My interest for Shetland
Sheepdogs and pedigrees started in 1969/70 when I began the work
with the first Norwegian Handbook about the breed in Norway.
This Handbook was given out by the breed club in 1971. The first
Sheltie came to Norway just before 1950. The activity was slow
up to 1960. The breed club (Norsk Shetland Sheepdog Klubb) was
founded in 1964.
When my husband Helge
and I bought our very first Sheltie in 1968 we come in contact
with a young club where the enthusiastic members used their spare
time and own money in their work for our fantastic breed. Already
told our breed club had been founded only four years earlier.
The first Sheltie in our home was Norwegian bred and her name
was "Cover Girl", her father was N Ch Willowstone Wiseman
who was an import from England - the breeds orgin country. With
this my interest started for pedigrees - and my interest grew
when we bought our first English Handbook with the Charts Lines and Families.....
Look
at this: A
pedigree as an example to show how Lines and Families is "spread"
in this one....
Line
=
father, grandfather, great grandfather and so on .....
CHE and BB are the two main Lines. There were five more that
sired CC winners in England: LJA, TRP, IH, LWW and DL - but there
are no modern dogs carrying on any of these.
Family
=
mother, grandmother, great grandmother and so on ......
This is the female Families and in England there were 25 Families.
As time went by some of these Family numbers died out - as there
are none "branch" ending up with CC winners of today.
As you will see from the Family numbers below we also have a
Family 26 here in Scandinavia.
The English Shetland
Sheepdog Club's Handbooks was unique, and I felt very honored
when I got the opportunity to meet miss Felicity Rogers who had
created the English Charts with Lines and Families. It was great
to get help from Felicity with "the missing link" when
I in my work in tracing the Norwegian owned CC winners back to
the English Charts. It was while we did this work we ended up
with a Family (lather named Family 26) traced back to unregistered
bitches for some generations - and there had never been bred
CC winners in England in this Family. I then asked Felicity to
use the next unused Family number - and this was Family 26. This
is why the Family 26 not can be found on the English Charts.
As known the misses Felicity and Patience Rogers - owners of
the Riverhill Shetland Sheepdog - well known all over the world
as breeders of quality Shelties in a great number both in England
and in other countries. When the Riverhill sisters died their
Riverhill prefix ended up as e legend - still today people talk
about the Riverhill Shelties as very special !
How to read the
Charts
(pages linked above): After the dogs name you can see the colour
of the dog (s = sable, t = tricolour, bm = blue merle). All names
on a Line
Chart
are dogs except for some names in the end of some "branches"
where you find the letter F (F=female) after the name and colour -
and all names on a Family
Chart
are bitches except for some names in the end of some "branches"
where you find the letter M (M=male) after the name and colour. When
a dog is exported from Great Britain this is written in parenthesis
in connection to the dogs name. GB = Great Britain. N = Norway
S = Sweden. The year when the dog was exported is listed). When
a dog here in Scandinavia is made up he get the title Uch. Dog
names marked in dark
writing are
Champions or CC winners.
Back to Leeland Homepage
How the Norwegian Lines and Families
got on the Charts