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duskregn In reply to vaaksi [2018-11-16 22:47:35 +0000 UTC]

I didn't know and have never heard of Buhundens Venner, so that's really interesting! I'm not in buhunds myself (yet), so all the info is just what i could find online in norwegian and english 🙂 From time to time on the norwegian dog corners of the internet we get people asking about dwarf buhunds and if they're still around, because some relative or acquaintance in some distant valley had them and they couldn't find info online, and it's been piquing my interest for a few years now. All the american buhund people i've spoken to are very much in agreement with Sæland about the "dwarves", or outright deny their existence, so i've learned to take what they have to say with 5 grains of salt. Shame that so much of what Otto Opstad did has been forgotten, at least by the general dog public, in favour of Sæland 😔
By cream do you mean like a light shade of ee red? I've seen pictures of one that looked almost brindle too

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vaaksi In reply to duskregn [2018-11-21 01:00:03 +0000 UTC]

I found that bit from Gerd J:son Frodheim's book about buhunds. My oldest bu is 13 years and I heard about dwarf buhunds only couple years back (I've had the book for at least 10 years but my swedish was so rusty I had only read some parts of it ). I don't know why they are never really mentioned anywhere. They are a part of breed history!

And yes, ee. Didn't know if you were familiar with genetics so I left that out. There have been cream buhunds registered in Sweden and I even found it in the book I mentioned. It was a part where the author wrote how important it is to recognize the different colors so the registering documents are accurate. Can't be 100% sure it was "real" cream but the description fit (born white with some color between the ears and gets more color when growing). And I've also seen recent photos of one individual that has all the characteristics of ee. For a long time I suspected buhunds had this color but I never found any proof until I really read the book and then saw the photos. Never seen a brindle-like bu though! The closest was the bu with a small somatic mutation on its side but I don't think you mean that one.

Also I'm told buhunds used to have some form of dominant white-spotting. They still have "white head"-like gene but I'm not sure if that's the same dominant white spotting I've heard about. I know the Flink 1. itself had piebald offspring but if the gene was dominant it probably came from the mother (whose sire was an Icelandic sheepdog from Iceland). And Sæland mated one of his bitches with a piebald male (his color description was "kvit med svarte flekkar") from that litter. Maybe it was not that bad because it was an icelandic sheepdog -cross and not the worst kind of trash? I once wondered why buhunds with normal icie colors (like the black&tan) are not accepted when the icies were openly used in the history and they should also be descendants from the same viking dogs as buhunds but didn't really get an answer. Just things like "pure buhunds can only be sable or black".

Oh and I believe dwarfs were shown under the Buhund-Klubben Norge. There should be a photo of an old show critique in one of the Buhund groups in Facebook. It is for a regular-sized bu but it has a tick-box for Dverg Buhund. If I interpret it correctly, the year was 1998.

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duskregn In reply to vaaksi [2018-12-06 18:51:08 +0000 UTC]

I say "almost" because it's the closest thing to possible i could think of, like a very extreme version of one of those very sparse brindling types you see on some whippets, but now that you mention somatic mutations that definitely sounds like a more viable answer ^^'  That's really neat about the ee red, would be interesting to see colour testing on some buhunds i imagine, as some of the sable ones can look quite ambiguous. White heads too, that's a trait i associate more with bull breeds, terriers, and collie types and not the modern buhund, but i see Flink 1's paternal uncle (Rapp Bjelland) also had a partially white head. I do know white heads, split faces, and extreme piebald occur in lundehunds, which are closely related. Makes me wonder if perhaps the modern strict colour regulations are - in part - to set the breed apart from the others, and distinguish them from the worst kinds of trash 😏 Sæland i think also inbred buhunds quite heavily, like parent-offspring crosses? It's a bit wild that we're still so stuck on colour breeding that was decided upon in such a different era, for all breeds really.

I honestly think colour constraints, at least for colours that naturally occur in a population, is just so petty and pointless - i'm in berners and we only accept 1 colour, in a breed that is already.... not the healthiest or most genetically diverse. Lundehunds also used to come in more colours, like tricolour, if i recall correctly from a lundehund magazine i read years ago, but they lost the colour because of the near-death of the breed, not intentionally.
I've also heard mention (but not seen) a show critique with the dwarf tick box! Also, you're adding so many books to my to-read list

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