The Nova Scotia Duck Tolling Retriever

Conformation The toller should have an foxlike apperance, and give an impression of strenght and agility. It's the smallest of the retriever breeds, males between 48-51 and bitches between 45-48, in both cases +/- 3 cm. Weight should be between 17-20 kg for bitches and 20-22 for males. Colour should be red or orange and white markings is desireble. The markings can be placed on the paws, breast, head or tail. If the dog has a white collar, white spot in the neck or long white stockings it has too much of white and can not be a showdog. On the other hand, dogs without markings is accepted. The nose can be fleshcoloured or black. The black nose is often bleaked when the dogs gets older, but you can find old tollers with very black nose, too. Bitches with bleaked black nose usually get a very dark nosecolour after giving birth. Dogs with black nose can give puppies with both black and fleshcoloured nose, but dogs with a fleshy nose can never give puppies with dark nose. There are colorus that is wrong, most commom is the buff and the one's with black in coat. Black in coat Tollers with black in coat usually looses the black hairs sometime during the first year. It's not so common to meet grown-up dogs with black in coat. Because black in coat is depending on a dominant gene, will a dog with black in coat also leave puppies with black hair in coat. On average, over a big amount of litters, half of the puppies will have black in coat. A dog which never had a single black hair can never leave puppies with it. Buff A dog that is buff, lacks any shade of red or orange in coat. They can be light beige/grey or nearly silvercoloured. Unlike the black in coat, this colour depends on a recessive gene, a dog with the right colour can have buff puppies. Pretty often it seems like the dogs with very dark colour carry the buff gene. Except this, there are for example brown tollers and brown and red tollers with tan markings. All these colours have in common that they are not allowed by the standard. Temperament The toller is a pretty tough, stubborn and independent dog, but still with a will to please. It is a very vivid dog, a bit like a border collie but with the retrievers ability to be cool if nothing happens. It is a bit more reserved to strangers than the average retriever, but not shy. But to people they know, are they often very enthusistic. Socilazation is very important, toller puppies shopul get used to many differnt environments and people. They have a great working ability and are often hard to make tired. They are brave and with propper socialization easily adapted to new situations. You train your toller best firm but kind. To be able to get the best out of your dog, you should be willing to spend lots of time training your dog, one way or another. A toller which doesn't get trained, will find his own hobbies. Not allways so very nice one's, they can be really terrible. Health As most breeds, the toller has some healthproblems. But in generall it is a very healthy breed. Joints The frequency of hipdysplasia is usually about 12 %, but it seems like the number of failed dogs are going down. There are som dogs with artrosis, too, but the figure was as low as 2 % for 1998. Eyediseases There are two main eyediseases, PRA and cataract. There are several different types of cataract, all of them are not known as inherited. PRA is short for Progressiv Retinal Atrofi and means that the retina is slowly degenerated. With a slit lamp you can se signs of PRA at the age of 3-4 years, with the ERG at maybe 1,5 year. Cataract is only detected with the slit lamp. The result of PRA is that the dog gets blind, but tollers seem to get into that stage pretty late. today there are 10 swedish tollers with PRA and about the same amount of dogs with cataract. Autoimmune diseases About 3 % of the Swedish tollers get some kind of autoimmune diseases, often at the age of 6-12 months. The signs could be neck- and/or joint stiffness, high fever. The most common diagnozis is artrithis or meningithis. The dog is cured by a long treatment with cortison, very slowly taken away. Other healthproblems with the same syptmoms is primarily lymphoedema, hyperthyroidea or SLE. But still is the toller in general a healthy breed. Mainpage | News

Helen Häggström
agrosofen@spray.se
Changed 24-02-2001
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© Helen 1999-2001