Talk:Icelandic Sheepdog

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Welcome![edit]

Homage

see also[edit]

Note: will be moved to meta or Wiktionary Gangleri 23:23, 2004 Oct 3 (UTC)

Maintenance issues[edit]

  • All alternative forms as of the name (as Icelandic Spitz, ...) should be created as REDIRECT's. [1] shows (between others) such REDIRECTS's to Icelandic Sheepdog existing already.
  • The links to all existing aricles in other Wikipedias should be maintened simuntaneously. Example: nl:Hond refers allready to the nonexistent article nl:IJslandse Hond. If such an article / stub is created, [[nl:IJslandse Hond]] should be added to all existing articles / stubs for languages, where the equivalent article / stub exists already.
  • Before the cross reference / link section to other Wikipedias the categories should be preserved whereever possible in order to maintain a common structure between the Wikipedias. In en.wikipedia we have for example [[Category:Dog breeds]] [[Category:Iceland]]. If a new language does not have this categories already a <!--- hidden note / comment ---> should be inserted in the editable text.

Rewritten Gangleri 23:23, 2004 Oct 3 (UTC)

Warnings[edit]

  • Special attention should be paid to references / links to Wikipedias in other languages because at the moment there is no global all Wikipedias Whatlinkshere available. Example: [[is:Íslenskur fjárhundur]] changed to [[is:Íslenski fjárhundurinn]] (more details see below in the section Why Icelanders talk about Íslenski fjárhundurinn and not Íslenskur fjárhundur). In such cases the original form should not be removed before all linking artikels (also those linking from other Wikipdias) are adjusted properly.

Rewritten Gangleri 23:23, 2004 Oct 3 (UTC)

FCI 289[edit]

Dear friends,
a) today / tonight I realised that FCI misspelled the Icelandic name for the Icelandic Sheepdog. It should be "Íslenskur fjárhundur" and not "Islenskur fjárhundur". This is like writing "Ingland" or "Ongland" and not "England".
I will discuss this issue with ISIC - the Icelandic Sheepdog International Committee .
b) The names displayed at "Alternative names" are not correct. How they can be changed? - done -
Kveðja / Gruß / Salutas / Best regards
Reinhardt (Gangleri)

To change the names, click Edit This Page and change them. :-) I fixed the spelling (yes, we just had a typo somewhere along the line) and added one alternative name from the web site you mention above. I don't know where the full list of alternative names came from; another user did a lot of research ahead of time to find different ways that different breeds are called and you could probably ask about the additional names on her talk page: User talk:Sannse. Elf | Talk 05:14, 21 Sep 2004 (UTC)
Basically, I used the FCI pages, the kennel club pages, various sites (such as dogbreedinfo) and various books. I just added all the variations I could find and verify to my spreadsheet. I didn't repeat the exercise to check it through, which explains the many errors we have since found! I think the biggest of those I made was with accents. So many sites seemed to use unaccented characters that I thought they were not important when writing for an English speaking audience, I now know better. At least in this case I can blame the FCI ;) -- sannse (talk) 07:27, 22 Sep 2004 (UTC)

more about alternative names[edit]

Dear Elf,
Thanks for your answer. I was thinkning a lot about the different categories of names.
I would always start with the alternative name(s) from the country of origin, as "Íslenskur Fjárhundur" in this case.
Then the alternative names of the current language as you did.
There are three things more to handle:

  • Misspelled forms widly used as (not "Islenskur fjárhundur") in this case. Wikipedia should use a standard convention for this. If you delete the wrong name another user may insert it again thinking it is a valid one. This can go forever.
  • Latin names as Canis islandicus in The history of the dog in Britain.
  • A list of translations as "Islandsk Fårehund" dk: and no: , "Islandhund" de: . How this could be done automaticaly. I have many variants from fr: fi: es: eo: and so on.

Another item to discuss is the term "Friaar dog". http://www.google.com/search?num=100&as_epq=%22friaar_dog%22 does not show much. Who realy used this term?
Regards

You might want to visit the WikiProject Dog breeds and read existing notes about articles & tables. For example, for the list of alternative names, it says: "Other names by which the breed is known. The list of names for the breed in the FCI standards is a good starting point; also can include common breed names from other English-speaking countries." So we don't include all names that the dog is known by in all languages, only those used by English-language speakers since this is an English wikipedia; the others would appear only on translations of that page into the other languages. (And many of the dog breeds do have pages in the other-language wikipedias; for example, Airedale Terrier has 3 other language pages.)
Not sure what you mean by using a standard convention for commonly misspelled names. I don't think there's any way to avoid it. You can put notes on the talk page (as you did here). Latin names are iffy, since I don't think the scientific community recognizes different species of domestic dog, but it's certainly worth a mention in the article on the hsitory of the breed. Elf | Talk 16:09, 21 Sep 2004 (UTC)
Common misspellings can be made into redirects. If it's very common it can be mentioned in the text ("commonly misspelled as 'sanse'"). But otherwise we should just use the correct spelling ourselves. A note here is a good idea if the the word keeps getting "fixed", with information to verify which is the correct spelling -- sannse (talk) 07:27, 22 Sep 2004 (UTC)

to Sannse | talk Sannse : Asking for help[edit]

Thanks Elf, Dear Sannse,
Regarding my previous post on "misspelled name forms widly used" I suggest that these should be listed to. "strike" would do the job. Example "Islenskur fjárhundur".
Have you found the alternative name "Friaar Dog ?" at other sources then dogomania using google.com "friaar dog"? The Icelandic search engine leit.is "friaar dog" does not show any site. At some point Italic and questionmark could be used for these variants.
Regarding names in other national languages links to Wiktionary as Wiktionary:Dog or Wiktionary:Dog#Translations could be inserted.
In the case of "Icelandic Sheepdog" "Islandsk Fårehund" should be remouved because it is Danish, Norwegian ... and there is a / there will be some links to xx.wikipedia.org sites.
Maybe there will be also a point in time to automaticaly generate a list of the names in other languages and place it at a to be defined position. (Before the link section or whereever.)
There is one name / are some names left: "Canis islandicus" / "Canis familiaris islandicus" The history of the dog in Britain . It could be also mentioned in the text but then no automatic processing would be possible.
I search many hours a day on the internet and have problems in many languages with the forms in singular and plural, with article and not. Maybe it has been discussed in www.wikipedia.org so far not to define different forms as de:Islandhund and de:Islandhunde as I did also for Special:Whatlinkshere&target=Icelandic_Sheepdog . I normaly search for dogs and for one dog only . If a wikipedia contribution is written about a dog then the aricle the will be there too. Then "Íslenskur fjárhundur" changes to "Íslenski fjárhundurinn" (The Icelandic Sheepdog) and search will be much more complicated. Do you know anything about how to avoid all this?
I have seen some Wikipedia pages where the references to other categories and other xx.wikipedia sites are placed at the top of the document. This is quite practical in order to link all the sites together. For me it would be suitable to alphabeticaly order the xx.wikipedia prefixes. This normaly is faster.
These days I will add a section with reference links at the end of this page. I placed the en:Talk:Icelandic Sheepdog link at more xx.wikipedia sites linkt to Icelandic Sheepdog too.
Hope that this is compliant with most of what you did so far. The dog section looks realy good.
Kveðja / Gruß / Salutas / Best regards
Reinhardt

I'm jumping in because I'm here. :-) Trying to answer your questions.
  1. I'll defer to Sannse on Friaar Dog.
  2. Nope, strike is not appropriate for encyclopedic text. So those need to be removed from the article. As I said, you can list them on this discussion page under a heading like "Note common misspellings" or such. Encyclopedias (and dictionaries & other reference works, for that matter) do not list what's WRONG and cross it out--they just leave out what's wrong and include only what's right.
  3. Not quite sure where you're going with the links to lists of foreign names, but it sounds like an interesting concept.
  4. A name doesn't have to be removed just because it's Danish; remember, these are names commonly found on English-language web sites, and it's very common for many breeds to be referred to by their native names even on English-language web sites.
  5. I'll just repeat my earlier comment on Latin names--as far as I know there's no scientific agreement that there are other Latin names for domestic dogs, so if any breed has such a name in some sources, that's of interest to that breed only and isn't really a standard thing that one would find in most breeds--so there's no automation issue, really.
  6. For spelling variants, including plurals, especially plurals for non-English names, and common misspellings, what we do is to create redirect pages with the alternative spellings. If you can't figure out how to do it, we can probably give you some pointers. (For example, German Shepherd, German shepherd, and Alsatian dog are all redirects to German Shepherd Dog.)
  7. Categories & languages by convention go at the end of the article text. Most people have been enthusiastically moving them down when they find them at the top. In part this is because most newer users to the site, when they click Edit This Page, expect to see the same text in front of them, in the same order, that they see it on the actual page. So it's better to have the article text at the top and the categories & languages & so on at the bottom. So those have to go back to the bottom.
  8. You're welcome to add your name to the dog project list at any time. It's very casual. We're always thrilled to have someone new working on dog articles and helping to improve the process.
Elf | Talk 03:08, 22 Sep 2004 (UTC)
I agree with all Elf says here. The name Friaar Dog was listed at dogbreedinfo and various other sites. It gets 35 hits on Google outside of Dogmaina and Wikipedia [2] so it seems a possible variation, although a rare one. I don't have my main book to hand, so can't check to see if it is listed there too - it's not in my other books. This page mentions the name with a date suggesting it is a very old variation. It looks like this needs further research. -- sannse (talk) 07:27, 22 Sep 2004 (UTC)
The main book that I use for reference, The New Encyclopedia of the Dog, Bruce Fogel, (c) 2000, lists the following alternative (English) names for the Icelandic Sheepdog: Icelandic Dog, Islandsk Farehond, and Friaar Dog.
Also--another reason for putting categories, languages, etc. at the bottom is that (at least at the moment) it can end up creating a lot of blank space at the top of the article, which is what's happening here. I'll go ahead & move them back down.
Elf | Talk 20:03, 22 Sep 2004 (UTC)
good to have that confirmation Elf, thanks -- sannse (talk) 20:11, 22 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Challenges with non-English characters[edit]

I just noticed that it's Islandsk Farehond (not using "å") in the book. The problem with these characters in the English-language wiki, now that I've thought about it more, is that most english speakers don't use (or know how to use) those characters. So if we have redirects to this page from the alternative names (which we ought to have if we don't), we'd have to have both "Islandsk Farehond" and "Islandsk Fårehond" for non-English speakers with non-English keyboards who are searching here. For example, "Bichon frise" and "Bichon Frise" both redirect to "Bichon Frisé" (in that case, it's the main entry with the marked character). In the latter case, I just noticed that a text search for Bichon Frise will never bring up that page because that text doesn't appear on it. That's a problem--both variants need to be there for searches. Hmm. I think I'll go add something to the page somehow. Elf | Talk 21:21, 22 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Thank you for your efforts. A search for somthing nonexistent is a tuff issue. Regards Gangleri 18:26, 2004 Sep 23 (UTC)

why Icelanders talk about Íslenski fjárhundurinn and not Íslenskur fjárhundur[edit]

Dear friends, I imagined that this would / can happen. Icelanders "normaly" talk about the Iclandic Sheepdog (with the definite article which is appended in Icelandic to the nown). They "normaly" do not talk about an Icelandic Sheepdog (with the indefinite article where nothing would be appended). I am not shure how other words are commonly used at is.wikipedia.org. Icelandic wordbooks and encyclopedies normaly use the word without the article. I will come back on this issue.
Regards Gangleri 18:26, 2004 Sep 23 (UTC)

If you're talking about the name of the article then it should be Icelandic sheepdog but not The Icelandic sheepdog but if you're talking about this sentence somewhere in the article, and in Icelandic, then you're right. --Stefán Örvarr Sigmundsson 23:41, 24 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

replaced photo[edit]

Dear Elf You were curious about my decision to replace the photograph of the Icelandic sheepdog. I am sorry I didn't give a reason for it at the time. But there were three main reasons for the replacement: First, I felt the new picture was of a photographically higher quality, secondly I felt that the new picture gives a better idea of the general appearance of the Icelandic Sheepdog. Although I am not a dog breeder I am an Icelander and in Iceland there is a fairly standard idea of what the Icelandic Sheepdog should look like (given the variation in colour and hairiness of course). The third reason is simply that I happened to take this picture of a well known Icelandic individual of this breed and was happy to share it in a way that might improve Wikipedia. Best regards Zonjah

Threats to sheep...[edit]

I think that the Arctic Fox has been unfairly left out as a threat to the sheep... at the very least it was/is a threat to the lambs.

Ancestor of Collie/Corgi/Shetland sheepdog?[edit]

Is there any evidence for this claim? Collies (including Shetlands) and corgis are of very different type to Spitz dogs. Is this claim from genuine research, or is it just breeders' folklore? Could we have a reference please?--Richard New Forest 22:01, 27 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

All About the Spitz Breeds by David Cavill quotes a 1650 source Sir Thomas Brown saying ".To England there are sometimes exported from Iceland . . . a type of dog resembling a fox . . . . Shepherds in England are eager to acquire them!". // Liftarn
Interesting reference, but I don't think it's nearly enough, for several reasons:
  • My understanding (though I may be wrong) is that collie-type dogs were widespread well before the 17th century.
  • The export mentioned is specifically to England. Collie-type dogs are generally northern and western (mainly in Scotland and Wales), and corgis are Welsh (and indeed were not used by shepherds, but cattle drovers). England and Scotland were separate countries at that time (see Acts of Union 1707).
  • Export "sometimes" does not imply ancestry of anything. Who knows what happened to those exported dogs? If they did contribute to any British breed, why collies and corgis? Spitz characters appear wholly absent from all British herding breeds, so it does seem most unlikely that Icelandic dogs can have contributed much to their ancestry. And if they did contribute a small amount, this hardly makes them the "basis" of those breeds.
There is, I have to admit, a certain logic to importing Icelandic dogs at about that time. The wolf was already rare in the UK (the last were killed about a hundred years later), and this must have allowed a change in pastoral methods, especially for sheep and goats. With wolves, you need shepherded flocks with guard dogs (as still found in many mainland southern European areas), but in post-wolf Britain free-ranging sheep (worked with herding dogs) were possible, as they presumably always were in wolf-free Iceland. Having said all that, a logical need from a 21st century perspective does not mean it actually happened to a significant extent.
As for the Shetland Sheepdog... The article for that breed gives a very different origin, and although Icelandic dogs are mentioned, again no references are given, and there is no explanation for the absence of Spitz characters if Icelandic and Norwegian dogs were the main influence. (Pomeranian is also mentioned, and to my eye this seems more plausible...). Given the strongly Scandinavian history of the Shetlands, it would not be surprising if Scandinavian-type dogs were used there historically – but that does not mean that the modern pet breed has any significant connection with them.
Overall, I think these claims should be removed unless stronger evidence can be found.--Richard New Forest 08:59, 28 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Useful chart and discussion of collie ancestry here: [3]. It does support the idea that Icelandic dogs and Shetland Sheepdogs share ancestry (at least before the show-breeders got hold of the latter), but does not mention significant other connections with British herd dogs. --Richard New Forest 13:55, 28 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

That source what what I could find on short notice. There are probably better (and more) sources to be found if we did a bit more. I'm moving so my internet connection will be gone for at least a week so I can't do much work right now. Slap on a {{fact}} for now and I'll look into it later. It's probably not reliable and certainly OR, but a black and white Icelandic Sheepdog look very much like the Border Collie. The Icelandic Sheepdog have over time lost it's ear folds, but had them earlier. // Liftarn

"Double" dew claws[edit]

Not clear what this means.

"Forequarters ... strong forelegs. dew claws: may be double"
"The Icelandic sheepdog often has double dewclaws on the hind paws." (caption to photo)

I suspect what is meant is that there is one dewclaw on each front leg, and often one on each hind leg as well (in which case I think what is meant is "doubled"). However, it reads as if there may be two on each front leg, and that there are often two on each hind leg. I've never seen any Icelandic legs (dog or not) – which is it?--Richard New Forest 18:17, 29 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Look at Image:Icelandicsheepdogpaws.jpg. // Liftarn
Yes, but how many claws is that...?--Richard New Forest 20:57, 29 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Ah, the picture is not as sharp as it should have been (I'll try to take a better one), but there are two on each hind leg so they are indeed double. I thinks the Norwegian Lundehund have double in the front instead. // Liftarn
Thanks – all a bit strange for me as I have collies, which have the "proper" number – just one on each front leg, none on the hind. I've tried to clarify the article on this point. Do the hind dew claws not catch on things? And are they attached, or floating? (Dogs I've seen with hind dew claws often seem to have them floating – joined to the leg only by the skin)--Richard New Forest 09:45, 1 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]
In my own experience they don't seem to catch on as far, but they have been removed on some dogs (especially earlier). They are only attached to the soft tissue. Since they aren't in contact with the ground they also tend to require cutting often. // Liftarn
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