The Rough Collie dog breed: a depth of the pedigree of 80 traced generations

The Rough Collie is a dog breed of ancient origins. In Italy, about 1000 dogs per year were recorded to ENCI in the period 1980/1995 while nowadays about 400 puppies/year are registered. The aim of the present study was to determine the depth of the pedigree and the genetic structure of the breed starting from a single dog born in 2012 and belonging to an Italian breeder. The complete genealogy included 2713 dogs (1012 males and 1701 females) distributed among 80 traced generations. 1582 dogs were inbreds (636 males and 946 females) and the inbreeding coefficient was <0.05 in 374 dogs whereas it was >0.25 in 276 dogs. Four stallions had more than 30 descendants. The average inbreeding coefficient over all animals excluded the base of the population (496 animals) resulted 8.4% (47.7% as maximum value). Starting from the animals with 64 traced generations all animals were inbreds. The evolution of inbreeding indicates a steady increase over time, from a mean value of 0.24% for dogs belonging to the 2nd traced generations, to an average value of 28.84% in dogs belonging to the 73rd generations. Despite the attention of the breeders in the accuracy of genealogical records, the levels of inbreeding that can be deducted from this dog are very high, thus a regular monitoring of genetic variability of the population must be adopted, in order to safeguard the genetics health of the breed.