What is %Wycliffe?

Wycliffe was the kennel name of Jean Lyle, a very successful breeder of Standard Poodles from Vancouver, Canada. She began breeding in the late 1950s or early 1960s. She was devoted to very tight “line-breeding” (inbreeding). Her dogs spread across the USA and Canada and were exported to many foreign countries. For more information on the Wycliffe line, see Dr John Armstrong’s discussion at Influence of Wycliffe.

% Wycliffe Computation: Standard Poodle breeders sometimes discuss the % Wycliffe in a particular dog. This is a relationship coefficient (also known as % blood) showing the expected contribution of the main Wycliffe line. The main line of Wycliffe dogs is based on 5 founding ancestors (Carillon Michelle, Peticote Domino, Annsown Gay Knight of Arhill, Carillon Dilemma and Sedbergh Mitzi). So the % Wycliffe ancestry of a dog is the sum of the contributions of these 5 dogs. It is important to make sure enough generations are included to capture all the occurrences of these 5 dogs (they were born in the 1950s). The origins of the Wycliffe line are shown below (Dr Armstrong’s Chart). Their descendants are the main Wycliffe line.

Computing % Wycliffe: Since the 5 Wycliffe founders are often more than 10 or even 15 generations back on today's dogs a new approach to computing the % Wycliffe for an entire database was developed. This approach starts with the five founders and works down through the descendents. The result is that 200,000 dogs can be computed in about 15 minutes

Relationship Coefficients: The relationship coefficients or % Blood, as Malcolm Willis (Genetics of the Dog) calls them, show the expected contribution of an ancestor to the present dog. If the dog appears only once in the pedigree their contribution is based on the generation of appearance. But for dogs that appear multiple times, their contribution will be the sum of their contribution in each appearance.

The Wycliffe Founders: The % Wycliffe is a relationship coefficient showing the expected contribution of the main Wycliffe line. The main line of Wycliffe dogs are based on 5 founding ancestors. So the % Wycliffe ancestry of a dog is the sum of the contributions of Carillon Michelle, Peticote Domino, Annsown Gay Knight of Arhill, Carillon Dilemma and Sedbergh Mitzi. (Note Sedbergh Mitzi is a granddaughter of Gay Knight, so her contribution is reduced by 1/4.) To account for the rest of the Wycliffe line, the contributions of High Meadow Babette, Bel Tor Hugues Capet, Pantaloon Britta, and de Russy Topsy can be added in, but these dogs appear in relatively few pedigrees. When Dr. John Armstrong did his research, the average black Standard was approximately 50% Wycliffe in ancestry. See the Population Statistics graphs to see how this has changed over time.

Comments on Origins of Standard Poodles.

Annsown Gay Knight of Arhill and his sire Annsown Sir Gay are bottlenecks in the ancestry of Standard Poodles. Wycliffe dogs are line-bred on Gay Knight and the Bel Tor line was line-bred on Sir Gay. The popularity of these dogs in the 1950s has reduced to minor status the other major lines of Standard Poodles. The Prinz Alexander von Rodelheim line of white dogs, the Whippendell Carillon line of blacks and the beginnings of a brown Blakeen Cyrano line have all been crowded out by the major influence of these two dogs from the Anderl von Hugelberg line.

By the late 1960s the dominant line in Standard Poodles in the USA and England had become the black Anderl von Hugelberg line, of which Annsown Gay Knight of Arhill and Annsown Sir Gay are part. Today this is the dominant line all over the world. The rarer colors (browns, silvers, apricots) often have a greater variety of ancestors, but the Anderl line is still dominant.

Interestingly the reds and apricots have a similar bottleneck with the “Old English Apricots”.

Annsown Sir Gay could perhaps be considered the "Noah" of Standard Poodles. That makes his great ancestor, Anderl von Hugelberg, the "Adam" of modern Standard Poodles. Anderl was a German bred dog owned by Mrs Reichenbach of the famous Labory Kennels in Switzerland. Anderl lived in the 1920s and produced only 5 litters. There were significant lines of Standard Poodles in the USA prior to the Swiss, German and English imports of the late 1920s. But today's dogs owe very little (and often none) of their ancestry to the Meadowmere, Hill Hurst, and Red Brook dogs of the turn of the century.