The IWDB Companion site

Welcome to the IWDB companion site. We complement our Irish Wolfhound Pedigree database at iwdb.org. This is a repository for help on the main iwdb.org site. It’s an educational resource on pedigrees. It’s a blog with things we find interesting. We aim to provide useful information for users and researchers alike.

Contribution of blood

We have added Contribution of Blood as a value in the ancestor-listings of IWDB. Interpreting these data is something some people are very used to, while it’s unknown territory for others.

Contribution of blood is an estimation of the genetic contribution made to an individual by a specific ancestor. It is given as a percentage. The base theory is that each of the parents contribute half of the genetic makeup for the offspring (50%). Each grandparent contribute a quarter (25%) each, and so on.

For each generation, the total contribution totals 100%. For each generation we go back, any single ancestor’s genetic contribution thus gets less important. A dog 10 generations back contributes less than a tenth of 1% of its genetic material to the present generation.

The contribution of blood should not be interpreted as giving a precisely accurate measure of the genetic contribution in a hound. In these calculations, the whole of generation 10 seems to be as influential as the parents. That’s not how these things work.

Look at the contribution table below, there is a cumulative effect of each generation. Each parents 50% contribution is made up of 25% from each grandparent, which is made up of 12.5% from each great-grandparent, and so on back through the generations.

Contribution-table

GenerationContribution pr appearance
150%
225%
312.5%
46.125%
53.063%
61.563%
70.781%
80.391%
90.195%
100.098%

How can I use this?

These values are useful to see which dog is more influential in a certain breeding-program. This is especially true if the breeder is linebreeding. Then one of the more interesting questions is “who are you linebreeding on?”. The contribution of blood will give a good answer to this question. Look for the hounds with high percentage in common ancestors.

If a dog’s parent is also a grandparent on the other side of the pedigree then we can see that this ancestor has contributed 75% of the genetic make up of the dog. It’s not so easy to calculate when an individual appears twice in the 4th generation, 3 times in the fifth generation and once in the 6th generation. Or if she appears 12 times in the 8th generation, 8 times in the 9th and 7 times in the tenth. It’s a very handy way to see genetic influence without having to calculate all of this yourself. When we get way back in the pedigree, it’s quite common that certain dogs appear many times in many generations, making it hard to calculate. Now IWDB can tell you how much genetic influence that ancestor has on your own dog.

Private notes

Private notes and annotations is a new feature of iwdb.org. It’s main use is for annotating pedigrees with information that may not be public or doesn’t fit in the iwdb.org framework.

What kind of info fits?

Different people will use private notes for different things. It all comes down to what’s important for you. Here’s some ideas as to what info might fit you:

  • Show results
  • Your own impression of the dog
  • Temperament
  • Known diseases and treatments
  • Confidential information like age and cause of death if not known in iwdb
  • Veteran-status
  • Semen-storage

The list could be made much longer, but we do hope you get the idea.

How is the information protected?

We take your privacy very seriously and acknowledge that private information is just that: Private information. To ensure that, all information you enter is encrypted with a special key that itself is also encrypted. Without the original key, information is gibberish. We are using state of the art encryption techniques, which means the information is safe from most intruders. Security is always a compromise between practicality and security however, and no information entered online is completely safe.

How do I add and edit info?

To use this feature you have to be logged in as a registered user of iwdb.org. If you are, adding and editing info is easy through the small text labeled Add Private info underneath each dog’s listing. Click it, and an inline editing window will show up. When you’re done, just click save. You are free to use formatting and HTML in these listings.

If you’re not a registered user, we suggest you become one. It’s free and easy. Just click the button Register/Login, choose register and enter details. You will receive a confirmation-mail which asks you to confirm. Once done, you are logged in and may start using private notes

The ringside tool

The show season is upon us. Did you know that iwdb.org works great on a mobile phone?
If you sit ringside and see a dog you like, just check it out in iwdb.org to see its breeding. Should the dog be missing, we would appreciate if very much if you notify us by email to info@iwdb.org (a snap of the catalog page is great) or just add it with the Add a litter-function when you’re back at a computer

The Research tool

iwdb.org comes with it’s very own breed research tool. It will be developed further over the next few months to give you more tools to evaluate the state of the breed. The tool is designed to get relevant data for one or more countries in a certain timeframe.

Right now we are listing the number of litters born, average number of litters per year, average litter size, average and highest coefficient of inbreeding and the same for number of ancestors. All these data are plotted along a timeline so it’s easy to see how development has been. We are also listing origin of parents and the frequency of animals used in breeding.
The tool is available here: http://iwdb.org/research/
Feel free to contact us if there’s tools you really need, but we don’t have available yet.