*Hegel Van Bavel
When it comes to working with dogs, you may be convinced that it is genetics and genealogy or, rather, training that determine dogs’ abilities. But what about the descendants of champions that have shown no real skills to compete? And how many dogs without pedigree have been victorious?
In 2005, French scientists published an article that evaluated 2427 dogs of the three Belgian shepherd breeds (2208 Malinois, 193 Groenendael, and 26 Tervueren) that competed in France between 1986 and 1999 (J.-F. Courreau, B. Langlois, 2005). Data was obtained from 2196 competitions organised by the Société Centrale Canine de France and the dogs’ genealogy files. The scientists used well-known statistical methods to evaluate the heritability of dogs’ performance in 6-19 tests in 5 different categories of French Ring competitions. The tests were grouped into 8 general skills: jumping, following at heel, fetching an object, attacking, guarding, obedience, biting and global success.
They also took into consideration other factors that were unrelated to the genetic load. These factors were: sex, age, difficulty of the competition and variety within the breed. In order to solely evaluate the genetic load, all the effects of breeding and training factors that could have had an influence on the dog (mother, breeder, trainer) were grouped together as ‘permanent environmental effects’, which were assumed to be random.
The results were interesting. When evaluating the performance, taking into account only genetics, it was observed that heritability only had a small influence on the competitive performance in dogs, especially with regard to following at heel and global success.
On the other hand, when taking into account both genetics and the environmental influences (mother, breeder and trainer) that could have had physically and psychologically affected the dog, repeatability in performing dogs is highly reliable for virtually all skills. In addition, skills appear to correlate, except for jumping skills, which were observed to have a fully independent performance to other skills. Finally, a correlation was found between the difficulty of the test and the age of the dogs. Basically, for difficulty level 1, the best performance for global success (as well as for jumping, biting and obedience) starts from 1.6 years, for level 2 is reached between 1.6 to 2 years, for level 3 is 2.1 to 2.5 years and for levels 4 and 5 the best performance is achieved between 3.1 to 4 years old. For levels 4 and 5, the performance decreased significantly after 7 years of age. The best performance was in males compared to females, and the Malinois compared to Groenendael and Tervueren. These last comparisons are not as statistically significant for the small number of females and dogs Tervueren / Groenendael competing. Finally, in the scientific article the scientists discusses the observations in other animal tests, the heritability for both other breeds as for other species. They discuss heritability in PBM and suggest that little genetic variation between competing dogs could decrease the observed inherited effects. Another thing to discuss is the assessment in Ring French competitions. They suggest that in order to better statistically evaluate the inherited skills, the performance evaluation of the dog and handler should be separated. Which might be interesting, isn’t it?
WHAT DO YOU THINK? What, in your experience, is more important: a genealogy of champions or excellent handling? And what about nutrition and the socialization of puppies? If you liked this DOGGY SCIENCE, comment and FOLLOW the BLOG!
*Author: Hegel Van Bavel. Surgeon of the UNAM, Master of Science in Molecular Biomedicine graduated from CINVESTAV-IPN and PhD in Molecular Biology at the University of Glasgow in the United Kingdom. He is fond of the PBM and the Dutch Pastor. He has competed (and won) in obedience and rally events at the Canine Mexican Federation.
Reference:
Courreau J.-F., B. Langlois / Applied Animal Behaviour Science 91 (2005) 233-245
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0168159104002424
Van Bavel Dogs & Ciencia Perrona 
As a breeder and competitor in herding with Groenendael (Belgian Sheepdogs), the review is interesting.. Certainly the trainer and environment help or hinder a dog, but it’s been my observation that genetics were at least 50% or more of the factor. Different sires or dams made a difference in success even with the same environment (dogs raised by the same person in the same kennel) and same trainer. Perhaps the factors (heeling) weren’t the significant factors involved — willingness to please, type of grip (a study on location and type of grip in stockdogs was done and this clearly seemed genetic in nature so one would think grip – “bite” – location and strength would also apply in other venues. In 25 years of herding I’ve yet to successfully change where a dog griped livestock although I could put it on cue and increase or decrease (if it was there) its frequency. There were clear limitations regardless of handler to being able to get a herding dog willing to deal with combative or stubborn livestock and clear indications that dogs that were so willing produced more dogs that were also willing.
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Genetics , socializing correctely & a great trainer & decoy!
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