This picture is taken in Göteborg, 1943. From the left the dogs are:  Jessi, Tyra and Jerry.

More pure Swedish Vallhunds were found!

The public interest to this breed started to grow. Björn von Rosen had written articles about the ancient breed in the national Swedish newspaper, Svenska Dagbladet.  Zettersten still had his Scottish Terriers, but people started to ask for Vallhund puppies from him and then he decided to start a breeding program himself.

He started to ask about the breed from his old students and continued his biking tours around the countryside in order to find more suitable individuals. With help of his former student he succeeded in finding a female "Tyra".  She was grey with a white breast, strong body and head. Also she had the right length of legs.  Her father was Nicke,  whose parents were unknown, but Tyras motherline was known in three generations - Vivan I, Vivan II and Vivan III.

The three Vallhunds who were shown officially in a dog show in Göteborg 1943, were Jerry, his sister Jessi and Tyra.  Tyra was the first registered mother  in Zettersten´s Vallhund Kennel Borghälla.  Father in this Borghälla A-litter was Jerry. At that time they didn´t register the puppies when they were born. Some of the puppies didn´t get registered at all and the one´s who did, got it much later - after 6 months or a year.

It is very difficult to find out who was whose mother and father because in the beginning there were a lot of dogs with the same name.  At that time as they didn´t have any registration numbers it was sometimes almost impossible to know for sure.

For example,  the model of the breed, Topsy and  Vivi came from the same breeder, farmer Herman Johansson. In the catalogue of the first show it said that Vivis parents were unknown but later, in some articles it is said that she was Topsy´s daughter...

This is  Vivi, she was one of the first finds, too. It is not sure if she is from unknown parents or if she is a daughter of Topsy…  or maybe she was even Topsy´s grandaughter…  Vivi had quite a lot of white marks  and she was also, for sure, the mother of Tessan, who was part of the first  classification. Zettersten bought Tessan and mated her with a son of Mopsen, Pelle. From this combination was born the first Champion of the breed, namely  Borghälla Delila.

Tessan,  father unknown and mother Vivi

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Clear and simple breeding program that we should remember every now and then...

So, this is how we got the Swedish Vallhund. It is amazing how vital this breed is when we think of how narrow was the breeding material they started with…  But earlier, when the farmers didn´t have any breeding standards to look, they had very good and simple orders in their "breeding program",  which we should honour and think of every now and then, too!

Their rules in breeding were:

* SV:s should be able to take care of the herding of cattle.

* They  should look like grandfathers dogs used to look

* They should watch the garden and be alert, if someone came.

"The Vallhund hunting" continued...

And actually it  goes on even nowadays. They still take into breed register dogs that do not have registered parents if the dog clearly is a swedish vallhund.