Icelandic Sheepdog

About the Icelandic Sheepdog

The Icelandic Sheepdog is the only breed native to Iceland, taken there by Norse settlers over a thousand years ago and used to gather sheep and horses across open country and to keep lambs back from cliff edges. Distemper and parasite epidemics nearly finished it in the nineteenth century, and the modern breed was rebuilt from a very small number of survivors.

Dogs stand around 46 cm, a spitz with prick ears, a curled tail and a double coat in tan, chocolate, grey or black, always with white markings. Both long and short coats are correct. Hind dewclaws, often double, are prized. The breed barks readily, is friendly with everybody and makes a hopeless guard; a stud should be sound, merry and entirely free of nervousness.

Rebuilding from few founders makes the coefficient of inbreeding the first thing to check, and a responsible stud owner will have calculated it already. Ask for hip scores, for patellar assessment, and for a current eye certificate covering cataract and distichiasis. Ask about cryptorchidism in the line and about the ages the stud's grandparents reached.

Health & breeding

We check every hip, elbow, eye and DNA result you give us against the Royal Kennel Club’s public records by hand, and we record who checked it and when. The Royal Kennel Club’s public records may not include all the screening a dog has had, so a dog with no Royal Kennel Club record showing is not necessarily untested.