogs to be evaluated based on their merits and thus were officially entered into the system. Norrbottenspitz also has a theoretical open registry as well.[1]

In fact, for many decades, unregistered Vallhunds were added to the system after von Rosen and Gustav came to a realization they could not get the coveted all-grey breed, as the litters kept throwing reds and yellows; and to narrow the gene pool with only a handful of founders in 1940s would be forcing the breed to commit kamikaze. Upon such epiphany they expanded the program from only three founders to more than than about two dozens key founders.[2]

In Jesper’s case, however, his grandparents were registered; but his parents never were. Unfortunately, his pedigree still traces back to the original dogs. Nevertheless, with assistence of the local breed club, he was officially entered into the system in 1996. Since then, he became a part of several dogs’ pedigrees today.

However, given the Vallhunds have relatively few founders, albeit much more than most rare breeds, every drop of blood is precious. They cannot afford the same luxury of a severe bottleneck Border Collies undergo.[3]

Footnotes

  1. The Swedish Kennel Club and Finnish Kennel Club allows members to petition the breed club to evaluate the dogs to be registered as purebred without demanding pedigrees. (“Registreringsbestämmelser”, 2011, 13)[source]
    Back to text

  2. Swedish Vallhund originated from 20 dogs and bitches during the early years. (“Key Foundation Dogs”, 2009)[source]
    Back to text

  3. Despite the fact over 5,000 Border Collies are registered with the ISDS every year, there was only 3,000 founders to begin with and only half produced offspring. In the recent years, only about a third still has influence over the overall gene pool. Out of those 600-some remaining founders, the genome only reflects eight individuals. This tells us low Co-efficient of Inbreeding, high registrations and and wide pedigrees do not paint the full picture of a dog’s genetic background. (Christopher Landauer, 2011)[source]
    Back to text

References

Christopher Landauer (2011, April 21). Only 8 Border Collies. Retrieved September 3, 2011 from http://www.astraean.com/borderwars/2011/04/only-8-border-collies.html.
Return to footnote

Key Foundation Dogs 2009. World Wide Swedish Vallhund Alliance. http://www.wwsva.com/key-foundation-dogs (accessed September 3, 2011)
Return to footnote

Registreringsbestämmelser 2011. Olso: Svenska Kennelklubben.
Return to footnote

Images

pedigree. www.svpedigrees.com. http://www.svpedigrees.com/modules/animal/pedigree.php?pedid=6198 (accessed August 29, 2011).

Susanne Karlsson. About Jesper Fixan’s Kennel. http://www.kennelviking.se/engsida/jesper.htm (accessed August 29, 2011)

Dog Humps Cattle

 Swedish Vallhund  5 Responses »
Jul 152011
 

Someone call the ambulance. I think the trial folks are kneeling over. We need a crash cart, stat!

via fjoseskennel.se [Image: G. Smedberg, 1987]

The weird thing is: there are more photographs and videos available of working dogs in Sweden and Finland than there are of Pembroke Corgis in Wales. I wonder how many documented cases there are of achondroplastic dwarves working in North America.

Side-note: Not dog porn, the title was inspired by a faulty translation, “Pinch humps cows,” by Google of a YouTube clip from an older post: “What? Working Corgis?!”.

Trio of Göteborg

 Swedish Vallhund  14 Responses »
May 132011
 

Lately, the Swedish Vallhunds have been neglected in favour of Cardigan Corgi history. However this is in part to trying to comprehend Google’s hackjob at translating Swedish and Finnish. Admittedly, the Swedish blogs are easier to read; however the Finnish websites provide better context, despite only one out every five or seven words actually makes sense. On the other hand, I did find this interesting photograph on an English-orientated website:

via oikkus.fi [Image: Unknown, 1943]

According to the owner of the website, the three dogs left to right are: Jessi, Tyra and Jerry. Tyra, in middle of the photograph, is one of the few founding mothers discovered by Carl Gustav Zettersten on one of his many cycling trips in the countryside.

However, unlike Mopsen, Tyra’s father, Nicke, was not recorded in the pedigrees of many Vallhunds; except in one database maintained in Australia. Her maternal ancestors? They are vague and were recorded as “Vivian II” and “Vivian III.”  Nevertheless, Tyra was one of the founders of Zettersen’s kennel, Borghällas.

Tyra was bred to Mopsen’s offspring, Jerry. It is not certain which Jerry was in the photograph above as many names were repeated during the early days. It is, however, safe to assume all three dogs in the above photograph are from the Borghällas kennel as even Jessi, daughter of Lessi and Mopsen, was used in the breed restoration.

What amazes me though is that the more I research the history of the Vallhunds, the less they seem to be inbred during the founding days. The whole myth of one sire and a handful of dams is proving to be less and less true with every search. And what is even more amusing, unlike the trend for breeding for shorter legs among dwarf dogs in the show rings, the trio were deemed to have the “right length of legs.” Maybe I am the only one that find the humour in these sort of things.

What? Working Corgis?!

 Cardigan Corgi, Pembroke Corgi, Swedish Vallhund  10 Responses »
Apr 152011
 

via channel.nationalgeographic.com 

[Image: Evergreen Films]

Paddy Burns made such a bizarre statement last week about the European heeler landrace. He got so wrapped up in the notion of a perfectly chiseled working dog, he ignored the fact blue-collared workers are not robotic adhering to the same standards across the board.

Admittedly, short-legged drovers are not in high demand in North America since people work with the breeding stocks available locally. However working corgis do exist: they exist on lifestyle farms; they exist on organic dairy farms; and sometimes they act as a backup in conjunction with another droving dog on large ranches and all of this can be found in Canada. Elsewhere? In fact, Scottie was kind enough to provide a video taken in Sweden:

Let ignore the blasphemous and traitorous act of owning a Cardigan in the heartland of the Västgötaspets. Let look past the fact the description of the video, which faulty translates to “Pinch humps cows.” Instead, let analyze why they have working dwarfed heelers. See, in Sweden, all cattle must graze outdoors; this is contrary to the North American practice of cooped up livestocks stuffed with barley, corn and soy. Yes, even Vallhunds are still being used to move herds from pastures to pastures throughout the day as part of a routine. A farmer within the Swedish system of raising dairy cows is a sharp contrast to being hired hand going on a drive alongside bullheaded beef cattle through Montana and the Rockies, or moving them along from station to station in the Australian Outback for weeks on ends once or twice a year. These cowboys cannot be blamed preferring Australian Shepherds and Cattle Dogs: they selected for rugged dogs with endurance to take on aggressive bovines during a perilous trek. However one cannot paint over the world-wide cattle industry with the same brush.

Why would one need a dog that is so high energy, it would worry the livestocks all the time? If one’s business model doesn’t fit the dog’s niché, the dog doesn’t get hired. Sorry, trialled Border Collies, you’re over-qualified.

Corgis are supposedly so defunct now, they even lost their role as hunting curs after hippies decided hunting with dogs was inhumane. Sorry, conformation or the show ring don’t play a role in the phasing out of functional corgis; regulations and the ever-changing agricultural culture do. Even the Border curs’ days are numbered; like how the Enclosure Acts in Britain led to the decline of the corgis, factory-farming will lead to the decline of the collies. The only hope these dogs have is if the granolas managed to work against Thomas Malthus’s formula and convince the bigheads organic and free-range are worthwhile business investments to line their pockets with. Surely, by now, corgi addicts will start amassing supports for hipsters with green thumbs in order to preserve their two favourite breeds. Perfect.

If Paddy criticized the trend for breeding shorter legs in comparison to what corgis were, pre-1940s, then this blogger would jump on the band wagon; but suggesting they were never a working dog and ignoring socio-economic factors is simply criminal. Face it, not every farmer wants a Border Collie just like not every hunter wants a Jack Russell or a Labrador. The problem with being an armchair analyst, someone will prove them wrong. Surely, there must be more working corgis who pay taxes than employed terriermen?

Swedish Vallhund: First Breed Type

 Swedish Vallhund  1 Response »
Jan 152011
 

via svclub.org.nz (Image: Count Björn von Rosen)

While there’s a popular notion, Swedish Vallhunds was “saved” from extinction in the 1940s by using one sire, five bitches, the pedigree records state otherwise. However that isn’t to say the foundation stock have not really impacted the breed.

Unlike other dog breeds who got their breed-types from a sire, with the Vallhunds, it was a bitch too old to be bred. The model for the breed was known as “Topsy,” who was born in 1930. There is some speculation Topsy is the Eve of the post-WWII Vallhunds because Vivi and Topsy were owned by the same farmer, Herman Johansson. So while Vivi’s mother was too old to be bred, she nevertheless served as a model for the first draft of the breed standards.

Question: Purpose of Achondroplastic Dwarfs

 Cardigan Corgi, Genetics, Pembroke Corgi, Swedish Vallhund  1 Response »
Jan 072011
 

After Riley was diagnosed with valgus of about 15 degrees turning outward, someone asked if Swedish Vallhunds are achondroplastic dwarfs. Honestly, I don’t know.

Normal German Shepherds, Golden Retrievers, virtually all breeds can get valgus too. However dwarfed dogs, especially of achondroplastic variety, are more suspectible to issues with cartilages. Hence why I am reserved wheither or not the Vallhunds are achondroplastic or not since the dog genome haven’t been mapped out, and not all the disorders have been discovered or named– let alone understood. However the little spitzes of the West Goths are functionally medium-sized dogs with reduced limbs. Let assume Vallhunds are one of the achondroplastics.

First off, achondroplasia in dogs is different from humans. Why? We understand how the genes interplay in humans. We still only grasped a small piece within dogs. So, achondroplasia in dogs is a description of the phenotype, not the actual genes at play.

I know the two breeds of Welsh corgis are considered to be achondroplastic. And while discussing with Riley’s breeder, she never heard valgus or varus being an issue in the Vallhunds. No one ever talk about it. It could be that Vallhunds are not widespread enough for these issues to be reported by their owners. However if the corgis are considered as achondroplastic, isn’t it logical to conclude Vallhunds are too?

From what I can find out, dwarfed breeds have fragile growth plates. If the dogs somehow injury the growth plates by exerting too much pressure or force, ie. jumping, getting a limb caught, excessive weight or playing too rough, can cause signs of limb-twisting in puppies. Often these traumas are too small to be noticed, and dogs don’t really express, if anything, if such traumas occurred. Otherwise if there is no damage done to the cartilages between the joints, the puppies will grow to be straight-legged adults. So it is not a bad thing for the dogs to be a dwarf, just they have their own issues like every other classification of dogs.

There are people out there who view achondroplasia as a genetic detect or a fault. However this is rather an absurd viewpoint; because if one has knowledge of evolution, they would know any genes that could be expressed could prove advantageous if the environment pressure the organisms into becoming so. Those with unfavourable genes don’t thrive to breed and are either suppressed or phased out, while those with good genes continue to exploit their niché. When the environment changes, it equalizes the playing field and reshuffle the deck. One would only have to look at insular giantism and dwarfism, both considered as faults by us, but the “faulty” organisms thrive in those environments. So it would be improper view genes with certain consequences as faults.

So I begun wondering: if achondroplastic dogs are not up to speed with their leggier cousins and tire more easily, what’s the point of breeding for these dogs? Surely, in this day and age of companionship, there’s a reason for striving for such look; but many of the dwarfed dogs are much older. What kind of environmental and economic pressures force these dogs to become dwarfs?

Yes, dwarfed herding dogs are supposedly bred to nip at the heel and duck under the kicks of the livestocks; but so can Australian Cattle Dogs and they’re not dwarfed. I am not entirely sold on the idea that short-legged dogs are better for rocky and hilly terrain as there are leggy hunting dogs with gaits to deal with such ruggedness. To say the small dogs are better with small tasks is fallacious in itself since even family farms use the same dogs used on large properties. So what gives?

So, being the amateur historian I am, I wonder if the socio-economic affairs of the ancient Swedes and Welsh was the final nail which caused people to favour these farm curs over other dogs. Otherwise these dwarfs would had not survive into modern times after agricultural practices changed just prior to the Industrial Revolution.

The compass is currently at the economic cost of a dog. My theory is: during tough times, it’s favourable to have a dog who doesn’t take food from the table by hunting too many small games to satisfy its hunger. Perhaps someone else would like a shine a light on the issue to why it’s favourable to have a dwarf of disportional sizes?

The Vallfather

 Swedish Vallhund  1 Response »
Dec 232010
 

He may not necessarily be the sire which popularized the breed, but most of the vallhunds can trace their lineages back to Mopsen. Obviously he’s less than an ideal example; but when you have a male with one testicle during the event of the 20th century in a country cut off from most of the world, one doesn’t really have much of a choice.

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...