BOBTAILS IN THE WELSH CORGI PEMBROKE
(Click on any picture to see a larger image.)
When the first standard was written, it was only natural that it said "tail short, preferably natural" as a greater percentage of all pems at the time were born with natural short tails, just look at the photos of the first greats, tail length varied from terrier tail to normal, short bobs, like you can see here in Ch. Rozavel Red Dragon, whose tail is very much like the undocked bobs we normally see here today.
In her book "The Welsh Corgi" Thelma Gray writes "Many Pembrokes are born tailless or with a very short stump, though half, three-quarter and full length tails are usual" (third ed., page 41)
Where did this trait get lost, then? And old, English breeder I spoke to about this told me that when she got a bobtail in a litter, she stopped breeding from that bitch, as the bobs were so difficult to dock, and she found the docked behinds so much neater. The same applied  to all her friends in corgis. And we all know how easy it is to loose a dominant gene. This means that mostly the gene "survived" where appearances were not the main thing;- where the corgi was kept as a working dog or merely a pet, although the occational bob slipped through the breeding program in the bigger kennels as well. Stormerbanks used to get some, and in later years Peggy Gamble of the Blands pembrokes took a great interest in them and made sure the gene was preserved.
When docking ban was endforced in Scandinavia in the late 80-s, the corgi clubs in the Nordic countries all had a different approach to the problem. In Norway we opted for the natural short tial that is preferred in the standard. As we do not have the big kennels with large breeding stock, it was important that all breeders in the club pulled together and used our resources to the best of the breed, so that we could keep the saucy little behinds we were used to.
We turned to Peggy Gamble for help and several brood bitches and stud dogs were imported. We realized that breeding only from those few imports,  our gene pool would be drasticly depleted, so the long tails were looked upon as a gene bank for future generations, while the bobs were bred to our best dogs and bitches, breeding the resulting bobs to dogs with full tails again, but still getting over 50% of the pups with short tails.
Right: Tails like this in the four week old puppy will look almost non-excistant when the dog is grown.
Nothing much was known about the gene at the time we started. It was assumed it was a dominant gene with icnomplete penetrance, and we also assumed that the Welsh farmers of old would certainly not have opted for a dog with natural bobtail if this meant it was not sound and functional, which is the main thing for a working farm dog. But rumours were aplenty; the bobtail lead to lacking angulation in knee and hock, the bobtail caused kinky tails, the bobtail was related to defects in the spinal vertebrae, the bobtail lead to puppies being born without an anus, but worst of all: the bobtail gene was lethal, causing litter sizes to go down, dogs to die an early death or if they survived, they were sickly, poor doers.
Of course  some where lacking in angulation, but that was not because of the bobtail, it was because one of the parents was lacking in angulation. Bred to sound, well constructed dogs or bitches, some of the pups with short tail would inherit the construction of the sire, some of the dam, as in all breeding.
This young dog doesn't seem to be suffering from any lack, does he?
Some of the allegations were too far fetched to take seriously, others we decided to fight back not with opinions, but with facts. In this we enlisted the help of the Norwegian Kennel Club and the Norwegian Veterinary Institute and the Norwegian University Departement of Agriculture, the Corgi Club and the Kennel Club contributing the money, the others their time and knowledge.
First, both pems with natural short tails, docked pems and also those with long tails from all lines in a number concidered enough for the study to be relevant, were x-rayed and their vertebrae studied. The studies were done by professor dr. Astrid Indreboe at the Norwegian Veterinary Institute and have been published among others in our Newsletter. Her findings were conclusive; - there are no signs whatsoever that the gene for natural short tail leads to any defects in the spinal vertebrae, nor is it connected with the kinky tail that can be found in both short and long tails.
The claim that bobtails breeding lead to a decrease in litter size was easily repudiated by statistics kept by Olav Hedne for the corgi club. In fact, the first generation of bobtail breeding gave us larger litters, this probably because they were all complete outcrosses. Now, the litter size is back to normal. Also, the statistics show that no more bobtails were lost at birth or died early than other pups.
Left: These sound and healty five week old pups come from a bobtail litter of 7, bred by dr. Friedrich Middendorf in Germany.
Professor dr. Frode Lingaas at the dept. of Agriculture's Institute of Genetics, located the gene causing short tail in the Pembroke Welsh corgi, deciding it was a simple, dominant gene saying either full tail or not full tail. The actual length of the bob seems to be decided by some modifying factors. There are other genes causing short tail son other breeds, for instance the short, screwed on tail in a bulldig or the occational similar tail in boxers, which is probably a recessive gene. So his findings can only be applied to the bobtail in the Pembroke Welsh corgi.
All owners of pembrokes with natural short tails from litters of bob to bob breeding were asked to have blood samples taken from their dogs at the club's expense and the samples, after being processed by professor Lingaas, were sent to dr. Bruce Cattanach in England. He is well known for his experiment of breeding a boxer bitch to a bobtail pembroke and in 3 generations having pure boxers, recognized by the KC, with natural short tails. The only gene common left over from the pembroke was the one causing the tail. But most importantly; he is a professor of genetics with time to spend on his great interest, the genetics on dogs.
In all the samples from bob to bob breeding, he didn't find a single homozygote: one where both genes were for bobtail, while in theory 50% should have been, had the number of samples been big enough. But even in this smaller number, some ought to have been homozygotes for short tails. This leads to the conclusin that the gene in fact is a lethal one but having effect only on which eggs fertilized will develope into foeti. In case of egg and sperm both carrying the gene for short tails, that egg wil lnot "take" but be expelled. In all pregnancies, surplus eggs are expelled, so this doesn't lead to a decrease of litter size. For more information on this topic, go to http://www.steynmere.com/GENETICS.html
When some people hear that it may well be a lethal gene, they stop taking in the rest. Hopefully this will not happen here, but you will also take in the conclusion: SHould the bobtail gene be a lethal gene, the ONLY effect it will have is that there will never  be a population of 100% bobtailed pembroke corgis, even when mating just bobtails to each other. Those who are born are as healthy and sound as the rest of their genetic make up allow for. The single bobtail gene causes no ill effects whatsoever. This is also what we have seen after about 16 years of breeding for natural short tails. A little over 60% of all pups born in Norway are bobs.
The length of the tail may vary from absolutely nothing to a terrier length half tail, though most common is the bob consisting of one or two vertebrae. As the pup is new born, this looks rather long and unattractive, - the vet report on my first bobtail litter read "born with half a tail". This half tail turned out to be a typical short bob that blends nicely into the furnishing on the hind quarters (see photo).
The underside of the tail is covered in hair the same length and colour as the trousers, which makes it look very much longer than it actually is, so we trim off while lifting away the different coloured top coat, using a pair of serrated scissors, this giving it a much neater appearance.
As the docking ban is spreading throughout Europe and Australia with other countries following, the interest in bobtails is increasing. I hope that our experience can be of helo to others and that the research done on this by our scientists can help to alleviate any fears connected with the breeding of natural short tails.
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