Researching pedigrees is an essential step for any responsible breeder of English Toy Terriers when planning a mating.
The first step is identifying the dogs on both sides (sire and dam) of the pedigree for the potential puppy and then building a picture of the health of the dogs in the pedigree.
Who is in the pedigree
There are two main tools to look up English Toy Terrier pedigrees:
- The Royal Kennel Club Database – the de facto record of registrations of English Toy Terriers in the UK, searched through the RKC’s Health Test Results Finder.
- The Manchester and English Toy Terrier Breed Archive – a global community-sourced database of Manchester and English Toy Terriers to create a Global Breed Archive.
When researching pedigrees, most people look back at the family tree – sire & dam, grandsires and granddams, etc. This is a vertical pedigree (like the one shown above). It is good practice to also look at a pedigree ‘horizontally’, identifying litter mates and other siblings of the sire & dam, and equally for dogs of previous generations in the pedigree.
Online Test Matings and COI Lookup
The Breed Archive has a useful ‘Testmating’ tool that allows you to build a clickable pedigree for a hypothetical mating: Testmating Tool
The RKC site has a Coefficient of Inbreeding (COI) look up tool, which can also calculate the potential COI of a hypothetical mating: Inbreeding Coefficient (COI) Lookup
Building a picture of health from the pedigree
- Health Test Results – for more recent generations in the pedigree, find out what health tests were performed on each dog in the pedigree and the results of those tests.
- Speak to owners and breeders of the dogs in the pedigree to learn about the health issues that have affected the dogs in the pedigree, and their conformation and movement. Responsible breeders are more than happy to share information about their dogs in the interests of producing healthy English Toy Terriers for future generations.
- Conformation – the Breed Archive has many photographs of the dogs listed in the archive which gives you a visual to assess the conformation of each dog in the pedigree against the Breed Standard, particularly helpful if you are not able to see those dogs in person (e.g. if they are in a different country or deceased). We also recommend that you search for additional photographs and any available video footage of the dogs in the pedigrees.