Breed Page

Havana Silk Dog — BetterBred Breed Page – BetterBred.com
BetterBred Breed Profile

Havana Silk Dog

Temperament: Outgoing, self-confident, and lively. Havana Silk Dogs are playful, curious, and intelligent companions - bred specifically to excel as family dogs and therapy prospects. They are good with children and other animals, and adapt well to a range of households.
Height: 9-11 inches (23-28 cm)
Weight: 8-14 pounds (3.6-6.4 kg)
Life Span: 14-16 years
Outlier Index ?
0.45
Born before 2016: 0.42 Born after 2024: 0.47
Avg Genetic Rel. ?
0.00
Born before 2016: 0.00 Born after 2024: -0.02
Internal Relatedness ?
-0.05
Born before 2016: 0.03 Born after 2024: -0.03
Havana Silk Dog
#NameGender OIAGRIR
1 Maplewood Silk Romance Sun-Kissed Sienna F 0.55 -0.02 -0.15
2 Silk Romance Sporty F 0.32 0.03 -0.01
3 Silk Romance Baby F 0.50 -0.02 -0.14
4 Maplewood Prince Ollie of Maryland M 0.40 -0.01 -0.01
5 Tyburn Woods Flower M 0.61 -0.10 -0.04
6 Tyburn Woods Tanger M 0.62 -0.08 0.03
7 Tyburn Woods Geno M 0.68 -0.06 -0.14
8 Tyburn Woods Sidney M 0.49 -0.01 -0.09
9 BellaLuz Bellatrix Female Warrior1 F 0.43 0.04 -0.22
10 Esperansa F 0.25 0.06 0.08
The Havana Silk Dog is a restored breed - a recreation of a small companion dog seen in Cuban paintings and historical records, developed from post-revolutionary Cuban dogs that also gave rise to the modern Havanese. The Havana Silk Dog is more refined than the Havanese, with a silkier coat, and is maintained by a dedicated breed club with strict health and conformation requirements for all founding stock. The breed represents a preservation effort to maintain what founders felt were the historically authentic characteristics of the small Cuban companion dog.
View Official Breed Standard →
As a young breed built on actively screened founders, the Havana Silk Dog has a carefully managed health profile. Typical small-breed issues - patellar luxation, Legg-Calve-Perthes disease, dental concerns, and progressive retinal atrophy - are monitored. All breeding stock is screened according to breed club requirements.
VGL has reported Havana Silk Dogs carrying an average of around 6.48 alleles across the 33 STR loci, with an effective allele count near 3.87. Those are respectable numbers for a recently restored breed with a small founder base, and reflect the breed community's attention to genetic diversity from the outset. VGL testing has found Havana Silk Dogs with observed heterozygosity slightly above expected, giving a modestly negative inbreeding coefficient. That is an encouraging breed-wide signal and reflects the breed club's active work to maintain diversity during the restoration and establishment process.

Average metrics by birth year for dogs with recorded birthdates in the BetterBred database.

A 3D genetic map of enrolled Havana Silk Dog dogs in the BetterBred database, based on allele-sharing distance across 33 STR loci. This is not a complete picture of the breed — it reflects only dogs whose owners have enrolled them. Drag to rotate · scroll to zoom · hover for dog names (public profiles only).

Historical founders — oldest 25% of enrolled dogs     Current gene pool — most recent 50% of enrolled dogs
Building plot… this may take a minute for larger breeds.

The Dog Leukocyte Antigen (DLA) region controls immune function and is the most polymorphic portion of the canine genome. Every dog carries two sets of DLA haplotypes — one from each parent — which almost never recombine across generations. Frequency percentages reflect how often each haplotype appears across all allele copies in the breed, not the percentage of dogs carrying it.

Class I Haplotypes

HaplotypeFrequency
1068
24.6%
1092
20.0%
1016
9.1%
1117
7.3%
1003
6.4%
1054
6.4%
1116
5.5%
1115
5.5%
1030
3.6%
1006
2.7%
1262
2.7%
1093
2.7%
1040
1.8%
1140
0.9%
1029
0.9%

Class II Haplotypes

HaplotypeFrequency
2053
26.4%
2003
25.5%
2066
9.1%
2074
7.3%
2001
6.4%
2022
6.4%
2070
5.5%
2023
3.6%
2005
2.7%
2007
2.7%
2032
2.7%
2075
0.9%
2016
0.9%

Class I & II Combinations

Class IClass IIFrequency
1068 2053
24.6%
1092 2003
20.0%
1016 2066
9.1%
1117 2074
7.3%
1003 2001
6.4%
1054 2022
6.4%
1115 2003
5.5%
1116 2070
5.5%
1030 2023
3.6%
1006 2007
2.7%
1093 2032
2.7%
1262 2005
2.7%
1040 2053
1.8%
1029 2075
0.9%
1140 2016
0.9%

The Canine Diversity Test from UC Davis Veterinary Genetics Laboratory is the foundation of BetterBred’s breed management tools. Testing your dog adds to the breed database and gives you access to the full suite of breeding analysis tools.

Order from UC Davis VGL →
OI
Outlier Index

The Outlier Index (OI) measures how unusual a dog’s allele combination is relative to the tested population of its breed. A higher OI means the dog carries alleles at lower frequencies across the breed — genetic variants that are underrepresented in the population as a whole.

Dogs with high OI are genetically valuable because they carry diversity that most other tested dogs don’t share. Breeding them thoughtfully into the broader population helps redistribute lower-frequency alleles rather than allowing them to become even rarer over generations.

The breed average shown here reflects all dogs tested in the BetterBred database. The senior and youngster comparisons show whether diversity is trending up or down in recent generations.
AGR
Average Genetic Relatedness

Average Genetic Relatedness (AGR) measures how similar a dog’s DNA is, on average, to every other tested dog in the breed. It reflects the dog’s mean kinship — how closely related it is to the population as a whole.

A lower AGR means the dog is more genetically distinct from the majority of the breed. Dogs with low AGR carry alleles at lower frequencies across the tested population, making them higher-priority candidates for inclusion in a well-managed breeding program.

AGR is conceptually related to mean kinship used in conservation genetics for managed species populations. A declining AGR average in younger dogs suggests the breed is successfully redistributing genetic diversity across generations.
IR
Internal Relatedness

Internal Relatedness (IR) measures how much identical genetic material an individual dog inherited from both parents. IR is a useful indicator of inbreeding: lower IR generally reflects lower inbreeding, and it is widely used and reported in the scientific literature.

A high IR is not the cause for alarm it might appear. Elevated IR can often be resolved in a single generation by pairing with a dog whose ancestry is less represented in the breed. It is a signpost, not a sentence.

BetterBred reports IR for reference, but it is not our primary breeding guidance tool. OI and AGR together give a more complete and actionable picture of a dog’s genetic value to the population.

AGR tells you which dogs are genetically unusual relative to the population. OI tells you which dogs are most valuable to preserve. OI specifically weights mid-frequency alleles, identifying dogs whose ancestry is underrepresented in a way most likely to benefit the breed.