Scout's Paw Tracks

Sunday, April 23, 2006

Scout takes 2 Points in Bloomington IN KC

Scout rounds out the year with a Winners Dog for two points.  We were hoping the major would hold but alais it did not.  We are thrilled with the win and want to thank Patty Huffman for watching out for our young man while in Indiana.  This is the first time Scout has gone out with a handler.  I only hope he was not to much of a spas.  Photos should be posted in a few weeks.

This will be it for Scout until sometime in September.  It is off to field training for 90 days, we will miss having him around it was really strange not having him here for the weekend and Blade paced alot the first day looking for him.  It was a little like where is Scout, where is Scout, where is Scout, oh the cat, um where is Scout, where is Scout, oh the cat. =D

September and the start of field competition we will be attending a mix of shows upon his return mainly looking for majors.  Blade we are going to hold back for another couple of months for some finishing training.

Saturday, April 22, 2006

Pedigree Database How To Guide

The record you see above is an example of the results from a search in the Pedigree Database. I wanted to speak today about some of the features and where we are in the data investigation we are performing. First lets start with the record. It includes the name, {color, sex} registration number, date of birth. The second line is the sire x dam (notice that any titles or awards are listed in red). The third line is a series of link options you can select for more details.

Pedigree w/ links - this option list the pedigree in a standard child parents model everyone is accustom to seeing. Each child and parent are listed and if they have links to their pedigree you can select them and see the next pedigree using that dog as the starting point. Example: I select Fido 5 generations I see his record and select the Pedigree w/ links. While looking over the pedigree I see the 5th generation grandparents have links. I can click on one of those links and them start the pedigree from that point back another 5 generations. Note if you selected to run a 10 generation pedigree and you select a 10th generation grandparent you will get 10 generations for that grandparent. What this basically allows you to do is track backwards though a specific bloodline.

Pedigree w/o links - Is basically the same as above without links it is more for people that want to print a pedigree without the names being underlined.

Breeding Info - Shows all the breeding information for a specific dog, parents, littermates, full siblings, half siblings Male side and half siblings Female side. It will also show breeding info who they were breed with and names and links of pups produced.

Trail Pedigree - This shows what if’s, what if I bred dog A to Bitch B what would the offspring pedigree look like. Currently the web version does not support showing an in breeding coefficient.

Reverse Pedigree - Is exactly that start with a grandparent and it build the prodigy listing of that dog.

That hopefully explains how the database records work.

Currently there are over 6,700 German Shorthaired Pointers listed in the database. A word of caution, I am always on the look out for validated information, not all records have been validated about 50% have been validated. Some records you may notice do not list a dog as a Champion or award they may have earned. One of two things could be the reason. Either I have not confirmed the record with 2 independent sources or I have confirmed the record. I only record information I can confirm from an broadly accepted source. Paw Village is not an accepted source as the records in Paw Village are put in there by individuals without validation. While I do us Paw Village as one of our investigative tools as well as World Pedigrees I take the information gathered from there and use it as a starting point to search foreign stud book and AKC records. If those records indicate titles they are included as part of the record if they do no then they are removed during validation.

If you believe a dog has been awarded a title and it is not properly listed I recommend contacting the proper registry to have the data corrected. I seem to run into this more with AFC titles where the dog is listed as an Ameture Field Champion but the AKC does not have them recorded as so. Once it has been corrected send me a message and I will make the correction in our data sources.

Monday, April 17, 2006

Easter Egg Hunting

We wish you all a Happy Easter.  We spent a good deal of time with friends and family and as you can see from here the boys had a good time running the back 2 acres.  Enough so that Blade actually laid down. =D

Wednesday, April 12, 2006

Web Site Review: Food and Drug Administration's Center for Veterinary Medicine

How many of you were aware of the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) website for pets?  Probably not many people know of this site but it does exist.  How many of you have been fustrated by rumours or inaccurate information about recalls and products unsafe for pets?

Most people are concerned pet owners, handlers and breeders, that is not to say everyone cares but they are in the minority.  There are various useful sites with accurate information for all of us.  One of those sites is the FDA’s Center for Veterinary Medicine (CVM). 

This site contains recall alerts, tips and information that impact a broad range of information useful to all of us.  They cover everything from dog food to adverse drug reactions.

Consumer fliers contain useful information posted by the FDA covering a wide spectum of subjects including why turtles are a dangerous pet for children, how to read pet food labels, and more technical fliers on “How the FDA regulates Veterinary devices.”

I would highly recommend bookmarking thier site and paying it occassional visits or better yet sign up for thier e-mail alerts and have news stories sent to your inbox.

How useful was this article what do you have to say on the subject?  Select the comments link below this article to let your opinion be heard.

Pedigree Database Updates

The German Shorthaired Pointer database has been updated with numerous new dogs and a continuation of the data clean up I have been performing over the past few weeks.  With over 6,600 records in the database we currently have about a 99.96% data accuracy rate.

I am always on the look out for pedigree’s to add to the database.  If you have a file you would like to send me you can send it to
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The goal is to have over 10,000 dogs in the database by years end with a 99.999% accuracy rate and to add 10,000 dogs a year in 2007, 2008, and 2009.

We do not plan to change the interface with the database but we do hope to add new features, specifically the ability to add records and validation links directly to the database.  Unlike many on-line pedigree database ours only includes German Shorthaired Pointers.

If you know PHP programming and MySQL and would like to help with this conversion please contact me.  Currently the application is CGI based.  The XML format can be located here.  This file is exported into XML format from Breedmate.  Breedmate is the application I use to store pedigree’s locally. 

The Web based version is from Alfirin Technologies.