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Swedish Vallhund — BetterBred Breed Page – BetterBred.com
BetterBred Breed Profile

Swedish Vallhund

Temperament: Intelligent, happy, and eager to please. Swedish Vallhunds are compact herding dogs with big-dog energy and working-breed drive. They are generally good with children and other dogs, enjoy training and dog sports, and need real daily exercise. Sheds seasonally and needs regular grooming.
Height: Males: 12.5-13.75 inches (32-35 cm), Females: 11.5-12.75 inches (29-32 cm)
Weight: 20-35 pounds (9-16 kg)
Life Span: 12-15 years
Outlier Index ?
0.34
Born before 2016: 0.35 Born after 2024: 0.31
Avg Genetic Rel. ?
-0.01
Born before 2016: -0.01 Born after 2024: 0.01
Internal Relatedness ?
0.01
Born before 2016: -0.01 Born after 2024: 0.02
Swedish Vallhund
#NameGender OIAGRIR
1 Zi Ti Qato M 0.28 0.07 0.04
2 Beidelyn My Lovely Lady F 0.26 0.01 0.16
3 FF-N-RR Ube The Potato F 0.32 0.05 -0.17
4 Kleinhaus Storybook Hero's Journey F 0.18 -0.02 0.36
5 Kaagzicht Miss Shining Gunn ST F 0.37 0.03 -0.08
6 Windstorm's Under the Sky So Blue at Luna Sea M 0.27 -0.02 0.23
7 Valkyrie's Can't Put Baby in the Corner F 0.26 0.00 0.21
8 Windstorm's Once Upon a Time in Hopeland M 0.30 0.00 0.06
9 Valltineya Lasso Ur dreams F 0.32 0.00 0.13
10 Windstorm's Bright Light, Shine Through The Dark F 0.24 0.06 -0.03
The Swedish Vallhund - also known as the Västgötaspets or "Swedish cow dog" - is the national breed of Sweden, with roots going back over a thousand years as a working farm dog, herder of cattle, and general rural companion. Historically a landrace, the breed came within a handful of dogs of extinction during and just after World War II. It was reformed by a small group of Swedish citizens who located the remaining dogs that best represented the breed type and rebuilt the population from that narrow base. The breed's modern genetic profile reflects that dramatic bottleneck.
View Official Breed Standard →
Progressive retinopathy, allergies, hemophilia, spinal/vertebrae issues, and epilepsy are the main concerns. Hip dysplasia and patellar luxation also occur. Like most small long-backed breeds, intervertebral disc disease can be an issue.
VGL has reported Swedish Vallhunds carrying an average of around 5.15 alleles across the 33 STR loci, with an effective allele count near 2.57. Both numbers are on the lower end and reflect the narrow post-war founder base. In a breed this constrained, every rare allele matters more than it would in a broader population, and preserving them should be a priority. VGL testing has found Swedish Vallhunds with observed heterozygosity essentially equal to expected, giving an inbreeding coefficient near zero. That is a genuinely good breed-wide signal given how severe the post-war bottleneck was - it suggests breeders are doing a real job of distributing what diversity exists. The limitation is that the diversity pool itself is small, not that it is being mismanaged.

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

A 3D genetic map of enrolled Swedish Vallhund 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
37.6%
1006
22.5%
1177
17.5%
1178
15.9%
1009
5.5%
1259
0.9%
1179
0.2%

Class II Haplotypes

HaplotypeFrequency
2053
54.3%
2007
22.7%
2084
17.4%
2022
5.5%
2066
0.1%

Class I & II Combinations

Class IClass IIFrequency
1068 2053
37.6%
1006 2007
22.6%
1177 2084
17.5%
1178 2053
15.9%
1009 2022
5.5%
1259 2053
0.9%
1179 2007
0.2%
1177 2066
0.1%

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 →
Ausled Swedish Vallhunds
Victoria, AUS
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Naraena
France
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Torvall Swedish Vallhunds
NZ
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Vallarity Swedish Vallhunds
NZ
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BetterBred does not personally endorse or recommend any listed kennel. Visitors are responsible for conducting their own research, including verifying health testing records and speaking directly with breeders. List your kennel →

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.