ISDS Border Collie Database

STATISTICS FROM THE STUD BOOKS

Also published in Working Sheepdog News Sep/Oct 2002
Copyright © Teun C. van den Dool, Aug 2002

At the Dutch Open Trials in Gendt, July 2002, I met Ylva Holgersson from Sweden. She is one of the persons that contributed to the Swedish Herding Dog database, which was setup by Lars G. Örne and can be accessed through the internet: http://vallreg.svak.se. Ylva ran her Peg 220925 who was sired in 1995 by Woodland Jon 167383 who himself was born in January 1987. I retrieved all offspring of Woodland Jon for here because she likes Peg and thinks much of Woodland Jon. She noted that Woodland Jon had no blood of Wiston Cap 31154. That is remarkable because more recently no dogs have been registered without influence of Wiston Cap. So I wondered when the last dogs without Wiston Cap blood were born and if they could still be living.

So I queried my database for all ISDS dogs without Wiston Cap. The graph shows these dogs as a percentage of all dogs registered each year since Wiston Cap was born in 1963. The graph goes sharply down in the seventies and to almost zero in 1990. The last litter was born at 17 November 1995 and registered by Peter Wood with kennel name Woodland. It consisted of 3 dogs and 2 bitches: 224535-224539. The following are all litters registered since 1992 (with breeder, kennel name and year of birth):

Peter Wood (Woodland) 1995: 224535-9, 220749-50, 220751-3, 220759, 220754-8, 1994: 218914-7, 211163-7, 1993: 212415-9, 208910-2, 208744-8, 208301-4, 1992: 208711
David France 1993: 208092-6, 1992: 202700-3
J.A.Jones 1992: 201275-9
Robert-Thomas Jones 1992: 202608-10
Mrs.M.Bellamy (Sealight) 1992: 200120-1

It seems Peter Wood doesn't like Wiston Cap very much. He registered a couple of litters each year without influence of Wiston Cap up to 1995. Then he didn't register anything until 2000 when he registered a single litter (250967-70) with no Wiston Cap in the first six generations but still 7% Wiston Cap in older generations. This is approximately half of the average influence of Wiston Cap in all recently registered pups.

Remarkable is that many of the dogs above are hardly related. If for instance Peter Wood would mate 224535 to 220751 the coefficient of inbreeding would be low: 3.3%. David France's litters are related to Peter Wood's but the other breeder's dogs are hardly related to each other or Peter Wood's dogs. Of course these dogs have some blood in common with the ancestors of Wiston Cap. A mating with Wiston Cap would have produced dogs with an inbreeding coefficient between 4% and 5%, still very low.

Because all these dogs might still be living, we could breed back a healthy Border Collie family without blood from Wiston Cap! Considering the recent interest in AI (Artificial Insemination) I would suggest to store semen from these dogs because they are clearly unique. There will be at least one customer in Sweden, that's for sure.