Swedish Vallhund » Prick-Eared

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 Express^3D. 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.

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

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]
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Swedish Vallhund originated from 20 dogs and bitches during the early years. (“Key Foundation Dogs”, 2009)^[source]
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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]
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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.
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Key Foundation Dogs 2009. World Wide Swedish Vallhund Alliance. http://www.wwsva.com/key-foundation-dogs (accessed September 3, 2011)
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Registreringsbestämmelser 2011. Olso: Svenska Kennelklubben.
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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)

Where are the Border Collies?! Why are they not out there handling the livestock? Why are they not bringing the lost ones home?

See, the working class don’t really give a damn about what breed their dog is as long it can still do the work. The main use for the Swedish Vallhund is to drive the cattle out to a pasture, watch over them as they graze; and ensure none wanders off, then bring them home at the end of the day independently without any commands issued from the farmers. Obviously, the Swedish Cattle Dog in the video is comfortable with his routine.

Note: It was pointed out this video belongs to Fjöses Kennel and was lifted from their kennel website. The kennel produced Dagny, who is currently employed on a farm owned by Orjan Skoglund in Sweden.

Post Script: “Kick, Push” by Lupe Fiasco should be the soundtrack of the footage. See the blank video with embedded lyrics here.

Who would had thunk it, someone was thick enough to cross a Vallhund with a Norrbottenspets.

Must be a "mongol"!

via wwsva.com [Image: Unknown]

Actually, no, the piebald patterning is actually found in the genepool of the Västgötaspets; just the breed standards only call for agouti. It is still niffy one of these crops up from time to time. Hopefully these neat little guys are not culled out of vanity; and is kept to maintain genetic diversity as the likelihood of such partial masking emerging is quite low. Such appearance is not something I would breed for, but if the dog proved itself to be an overly stellar cowdog, then its asset is fair more valuable than its recessive genetic makeups.

Why would I approve of piebald dogs not being culled? Piebald (s^p) is recessive to Solid (S). The chance of s^p emerging again is very low if bred back to a Solid outside of its known lineages. I might catch some flak for this, but to me, promoting genetic diversity is more important than adhering to the standards. All Piebald means is they cannot be shown. Nothing in the Code of Ethics they cannot be bred.

I would rather defer to statistics rather than trying to achieve perfection. Even if genetic drift is an issue, it can be managed.

Now that being said, I am not saying every Piebald should be bred back into the main gene pool. One would have to evaluate for temperament and health which are more important than the question of colour.

While Corgis don’t frequently come in Piebald or Extreme Piebald, others within elghund, laika slash husky and pystykorva landraces do though. Just something to dwell on.

Of course, there are people who say one doesn’t need herding dogs for sorting dairy cows these days. Surely, this dog must be sorely confused? Oh wait, that’s right, Sweden has anti-factory farming laws in place.

Here’s a little one encouraging the cows to head out to the pasture for the daily grazes. To be honest, employing a small dog seems to be more effective than sorting out the livestocks by oneself even in a stable.

Prick-Eared

A Sign of a Wounded