Wolfdog - How I'd do it! General Chat

Firstly this is purely hypothetical as I have no interest in creating a wolfdog. Not my cup of tea lol! But I thought I'd put down how I'd give it a go!

Firstly I would establish ground rules to be stuck to no matter what. I think that is very important to begin with. The ground rules I'd have would be these;
1) All dogs registered with the KC either on the breed register for the parent breeds all puppies to go on the activity register. This provides an independent registry and pedigree database and therefore continuous registration.
2) All dogs to be permenantly identified by microchip and the number is placed on it's registration
3) All dogs to be DNA profiled
4) All breeding stock to be tested for all the health tests available for the relevant parent breeds so;
a) Hip scored
b) Elbow scored
c) Eye tested
d) Tested for the various blood disorders VwD etc
e) Heart scored
f) Luxating Patella
g) Any other test that is available or becomes available
5) All breeding stock to be DNA tested for colour and coat length to eliminate undesirable characteristics
6) All stock to remain in my name as co-owner on those sold to outside homes
7) All puppies to be assessed at 8 weeks based on structure/temperament and breed standard
All puppies/dogs to go through a structural and temperament assessment every 6 months until they are old enough to be bred from if suitable or are neutered. Once neutered ownership will pass over to the person who has them if they wish.
9) No dog or bitch to be bred from before the age of 2. Immature/longer developing specimens will be left longer.
10) No more than 3 litters off a bitch and only if absolutely necessary.

I'd source the following for my foundation stock;
A minimum of 6 quality KC registered straight backed GSD bitches, sable, white and black (mainly sable)
2 Quality KC registered Malamute dogs to improve substance. Again I would only use the sable dogs.
2 Quality KC registered black smooth chows to reduce ear size
1 Quality Elkhound Male
If there were any suitable dogs/Bitches from current NI/Ute/wolf-type breeding then they too would be included.

Each of the foundation bitches would have a litter from 3 of the dogs and so on. This would mean a reasonably large gene pool from as healthy a stock as possible.
As you can appreciate, though, the numbers of puppies being produced and homes required would be enormous and any such breeding programme should be undertaken with that huge responsibility in mind.
Becky

Becky xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Very interesting and thoughtful post Becky. x

I would be using somewhere BSD, grons & tervs , these are alot more wolfie looking than GSD

And I would hope no good breeder of any of the KC stock you mention would let you have any of their pups!

SO again to start off a breed its going to be down to "not very good" examples

Interesting you should say that. I was thinking about the film 'The Company of Wolves' earlier and how they used BSDs in the film to represent wolves. They did use a real wolf or two aswell but for the 'mass' wolf clips, they used the BSDs.

http://www.corsini.co.uk/belgians/quadrille.htm

BSD are lovely but imo look too long in the nose so would compromise the mouth some what, i.e over shot jaws incorrect bite ect, would possibly bring in a collieness to the wolfy look...dunno just my opinion.
What a brilliant thread Becky, a bit of virtual dog breeding, I like it. x

Would chow's and elkhounds not bring in curly tails?

I do think the BSD are wolfier looking than GSD and personally love the longer hair look but see what Inki is saying too.

If i ever got into showing i'd go for grons, i just love them, love them, love them.

i personally am unsure about the chows as having them purely to reduce ear size, they don't really have much else to offer, i like the idea of BSD but used in conjunction with the GSD, elkhound is also a fab idea although again the curly tail is an issue a you can see alot of dogs have these and are really hard to breed out. The problem here is none of these dogs carry amber eyes( maybe mals do) so where do you go for that? personally either a CWD/SWH or one of these crosses being used...like as you said current wolfy type dogs and huskys. And as i said in the breed standard thread any of the dogs would have to have all their ancestors researched for health temperament and colour also specific traits those lines throw out.

Becky i think your idea about co-owning is good as that way if anybody goes against terms of agreement you can still get the dog back and you can follow each puppies progress by calling them in every few months to check on how they are developing. Obviously i assume if space is available the best stock would be kept by the original breeder.

Now the question is, for an undertaking such as this, you would have to have different owners for the founder dogs ie one person has a couple of studs, one has a couple of bitches, but how do you get them to follow the breeding rules?? should all dogs be owned by numerous people so if the drawn up breeding programme is not adhered to the other co-owners can take those other dogs on?? I think we all know sometimes people will have their own agendas and playing god can make people turn a bit funny...i think this was where the original wolf type breeders fell down.

im not sure about the chows, I think they may give to broad a skull and to short and broad a muzzel as well as many other things.

I know that darker eyes are preferable ref GSDs but I could've sworn I have seen many with Amber eyes.......

But as its only a virtual breeding programme then no harm done ...

First link, ok it is a USA link, but it is the first one I came across, google:

http://www.longcoatgermanshepherds.com/AyersLongCoatGermanShepherds.html

A bit off eye colour ref it is really about coat colour but there is even one with really light eyes part way down the page:
http://www.4gsd.net/colours.html

Im really not up on coat colour genetics, but would sable gsds throw sable, or are can they throw blacks/whites/black n tan as well?

You have to use dilute colour dogs to get the light eyes, probs why a lot of white GSD have light eyes

No Chows for me and without them I see no reason to test for luxating patella, its a small dog thing and breeds such as EBT's and Chows which dont really have good "knees."

As mentioned, tails too, as with the Elkhound.

some one in the shop recently Shona, has a sable GS bitch that has produced all black, white and black n tan !

thanks for that,

I guess the stud dog would need to be taken into account

I think this just illustrates the kind of work that needs to be put in when creating any new breed (hypothetically or not!!).

All the questions, problems, queries etc that arise out of it, as well as different people's opinions of what needs to go into a breed to get the expected/wanted result.

It just shows that you can't just put 2 random wolfy-looking dogs together willy-nilly!