ISDS Border Collie Database

STATISTICS FROM THE STUD BOOKS

1. DATA BASE CONSTRUCTION

Figure 1. Popularity of ISDS registered dog names as a percentage of the total number of pups in 5 year periods. Only names with an average use of at least 1% are displayed.
Upper plot: names with decreasing popularity.
Lower plot: names with increasing popularity.

Ever wondered which dog was most reproductive during its life? Indeed, it was John Richardson's Wiston Cap 31154. He mated 388 times to produce 1933 registered pups. The most reproductive bitch was R.Gwilliams Meg 79483, which produced 89 registered pups during 9 years from 13 litters. The most reproductive couple was Mrs.S.J.Ainsworths Taff 156350 x Jenny 159603 which produced 74 pups from 14 litters. Taff was Jenny's only Sire (Taff was not that faithful).

And what's more:

• There are 643 registered foundation dogs with genetic influence on the current population.
• 0.01% (25) of all registered dogs determine 75% of the genes in the current population.
• Effectively the genes of only 8 of the founder dogs determine the genes in the current population.

You might think 'scanning all those pages, what a job'. But it proved to be less than 10% of the effort involved. Although it must be said that the quality and consistency of scanning has major impact on the time used for the subsequent processing steps and was therefore carried out on a single system by one person.

Most of the work involved correcting the errors of the OCR processing and errors in the StudBooks themselves. The OCR software is approximately 99% accurate. That seems pretty good but a StudBook contains 1 million characters on average. So 10000 errors are introduced in every processed book. Luckily most data in every StudBook occurs twice and OCR-errors have typical behaviour. Approximately 90% of the OCR-errors could be corrected automatically with suitable software. That left 1000 OCR-errors plus original errors in every StudBook. These last errors have been corrected by hand after they were found by cross-checking with software specially developed for this job.

Of course I do not know the number of errors left in the final database, otherwise I would have corrected them. But I estimate that some hundreds may be left in each StudBook. Most of these errors occur in the names and addresses of breeders and owners, which I consider the least interesting information anyway. The most important information are the ISDS numbers and these, I believe, are more accurate than the Stud Books themselves. This is because ISDS numbers form an almost gap-free series and every ISDS number should occur twice in each StudBook with accompanying name of dog and owner. This enables an almost perfect cross-check. Furthermore, the ISDS numbers of parents can be cross-checked with data (name of dog and owner) from earlier years already available in the database. Something like 10 parents per StudBook might still have wrong ISDS numbers, because they are clearly erroneous and none or multiple dogs were found with the same name and similar ISDS number.

As an example of error correction, consider Joy 5290, registered in the StudBooks as:
    1948,394,22: No. 5290. JOY. Bitch. Rough. B. & W. 8/12/46.
    1948,394,23: Sire:-Jaff (Hughes) 43l3.
    1948,394,24: Dam  :-Queen (Bonella) 3387.
This notation means: Stud Book year 1948, page 394, lines 22, 23 and 24.
Her mother (Queen 3387) is registered as:
    1948,383,21: No. 3387. MINN. Bitch. Rough. B. & W.
And has always been owned by J.C.Williams, never Bonella.
Joy has 4 littermates, for instance 5219 which is registered as:
    1948,246,19: No. 5219. QUEEN. Bitch. Rough, B, W, & T. 8/12/46.
    1948,246,20: Sire:-Jaff (Hughes) 4313.
    1948,246,21: Dam  :-Queen (Bonella) 3389.
So Queen is most likely 3389 and not 3387!

A similar example is Phil 13063:
    1957, 82,18: No. 13063. PHIL. Bitch. Rough. B. & W. 1/6/56.
    1957, 82,19: Sire:-Glen (J. E. Hogarth) 12994.
    1957, 82,20: Dam  :-Flame (J. E. Hogarth) 6285.
Dam Flame 6285 is registered as:
    1949, 61,10: No. 6285. SPOT. Dog. Smooth. B. & W. -/11/48.
Clearly a completely different dog, not even a bitch. One would go back to the 1957 StudBook and look for brothers or sisters of Phil 13063 hoping for correct parents there. But no littermates of 13063 have been registered. Having a database it is possible to scan for dogs named Flame, a name used only 31 times. A Bitch named Flame appears to exist with number 6385! Apparently the number was mistyped as 6285.

As a final example consider Nell 3514, one of the most important bitches in the ISDS population as we will show below. She is registered as:
    1948,180, 2: No. 3514. NELL. Bitch. Rough. B. & W. -/5/40.
    1948,180, 3: Sire:-Cap (J. M. Wilson) 3036.
    1948,180, 4: Dam  :-Moss (McCaskie) 1677.
Dam 1677 is registered as:
    1947,279,32: No. 1677. MOSS. Dog. Rough. B. & W. -/1/22.
This Moss 1677 has been owned by A.Storie almost all its life, not McCaskie. Apart from not being a bitch, Moss 1677 would have been 18 years of age when giving birth to Nell 3514, very unlikely. Searching in the database, a McCaskie's Moss appeared twice before:
    1950, 75,30: No. 6722. JIM. Dog. Rough. B. & W. -/5/40.
    1950, 75,31: Sire:-Cap (J. M. Wilson) 3036.
    1950, 75,32: Dam  :-Moss (J. McCaskie).
and:
    1948,390,20: No. 3364. GLEN. Dog. Rough. B. & W. -/9/40.
    1948,390,21: Sire:-Cap (J. M. Wilson) 3036.
    1948,390,22: Dam  :-Moss (J. McCaskie) 3826.
3826 is also wrong, it is registered as:
    1948,103, 6: No. 3826. SPOT. Dog. Rough. B. & W. -/4/40.
Apparently J.McCaskie's Moss was neither 1677 nor 3826. Additionally, most likely these three dogs (3514, 6722 and 3364) are littermates born at the same date (-/5/40?). It will be shown in a minute that Moss is most likely number 1827.

These examples are particularly interesting because they all appear in the pedigree of famous Wiston Cap 31145:

• Flame 6385 once in the 4th generation,
• Queen 3389 twice in the 5th generation and
• Moss 1827 3 times in the 6th generation.

Especially the first two StudBooks contain many of such obscurities. Often also details of dogs are missing in the second part of the StudBooks. The seventies were worst in this respect, culminating in details of 85 dogs missing in 1976 and more than 400 in total. Their parents could sometimes be found by looking for likely littermates in the first part of the StudBooks. For approximately 70 pups the parents could not be found and 24 of them produced offspring later on.

Note: up to and including 1960 the Stud Books had a separate chapter 'Litter Records' that listed non-registered pups from (often additional) litters. I did not include these in the database. However, some extra information on early dogs was added from Sheila Grew's 'Key Dogs' and from Barbara Carpenter's 'The Blue Riband'.

Next: 2. KEY DOGS