Content & Percentages Primer
it's a
wolfdog of a different
color!
My first Wolfdog was
Pandora. She was 25% Timber, and boy! Howdy! I just knew that made her special!
I thought she was the only one of her kind. Imagine my surprise when I got my
first computer, and got on-line, and learned to surf, and discovered *gasp*
there were others like me! Others like Pandora!
Pandora taught me a great
deal. She re-educated me about canines in general. (I was under the misguided
impression that I knew something about canines. Ah, youth.) A funny side-effect
of learning about wolves, I learned more about dogs. It's all good.
Inevitably, whenever
people talk about wolfdogs, someone says something about percentages. "My
wolfdog is 72%" for instance. With just that piece of information, you
really have very little to go on in order to form any kind of idea as to what to
expect. Yet, people seem to think that giving a number accurately describes the
animal. They make certain expectations regarding the behavior and suitability of
an animal based on a set of mathematical values. Not good logic.
I am not a geneticist,
indeed, I have only your basic Advanced College Level biology classes under my
belt. This does
not an expert make, let me assure you. However, I have had the unique
opportunity to learn at the feet of some VERY knowledgeable Folks. From
listening & questioning, this is a synopsis of what I have gleaned. This is
my attempt to explain the importance of content, and why percentages can be very
misleading. I am not saying that knowing your animal's percentages isn't
important, it is. Knowing your wolfdog's accurate percentages is indicative of
knowing your wolfdog's lineage. You SHOULD know your companion's lineage. (of
course, if your companion is a Rescue, that might be problematical.) I have
approached this material as a Field Observer. So here we
go. A Content Primer by a Laywoman.
Genetics, the study of actual
accumulated genetic material that a being winds up with from two parents, and the resultant combinations,
is a "hard" science. It is defined as:
1. Biology. the science of
heredity, dealing with resemblances and differences of related organisms
resulting from the interaction of their genes and the environment.
2. the genetic properties and phenomena of an organism.
Content is a biological, or "working", description of what the individual has inherited. Percentage is a
mathematical description of potentials for the purpose of a pedigree. You take the
Mom's % add to the Dad's %, divide by two, and Voila! you have the perfect number representation of the
resultant puppy.
However, puppies are biological beings. Biological beings incorporate
unpredictability. Life finds a way. Well, in my opinion, Genes are little
cellular artists. Genes find a
way to express themselves.
A gene is, in essence, a
segment of DNA that has a particular purpose, i.e., that codes for (contains the
chemical information necessary for the creation of) a specific enzyme or other
protein. The strands of DNA on which the genes occur are organized into chromosomes.
Genes are carried on these rod-shaped structures, inside the nucleus of the
cell. These chromosomes come in pairs, one from the mother and one from the father.
Dogs and wolves have 39 chromosome pairs.
Enter F-factor. Filial
Generations (F-factor in Wolfdog lineage indicates generations away from the Pure)
is very much an
important and oft overlooked part of the actual biological description. In my
observations, the wolf is a well-crafted, efficient, biological being with alot of years
of natural selection and development behind him. It stands to reason that a pure
may have more dominant gene
expression over the dog, who has been altered & manipulated to no end. So if
one parent is a pure, you may have a higher chance of seeing more wolfish
characteristics in the puppies.
Let me use an analogy.
It's called, for obvious reasons, the Marble Analogy. Now, this is an analogy in the
broadest use of the term; Genetics is an amazingly complex and intricate dance
of science. You have a big bowl, and a
whole bunch of white marbles, and a whole bunch of black marbles. The marbles
represent the chromosome pairings which hold the codes for each trait and part
that makes a canine a canine. Mama is 100% dog,
and she has 100 white marbles.
Papa is 100% wolf, and he has 100 black marbles.
You take ALL the 200 marbles, put them in a big bowl,
and stir 'em around.
Then randomly select 100 marbles from the bowl. This will represent the basic
material that will largely determine the physical traits of the 50% F-1 puppy, as close as I can
analogize it, that is.
Physical descriptions does not an entire biological being make,
however. Nay! Genetics express themselves physically,
behaviorally , and
sexually. So, you must repeat the process of drawing out another 100 marbles, to
represent the behavior attributes of the pup & 100 marbles to
represent the reproductive cycles of the pup, re-stirring the bowl each time.
Actually, to follow the analogy more true to science, you'd have to re-stir the
bowl & re-draw the marbles once for each of the 39 chromosomal
pairings. Repeat for each puppy within the
litter. Thus, in this same litter, one of the
doggiest-looking animals might have the most wolfy-ish behavior, and the wolfiest-looking
animals may act just
like a dog. This is the wolfdog that everyone wants. The animal that looks just like a wolf, but acts
just like a dog. Do the math, tho.
(Not that I can give you the right math to do. *grin*) They are very very rare.
But what if both parents are NOT pure? What if both the parents are say, F-2 and (we'll stick with an easy round number) 50%? Here's where you really get to
play in the mud. And this is the actual context where most wolfdogs lie. (I'm going to venture to guess that MOST people do not have F-1 animals. It's an educated guess.
*grin*) To expand on our marble analogy, for each generation away from pure, you will double the
amount of the marbles, keeping the ratio, (50/50 ~ Mom/Dad) to represent the
potential number of combinations, but still only draw
100 random marbles per chromosome pairing and repeat
the process per each puppy in the litter. Do you see how much of a crap shoot it becomes?
Your F-3 50% puppy (the result of an F-2 to F-2 breeding) may or may not be
wolfy. Going back to the marbles, remember you are now drawing 100 marbles out
of a bowl that does not have 200 marbles, as in the F-1 example, but 400
marbles, to reflect the second generation away from the pure. So your chances of
pulling out mostly black (wolfy) marbles has decreased dramatically. So, in a litter of six, you might get 1 very wolfy-looking animal, 1 very doggie-looking animal, and
four puppies that you just can't peg right off. This is also the reason why it is SO important to know the
dog heritage in your Wolfdog. Because, in real-life, genes WILL express themselves somewhere. Biology WILL
prevail.
Percentages are the
mathematical model. ie: in the above-described individual, a 50% F-1 wolfdog, or
the 50% F-3 wolfdog. CONTENT describes how many marbles the animal has actually wound up with out
of the bowl. It is POSSIBLE for an animal to inherit all black or all white marbles, but it is NOT likely, nor is it probable.
Now. On to Content.
You add the content description because it is a more accurate & inclusive model of the actual biological being that you are describing.
It's a phenotype description, rather than the genotype description that we
addressed above. Content, in this reference, simply means the observable amount of wolf in a canine
and includes the physical &
conformational aspects; the mental or behavioral aspects; and the sexual
reproductive cycles.
I break content ranges
down into three separate categories:
Low-Content ~ 0-49%
Mid-Content ~ 50-80%
High-Content ~ 81-99%
I can further break it down into
"Low-No"
Content ~ 0-30%
Low Content ~ 31-49%
True Mid Content ~ F-1 50%
Low Mid-Content ~ 51-65%
High
Mid-Content ~ 66-79%
Low High-Content ~
80-89%
High Content ~ 90-99%
These are just MY
personal field-book break-downs. They follow the accepted standards, +/- a few
degrees. I tend to be inclusive in my phenotyping. Phenotype is the
visible properties of an organism that are produced by the interaction of the
genotype and the environment.
Now, the actual genetic
science is considerably more complex than this little marble analogy. My
interpretation of the marble
analogy is rather simplistically Mendelian, and does not take into effect that
each gene is inherited on an individual basis, independently from every other
gene, AND sometimes in combination with only certain other gene sequences.
Basically that means that every once in a while you'll get a grey marble. The
dominant genes are expressed, no matter where they have come from, and the
recessive genes lie dormant, and are not expressed. The recessive genes will not
express in this individual, but CAN express in the individual's progeny if
matched up with another individual with the same recessive genes. There is much
more to it than this, but I simply do not have the science background to
effectively explain it all.
This then, is the crust of
the biscuit. In order to understand the meat of the matter,
I direct you to
these pages on Canine Genetics.
The Wolfdog ~ Canid
Genetics
http://www.fiu.edu/~milesk/Genetics.htm
Cornell University's Canine Genetics Links List
http://www.ansci.cornell.edu/cat/cg01/doglinks.html
University of
California at Davis' Veterinary Genetics Laboratory
http://www.vgl.ucdavis.edu/research/canine
Working Dogs CyberZine
http://www.workingdogs.com/genetics.htm
How Genetics Determines A Dog's Health
http://dogs.about.com/cs/caninegenetics
Also. One of the things I've been very puzzled about is why the
"doggie" part of our WolfDOGs have so often been overlooked and
understudied. Many of the attributes relegated to Wolfdogs are shared by
pure-bred breeds. In order to truly understand one's WolfDOG, one should
understand the Dog part of the equation.
In the interests of that goal, here are a couple of major all-breed purebred dog
sites.
The American Kennel Club (AKC)
http://www.akc.org
The United Kennel Club Inc. (UKC)
http://www.ukcdogs.com
Dog Breeds
http://www.petcave.com/Dog_Breeds.htm
Canadian Kennel Club (CKC)
http://www.ckc.ca
I want to thank Dr. Norla M.
Antinoro for the Marble Analogy, and for helping me understand the basic
principles as it applies to real-life, and Jody Haynes for helping me with
translating the science into English.
