The breeds · working
AKC Foundation Stock Service · UKC Guardian · FCI standard 190
Hovawart.
FCI 190 utilization: working dog, with working trial; a recognized working dog for versatile use, an outstanding companion, watch, guard, rescue and tracking dog. History (FCI): a very old German farm guardian ('hova' yard, 'wart' guardian), rebuilt from 1922 from farm dogs and crosses with German Shepherd, Newfoundland and Leonberger, recognized in 1937 and as a working dog in 1964. UKC: a yard and farm watchdog, versatile as a watch, guard, tracking and rescue dog and companion. Wikipedia: used in search and rescue, tracking and working-dog activities..
Breed sets the odds. The parents set the dog. Every number here shows its source, its spread and how sure we are. Nothing on this page is a prediction about one dog.
The body
What the breed is built like. Registry standards give an ideal, not a range.
Height at the shoulder
Breed-wide AKC band counted in both sex rows. 1 cm = 0.3937 in.
Weight
Registry page band and Wikipedia; no standard sets a weight. Not split by sex in either source.
Coat
Shedding
AKC breed page trait score, 1 to 5: a breed-club tendency, never a measurement.
Heat tolerance
Derived from the standard's coat description on the library scale: long coat with little undercoat placed at 3, above the heavy double coats.
The dog at home
What the breed asks of a day. The first thing most homes get wrong.
Energy
Grooming load
Mapped from the AKC grooming frequency 2 of 5 to 2 (weekly brush); no club or kennel-club grooming band was read.
The work
What it was built to do in the field, and what a test or trial asks of it.
Role
Not a gun dog; no game traits recorded.
Also used on
Field trial standard
The working-trial regulations themselves were not opened.
How common the problems are
Evaluated dogs skew toward breeding stock; the numbers are still the best there are.
Hip dysplasia
OFA's database is voluntary and skews to breeding stock, and affected dogs are under-reported, so true prevalence is probably higher. The FCI sentence is the registry's own claim and was not tested against German registry data.
Elbow dysplasia
OFA's database is voluntary and skews to breeding stock, and affected dogs are under-reported, so true prevalence is probably higher. Small n.
More
akc bands
Fourteen AKC bands in one row; the selector reads each by name. Breed-club ratings: a tendency, never a measurement.
How to read this page
Every value carries a label. Measured means peer-reviewed data on many dogs. Studied means peer-reviewed, smaller or indirect. Breed club means a club or registry states it. Editorial means expert opinion with no measurement behind it. Where two good sources disagree, both are shown and neither is averaged.
Published when the entry rests on the best information available from no fewer than three independent sources, checked by a second pass that did not write it. 3 sources on this page. Found something wrong? Tell us and the correction is logged with its date.
- Also called
- Hovie
Every breed, read the same way.
The breed index grows as entries clear the standard. Gun dogs first.
All published breedsYour hovawart, on the record.
Log the days, the miles and the birds, and the KENAI app keeps the dog’s story beside the breed’s. Free to start.
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