Tag Archives: Old English Sheepdog

Marking Harry Maclary’s 40th anniversary

Posted on February 22, 2023 | Leave a comment

For Dame Lynley Dodd, a sketch of a dog on note paper started it all – 40 years ago.

Harry Maclary From Donaldson’s Dairy was first published in 1983. The book features Harry, a mixed breed dog who looks a lot like a Skye or Scottish Terrier (Dodd has said that he is a terrier mix) alongside his canine friends:

Hercules Morse, As Big as a Horse, a Mastiff
Bottomley Potts, All Covered in Spots, a Dalmatian
Muffin McLay, Like a Bundle of Hay, an Old English Sheepdog
Bitzer Maloney, All Skinny and Boney, a mixed breed dog that is clearly part Greyhound

and

Schnitzel Von Krumm, With a Very Low Tum, a Dachshund

Every Kiwi child knows this story! (with a further 19 books that followed the first).

NZ Post will release a series of commemorative stamps on 1st March to celebrate the 40th anniversary of this now classic children’s book. Can you guess which character is Sox’s favourite?

Kathleen Crisley, Fear-Free certified professional and specialist in dog massage, rehabilitation and nutrition/food therapy, The Balanced Dog, Christchurch, New Zealand

The impact of movies on dog breed popularity

Posted on September 20, 2014 | Leave a comment

The effect of movies featuring dogs on the popularity of dog breeds can last up to ten years and is correlated with the general success of the movies, according to new research from the University of Bristol, the City University of New York, and Western Carolina University.

The researchers used data from the American Kennel Club, which maintains the world’s largest dog registry totaling over 65 million dogs, and analysed a total of 87 movies featuring dogs. They found that the release of movies is often associated to an increase in popularity of featured breeds over periods of one, two, five, and ten years.

The influence of movies was strongest in the early twentieth century and has declined since.

Additionally, they found that these trend changes correlated significantly with the number of viewers during the movie’s opening weekend, considered as a proxy of the movie’s reach among the general public.

This suggests that viewing a movie may cause a long-lasting preference for a breed that can be expressed years later, when the time comes to buy a new dog.

The 1943 hit Lassie Come Home is associated, in the following two years, with a 40 per cent increase of Collie registrations in the American Kennel Club.

An even more dramatic example is the 100-fold increase in Old English Sheepdog registrations following the 1959 Disney movie The Shaggy Dog.

Photo taken by Harald Urnes, Norway

Professor Stefano Ghirlanda, lead author of the study said: “We focused on changes in trend popularity rather than on popularity itself to avoid attributing to movies trends that were already ongoing before movie release, as up-trending breeds may have been chosen more often for movies.”

Earlier movies are associated with generally larger trend changes than later movies. This might be due to an increased competition with other media, such as television, and more recently, the internet, but also to an increased competition among movies. Movies featuring dogs were released at a rate of less than one per year until about 1940 but a rate of more than seven per year by 2005.

Dr Alberto Acerbi, a Newton Fellow in the Department of Archaeology and Anthropology at the University of Bristol and co-author of the paper said: “If people buy en masse dogs because they appear in movies the consequences can be negative for the dogs themselves. Our previous study found that the most popular breeds had the greatest number of inherited disorders.

“It’s not surprising that we tend to follow social cues and fashions, as this is a quite effective strategy in many situations. However, in particular cases the outcomes can be negative. When choosing a new pet, we may want to act differently.”

Source: EurekAlert! media release

Gene discoveries in canine ataxia

Posted on March 3, 2014 | Leave a comment

What do the Gordon Setter and Old English Sheepdog have in common?

Both breeds suffer from a type of hereditary ataxia where neurons in the cerebellum that control movement begin to die, causing a gradual loss of coordination. In humans, ataxia is also the 3rd most common neurodegenerative movement disorder (after Parkinson’s and Huntington’s diseases).

Researchers at the National Institute on Aging and the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard looked at 630 Old English sheepdogs and mapped ataxia genetically in the families of affected animals. Eventually they mapped the disease to a gene, RAB 24, located on chromosome 4. A mutation in RAB 24 was closely associated with development of the disease, and on screening of affected dogs of other breeds, the identical mutation was found in Gordon setters, providing additional evidence that this mutation is important.

“Rab 24 is a protein that is believed to be important to the process of autophagy – which is how cells cleanse themselves of waste,” says North Carolina State neurologist Natasha Olby who collaborated on the research.

“We know that autophagy and neurodegeneration are connected, so pinpointing this protein is important to our understanding of the disease process.”

“We have not yet proven that this mutation causes neurodegeneration; it could simply be a very good marker for the disease,” Olby says. “Our next step will be to determine exactly how the mutation affects the protein Rab 24 and its function and to determine whether this results in neuron death. This gene will also be investigated in humans with hereditary ataxia.”

The findings appear in the journal PLOS Genetics. The research was funded by the American Kennel Club Canine Health Foundation with additional support from the Old English Sheepdog Club of America.

Source: North Carolina State University media release