Here, I will try to show of the breed was recreated from the study of the pedigrees of a few dogs which counted. It will be the occasion to show on some real examples how the inbreeding computations are done.
A quick look at the history can be useful to understand the problem we faced in the 70's: the breed didn't exist anymore in a few bastards which had Bourbonnais ancestors and one had to extract this blood to recreate the breed.
When I found the notes my father was keeping at this time, I could understand afterwards the principles he used for his kennel:
We are going to study a little bit more " Uno du Rocher des Jastres " because he was the first Bourbonnais being at the same time beauty and field trial champion of all the history of the breed. He was also the sire the most used in this period because he was believed to "breed true", we will find the cause of this in his high inbreeding coefficient. Then, we will examine the case of "Vénus de la Bénigousse", because she formed with Uno the star couple of the end of the 80's. And then, we will examine the case of "Extra du Pontelle de Maicou", who, with a product of Uno and Vénus, formed the star couple of the beginning of the 90's.
He is Uno's pedigree presented in a new way: each ancestor in present only one time. The interest of this kind of representation is that one can visually see the genetic contribution of a subject by counting the number of arrows starting from him. I put in red the common ancestors to the father and mother of Uno, hence those which bring some inbreeding.
If you are lost with this representation, you can always have the same pedigree with the more classical representation in blue and pink:click here.
For those who are not afraid of calculations, here are the inbreeding calculations for those dogs, I detailed them in an Excel sheet: click here.
You only need toe know that the result is 19%, most of this inbreeding coming from Rasteau/Pyrrhus.
Here is now "Vénus de la Bénigousse" pedigree, with the same representation:
One can see that the dogs are almost the same, however, apart from the presence of Oural (Orion's brother), there are a few important additions: "Maxi", a dog from M. Poma, and "Lina/Gina", the bitch found under Voguë bridge, brought their contribution thanks to "Happiness Bulldogs Salluste". "Piruit/Diane", the bitch found latter in Paris, also permitted, with her marriage with "Luron du Rocher des Jastres", to bring some inbreeding on this latter dog, who was the first trialer of the breed. Those few additions enabled Vénus to have a genetic heritage different enough from Uno to be able to be married with him. I don't enter into the details, but Vénus has got an inbreeding of about 17%, the biggest contributor to it being "Luron du Rocher des Jastres", for 7,75%.
If one compute the inbreeding of the product of those two dogs, it is 19%, the same as Uno.
And indeed, the two of them produced a number of nice dogs when married together, becoming as I said before, the star couple of the end of the 80's. Among their offspring was "Folie de la Bénigousse", which, married to "Extra du Pontelle de Maicou", formed the star couple of the beginning of the 9'0s.
And then, here is Extra's pedigree:
Here, things are simpler: we have the same dogs as before, but this time the inbreeding is much less. In fact, the inbreeding on Rasteau/Pyrrhus and Java is small (a little bit more than 2%), and the one on "Luron du Rocher des Jastres" is quite important: the pathOvni-Luron-Raffut-Vania-Chinon has 5 dogs, then Luron contributes for 3,125% to the inbreeding of Extra, which is totally not much more than 5%. This quite low inbreeding explains why Extra, great champion, didn't really breed true.
I will continue latter the genetic history of the Bourbonnais by studying what happened in the 90's.