Czechoslovakian Wolfdog Discussions

Pod you speak alot more sense than I do...

can you explain how the DNA thing works. I always just thought that there was less than 2% difference between pure modern day domestic dog of anykind and pure wolf...How do the tests you mention show any breed as being closer or further removed from the wolf than any other breed? I am interested (and probably a bit thick )

Me too Though not thick!!!

Thanks for the link Per. Having read previous webpages with the writings of Ann Dresselhaus, I am now naturally suspicious of anything by her:? But I do know of the two authors she is referring to on that page.

Iljin was well known for his wolf/dog crosses. I have some of his papers here as they are relevant to my particular area of interest; coat colour inheritance. Also the Belyaev Project. A very interesting study on the domestication of the fox.

I can only repeat my previous comments. If any of these wolf crosses were incorporated into the breeds of dogs we have today, they have yet to show in DNA studies.

Regarding wolves been used to create the GSD, I found this link

http://www.grapevine.net/~wolf2dog/gsd1.htm

Hi Mys... not seen any evidence of you being thick

But I'm definitely not very good at explaining things and DNA is not my specialist area. I have to feed my dogs now (& self) and do a few other things and this is something I'll need time on

But just to say a few words first.... the studies that give a difference between species DNA are usually based on mitochondrial DNA which is very useful for research purposes because it's passed down the maternal line unchanged except for mutations which occur at a more or less predictable rate.

This mtDNA though does not have any influence on the dog's phenotype ie it is useless to the animal as far as is known, so a difference of say 1% in dog/wolf mtDNA does not mean that that is the complete difference. The functional DNA is contained in the nucleus and is massive compared to the mtDNA.

I'll try to find a website by someone more equipped than me to explain the basics but if you want to do a search Wayne is a good author on wolf/dog DNA.

That's my brain gone into meltdown :?

Pod you are clever and i live in awe...;-)
Great and very informative responses!!!!

I understand the point that people are trying to make about German Shepherds...but the 1800's is much more distant to peoploe than 1983...and it is only a possibel with the shepherds.
German shepherds developed a terrible reputation post WW2 thanks to terrible mass breeding brought about by a rise in popularity of the breed. In a lot of ways it is still recovering from that. It isn't the only breed to suffer thanks to it's own success...

Thanks LS for your kind posts (and Pod) and others.
My concern is breed welfare as you all now definitely know.
If education is to be done, I think it is important that it is done PRIOR to the dogs being introduced here.

I appreciate you want to show your dogs at Crufts...but DEFRA isn't going to make a special case is it???

I agree (being a teacher) that the way forward IS education..but how, as LS said...what's the next step in educating people about this breed????

I agree (being a teacher) that the way forward IS education..but how, as LS said...what's the next step in educating people about this breed????[/QUOTE]

I think that there is a lot of opportunity for you people to have the firsthand information about our dogs. If you are willing to travel and to spend some time you can visit a lot of events in Europe (dog shows, bonitation where animals for breeding are selected, CWS competitoins or-although a bit offtopic now- summer camps in Czech Republic or Slovakia where you can go with your dogs, even if they are not CSW, wolfdog owners are tolerant. Even a language is not a problem, some owners here are educated enough that they can speak English . You can find these events on web. Here you can find if you fell in love in with real CSW or with your imagination.
The problem is how to educate ordinary people. Even in former Czechoslovakia the breed was accepted with suspicion. People (even experienced dog trainers) did not know what they could exect from our dogs. The only way how tom persuade them was a longterm patient work with CSWs. But both breeders and CSWs had a chance to demonstrate that wolfdogs are not dangerous but beautifull, predictable inteligent and trainable creatures because there was no ban for keeping and breeding them. If there is no possibility for the people on the streets to see our dogs to touch them, to share experience with owners you can hardly overcome all the inherited and widespread myths and fears.

I think that there is a lot of opportunity for you people to have the firsthand information about our dogs. If you are willing to travel and to spend some time you can visit a lot of events in Europe (dog shows, bonitation where animals for breeding are selected, CWS competitoins or-although a bit offtopic now- summer camps in Czech Republic or Slovakia where you can go with your dogs, even if they are not CSW, wolfdog owners are tolerant. Even a language is not a problem, some owners here are educated enough that they can speak English . You can find these events on web. Here you can find if you fell in love in with real CSW or with your imagination.
The problem is how to educate ordinary people. Even in former Czechoslovakia the breed was accepted with suspicion. People (even experienced dog trainers) did not know what they could exect from our dogs. The only way how tom persuade them was a longterm patient work with CSWs. But both breeders and CSWs had a chance to demonstrate that wolfdogs are not dangerous but beautifull, predictable inteligent and trainable creatures because there was no ban for keeping and breeding them. If there is no possibility for the people on the streets to see our dogs to touch them, to share experience with owners you can hardly overcome all the inherited and widespread myths and fears.[/QUOTE]
Hi Jiri,
I think that yes, there are some people on here who would probably love to find out more and to travel (sorry I'm not included in that I'm afraid...beautiful dogs but i've got my breed!;-) ) It is the people that are willing to do that though that are the ones who don't need educating...

Yes, it may be harder to educate without the dogs being alloed here...BUT you are protecting the breed if you do it that way. I think you all need to look to the media...

I think some further explanation on the DNA evidence needs to be presented here as it seems to be rather important for the argument at hand.

Genetics is being used here to determine the lineage of an animal – so that is what I will go into with some detail.

The model which Pod has presented – whereby mitochondrial DNA and Y chromosome DNA are used to see the relations between an individual and its ancestors is based on a number of assumptions, the first of which is the fact that individuals are free to choose a mate from a more or less random selection of candidates. (The choice of mate itself is not random – the options for mating tend to be)

That assumption, while accurate enough in wild populations, completely breaks down in domesticated animals, because the choice of mates is actually made by humans who have a very specific breeding agenda in mind – the selection happens therefore much more rapidly than it would in the wild, thus what may seem like “hundreds of years” for a wild animal, in fact may represent only a few generations of directed breeding in a domestic environment.

Secondly there is the problem of loss of genotype – for instance in the case of the CSW populations you have a situation where a wolf was crossed with dogs, and then the offspring of that cross was again crossed with dogs. Crosses from that point on will never be with a wolf. They are with either a dog or with other wolfdog crosses. The result is that the net genetic input into the breed is higher from the dog (often significantly so)

So lets give an example –

M is the mitochondrial DNA from a female wolf
m is the mitochondrial DNA from a female dog
y is the y chromosome from a male dog

Look at this breeding regime –

M * y

F1 – M M y y y

Crossing a male from F1 with a female dog would get you –

m or y

whose outcome is always either y or m (dog DNA in both instances)

Crossing a female from F1 with a male dog would always get you

M or y

All other things being equal therefore the F2 generation would look like this:

M : 25% of the population (female dog with wolf mitochondrial DNA)
m : 25% of the population (female dog with dog mitochondrial DNA)
y : 50% of the population (male dog with a male y chromosome)

Already at the F2 level only 25% of the population would show any resemblance to the wolf according to the analysis. The remaining 75% would show up as “pure dogs”

If you do the same analysis you will find that at the F3 level 12,5% of the population will show up resemblance to wolf – only one in eight animals would show up as wolf. (It is interesting to note that this is the incidence shown of wolfblood in GSD in the study which I have cited previously)

There is a further complication to this analysis – populations of the various genotypes do not remain stable. In fact even when there is a small excess of one genotype it will result eventually in the loss of the minority genotype. Thus after a number of generations, unless wolf genes were dominant in the breed (which they in practice never are) they will be entirely lost from the breed. (This can be seen in some interesting studies on human DNA – for instance the mt DNA of all humans descends from a single common ancestor – the mt DNA of all our other female ancestors has been simply wiped out)

So does the genetic information support the fact that the GSD is close to the wolf? Absolutely. Perhaps it is not clear exactly how close, but having one GSD in eight having mt DNA identical to that of a wolf is equivalent to saying that GSDs are only three generations removed from wolves – I find that to be pretty convincing evidence that sometime in the near past GSDs were actually crossed with wolves.

(If someone didn’t follow that – feel free to ask, I’ll be happy to explain. My apologies though I didn’t have time to draw charts for all this which would probably make things clearer)

Oh and for the record –

I’m not sure where you got that piece of information, but it is unfortunately incorrect. mtDNA as the name implies code for various mitochondrial proteins, which are in fact essential for mitochondrial function. They can have a major influence on the phenotype of the dog, not only when it comes to endurance, but also when it comes to things like resistance to oxidative stress, adequate energy metabolism etc.

Thanks for that Dharkwolf

Interesting reading, although I did get lost somewhere in the third paragraph

These are brilliant photos!

Whether mates are chosen by natural selection (wild) or artificial (domesticated) makes no difference to way in which mtDNA or Y chromosome is passed down the generations. They are not subject to recombination (or at most minimal on Y chromosome) that occurs on the autosomes and the very reason why this is the method chosen for DNA lineage research.

I’m not sure what you mean by selection happening more rapidly. Maybe you mean the generation time is shorter which possibly it is. What does occur with domestication though is a more rapid change in allele frequency, which mostly accounts for the huge variation we see in the phenotype of different breeds compared with the relative uniformity of the wolves.

What exactly do you mean by loss of genotype? All dogs and wolves have exactly the same capacity for genotype ie number of genes. Only the alleles will vary but they will not reduce in quantity. Do you mean loss of diversity as in allele variation?

Dharkwolf, this is meaningless as you seem to have missed the very basics here. mtDNA and Y chromosome make up together a minute and insignificant (to our discussion) contribution to the genotype of an animal and small enough to be discounted when assessing the percentage of wolf content. The genes that make a wolf a wolf or a dog a dog are held in the nuclear DNA.

You have discounted >99% of the genome in your calculations. Your F1 and F2 generations will both have ~25% wolf content in their nDNA, which codes for the proteins that determine the dog’s genotype and therefore phenotype.

If you mean that allele frequency will change, yes this is normal in any population and mostly the reason for species evolving and dog breeds changing appearance...but loss of minority genotype?

Some are dominant, some aren’t but the wildtype alleles do tend to be dominant and are in fact the ones easily bred out. It’s the recessives that can lay hidden for many generations without detection. You can never be sure they are lost from the breed without DNA testing.

I don't know how you have calculated that this indicates three generations ago but the fact that an identical haplotype occurred in several other breeds should give some indication that this was many centuries if not millennia ago rather than a couple of decades. The haplotype has to have been present in a female wolf and introduced to the dog population before these breeds separated into different lineages. There is no way that an identical haplotype could have sporadically emerged in a diverse group of breeds. Would you apply the same 3 gens to the other breeds with the exact same haplotype...Golden Retriever, Mexican Hairless, Bulldog, Toy Poodle etc?

Edit: I have re-read the above and think I know why there is confusion here. You must understand that a haplotype is just one tiny, insignificant (as far as coding is concerned) part of the genome. The GSD's haplotype that was identical to the wolf's probably had no influence on genotype at all. Haplotypes are used purely as markers for tracing lineage and do not represent the functional DNA of the genome.

Ok I was wrong on that. I had not accounted for the role of mtDNA in cell metabolism. Thanks for the information.

However, to suggest as you have above, that the wolf content can be removed simply by eliminating the female wolf mtDNA is ridiculous. mtDNA forms a minute proportion of the genome. I don’t remember exactly how much but without looking it up <1%, and of insignificant function when we are discussing traits which determine the difference between dog and wolf. The wolf content will be present in proportion to the percentage it occurs in the pedigree regardless of whether the mtDNA is from a dog or wolf female line.

Found a really good site by Ray Coppinger -

http://www.grapevine.net/~wolf2dog/dnaid.htm

I would just like to comment again on the method of calculating wolf % in pedigrees as I think this an important point and if Dharkwolf, you have used your method in an effort to convince DEFRA your breed has no wolf content, then I’m not surprised if you have been given short shrift.



By Dharkwolf’s method of calculation on the above pedigree, dog A would be 0% wolf as the mtDNA from wolf E has been lost through her son B, and Y chromosome DNA from wolf F has been lost through his daughter C.

We are though left with the remaining genome which contains the relevant genes that do in fact have wolf content.

The usual method of calculation is based on nDNA and is quite simple. The wolf content reduces by 50% every generation and the %s accumulate from each line they appear in. This pedigree should help to illustrate.



I should add that although the %s are precise on pedigree they are not necessarily accurate for the actual animal for at least two reasons. Firstly there will have been selection. I know nothing about the breeding of wolfdogs so I’m only guessing here but I would imagine that selection has been based primarily on the temperament of the GSD and the appearance of the wolf. Also with selection for health, there would probably be a bias in favour of wolf genes. The more generations that accumulate the more effect selection will have on eliminating undesirable genes.

Secondly there is recombination. This is a process where chromosomes swap alleles during meiotic cell division. It doesn’t apply to the first generation so a GSD x wolf will always be exactly 50:50 dog:wolf genes, but every generation thereafter is just an estimation, but the way the genes segregate is random (AFAIK) so there will be no bias in favour of dog or wolf genes.

Then on top of this we have the fact that dog/wolf genes are almost identical anyway, so a wolfdog of say 12.5% wolf content by pedigree may have no genes that are not already found in the domesticated dog population, so is in reality 100% dog. On the other hand it may carry some of the genes that give the wolf his timid and unpredictable nature.

I have before said that I think 1% as a limit is a bit stringent of DEFRA but they do need to draw the line somewhere and I don’t think anyone is arguing that we should be free to own wild wolves or breed them in captivity without any restrictions.

Actually Pod I do agree there has been a misunderstanding.

First – my apologies, I gladly admit I was not clear enough in my first post, that’s what happens when you post late after a long day.

I thank you for your long explanation, but you have completely missed my point. In my previous post I was in no way describing a method for calculating the wolf DNA content – rather I was explaining the effects of the proposed methods for the detection of wolf DNA content; namely the comparison of the mtDNA and the Y chromosomal DNA of dogs to wolves and extrapolate the results to obtain a correlation which would give you an idea as to the wolf ancestry of an individual dog - or even a dog breed.

For any detection method to be valid, it has to be able to accurately measure the property which you intend to measure. (known as the measurand) The first step to be able to accurately measure a measurand is to precisely define it.

Unfortunately, in the field of biology, and molecular biology in particular, it is extremely difficult to accurately define measurands. As you accurately keep repeating Pod, both mtDNA and Y chromosomal DNA represent only a minimal amount of the total DNA content of most eukariotic cells (less than 1%). They also have a special property – they are the only significant segments of DNA not to be subject to recombination.

Precisely because of those particularities, you should be careful using an analysis based on such DNA. You should inf act be very wary of any technique that tries to extrapolate measurements of a given measurand to other measurands which are similar, but not identical. If for instance someone tells you that they have done a study on the culinary preferences of the people in the UK by asking all the 3 year olds, the result will definitely be suspect, and not be representative of the actual situation. A very similar situation happens here.

Bear in mind the following – from now on I will be talking about the results of the detection of wolf mtDNA or Y chromosomal DNA, not of the actual content of wolf DNA – it is in fact impossible at this date to determine the actual content of wolf DNA in an individual (though it may be possible to do so in a population).

In this case, mtDNA and Y chromosomal DNA are similar – the essential property in both cases is the fact that they are only passed down to the offspring through only one of the sexual lines. Y chromosomal DNA being passed down only by males, and mtDNA is only passed down by females. There is a subtle difference in that mtDNA is passed down to all offspring while Y chromosomal DNA is only passed down to male offspring, however as males are incapable of passing down mtDNA this difference is insignificant after a few generations (I would need a statistical analysis to define few here, something which I don’t have the time to do – the answer though is likely to be somewhere between 5 and 30)

Consider how transmission through the exclusive male line or the exclusive female line works. You are all familiar with it – it is the situation of royal families. Take a look at European royal lines. Assume a generation time of 20 years – that means 20 generations takes you back four centuries. You will find that the direct male line in many of them has been compromised, with at least one case where the throne passed on to a woman rather than to a man. That happened to the Tudors, the house of Windsor, the Austrian Hapsburgs, the Spanish Hapsburgs, the Spanish Borbons, the Dutch house of Nassau, the Swedish house of Holstein-Gottorp… I could really go on, but I think you see the point. It is extremely rare for a direct male or a direct female line to endure over many generations. If the direct lines do not endure – then they cannot be detected by the methods of mtDNA or Y chromosomal detection. (there is actually an inaccuracy to my example using the royal houses, but it is a relatively minor one offset by other considerations so I won’t go into detail here, I just note that it exists and I am aware of it. However, the example has good didactical value as most people can relate to it)

Statistically what is going to happen in any population which starts with a finite number of equally distributed mtDNA genotypes is because of random effects some mtDNA types will at first have a small numerical advantage over other types, and that with passing generations the number of different mtDNA types will slowly dwindle until only one remains, it all depends how far back you go – that is the basis of some interesting research on the so called “mitochondrial Eve” who is the common female ancestor to all of us. Similarly there are common male ancestors traced through Y chromosomal DNA.

The problem is that in any wolfdog breeding program wolf DNA – be it mtDNA or Y chromosomal DNA or autosomal DNA is always a minority because the “wolfblood” is going to be diluted by the breeders – thus I know that the Czechoslovakina wolfdog has a “wolfblood” content of roughly 25%, Saarloos maybe a little more. They are in a minority – mtDNA or Y chromosomal DNA will eventually be inevitably lost from those populations. (This would NOT be the case for autosomal DNA – precisely because of recombination)

The situation is even more radical in situations where less wolf content was used in a breed – what about a situation when a wolf mated with a dog once in the breeds history? That will be even harder to detect against the background of the breed, as the wolf content may be as low as 2 or 3% . In such a situation the mtDNA and the Y chromosomal DNA will almost certainly have been lost from the breed – but not the autosomal DNA.

There is again an aspect of domestic breeding which is crucial to this whole case and which has been missed by many – in the wild only mutations which result in death before puberty (reproductive age if you will), and mutations which result in sterility will be immediately removed from the genepool. All other mutations are removed far more slowly through a process of natural selection – and at varying speeds. In the case of domestic selection a random trait – completely unrelated to the survival or viability of the animal – will result in that animal not breeding. At all. A sheep with poor wool will not be used for breeding for instance. Essentially what is happening to a domestic population as opposed to a wild population is that it is under a much more stringent selective pressure than a wild population would be – even though the causes of selection are very different.

I apologize for the confusion caused by my first post – I was a bit tired at the time, I have reread it carefully and still find it to be fundamentally correct, albeit at times the terminology I used was inaccurate or ambiguous.

I will however take the liberty of quoting myself –

When I say it will “look like this” naturally I meant that is what you would see when you tried to detect the mtDNA and the Y chromosomal DNA – I was not referring to the actual wolf DNA present in those animals (look again carefully). I stand by my conclusions, namely –

1) The fact that over time, the use of mtDNA and Y chromosomal DNA techniques to determine the content of wolf in an individual loses predictive value – as the wolf mtDNA and Y chromosomal DNA gets eliminated from the population
2) The result of having one exact match of mtDNA to wolf in a population of 8 female dogs is equivalent to being 3 or 4 generations removed from the wolf. I admit freely that it is unlikely that the GSD is that closely related to the wolf – however using such convincing data to argue that it is not related to the wolf is a bit silly – and yes I am fully aware that implies other breeds which you have mentioned are also very close to the wolf, (though not necessarily as close – here the size of the sampled population is the critical factor)

I trust that things are a little bit more clear now. For the record I never approached DEFRA arguing that wolf DNA would be completely lost after a few generations. I never made such a preposterous claim. However I stand by the fact that using the methods described (mtDNA and Y chromosomal DNA measurements - which incidentally were developed to measure populations, not individuals) you are highly likely to fail to detect wolf DNA accurately, if at all, in a population of domesticated dogs.

Thanks for reading this all the way through ;-) If you made it this far you really are interested in the topic.

Yes, reading this Dharkwolf, I can see now I have been a bit hasty with some of my criticism...sorry.

Thanks for the explanation and a very intersting post.

2 UK breeders

What a fabulous thread this is. After reading through it all I can say is how easily data can be manipulated to prove or disprove a point if one wants to.
From my lay persons point of view I am fascinated by the concept of no wolf being bred into a line for at least 22 (I use this number as it was the least amount of time suggested) years but still having 30% wolf content in a dog. Whatever data is used to convince me I have to say that I do not see how that is actually possible. Even in pure bred dogs.
More importantly it seems to me that over 22 years certain characteristics would have become very clearly defined in the pure bred dogs. If aggression has not been a problem then I would take this as an indication that maybe the breed is not aggressive.
Now I do not have a bias one way or the other about them being in the UK so this is not in any way a yes or no article just some random thoughts on the subject from all the comments from everyone else.
I can understand the point about not wanting to bite as I own Siberian Huskies and mine are the same. I often get people asking me if they are wolves and I strongly say no. I love the wolves but hate people who want to just ooh and aah over a dog they think could be related to a wild animal (their perception of a wolf is not mine) and you get the next question 'does it bite'? Now why would the assumption of a wolf type dog being prone to bite humans be so common? Human perception and lack of true knowledge is the answer.
From this all I can say is that I agree with the worries of everyone, of not punishing the wolf type dog or owners for others perceptions, or that in the wrong hands such dogs could be treated badly to try and make them react in this manner.
I am so pleased that so many people care enough to respond to threads such as this as it shows that there is still hope for dogs in this modern society.
On a slightly different tack I would suggest that education is not the only thing that needs to be undertaken to ensure correct handling of such dogs.
Legislation - and not the knee jerk type that is being loudly called for after the unfortunate death recently - that punishes those who insist on promoting the misuse and dangerous treatment and behaviour of dogs is also needed. Where breeders are held accountable to ensuring they provide detailed information on owning and training their type of dog, and owners are held accountable to get training for their dogs. If they faced large fines if found not doing so then this would make breeding dogs just for money less attractive. All responsible owners and breeders would be doing this already and so it would not be any hardship to them.
The 'punish the dog' for all wrongs by humans is scaring me to death at the moment.
All dogs can be dangerous if not dealt with in the correct manner for their breed. Stopping the people from doing this would help stop the problems facing such breeds as the CSW.
Sadly I do not think any measures will stop some terrible people who misuse and mistreat animals.
Sorry long ramble but hope you see no insult to anyone except those who cause problems. Just respect to everyone on this thread for caring so much.

cossack...what a lovely post!
If we still had rep points there'd be a few heading your way now. Really lovely, thoughtful post.