A FRIENDLY DOG FROM BALI

Kintamani is a beautiful region in East Bali-Indonesia, just only one hour north of Ubud. Mount Batur rises prominently above a vivid landscape of greenery; crystalline Lake Batur rests inside the active caldera. Interesting villages and Bali's highest temple cling to the rim of the active volcano. Kintamani is a postcard-perfect reminder of what made Bali so magical.  I remember from this beautiful area is also home of the famous pet, a Kimtamani Dog!

As according to history, Kintamani Dog came with the Javanese invaders from the kingdom of Majapahit in 1343 or with the Javanese refugees of the civil war in the 15th century. But of all the hypotheses, about the origins of the Kintamani Dog, only one is really plausible: that sometime between the 12th and the 16th century a Chinese trader named Lee landed in Singaraja in Northern Bali, bringing with him a Chow Chow dog which bred with the local Balinese feral dogs. Lee later in settled in the Kintamani region and raised his family there. Evidence that the Lee family lived in Kintamani exists in the form of a Chinese temple in which people of the Confucian faith still worship.

The friendly Kintamani dog is a medium-sized  with erect ears and long fur dog native to the Indonesian island of Bali. It is a popular pet for the Balinese and locally Bali's only official breed and efforts are currently under way to have the dog accepted by the Federation Cynologique Internationale as a recognized breed. It is an evolving breed indigenous to the Kintamani region which evolved from the local Bali street dogs, which are rather a feral random-bred landrace distinctive to Bali.

Several hundred breeds of dogs are currently recognized around the world, and new breeds are continuously emerging. Many breeds have evolved rapidly over the past century from deliberate crosses of existing purebred dogs (Neff et al. 2004). However, many older breeds have been phenotypically modified over centuries or millennia from indigenous feral dog populations. If phenotypic selection is slow and involves large numbers of non- or distantly related males and females, the loss of genetic diversity in breed development will be small (Okumura et al. 1996). However, if phenotypic selection is rapid and involves few isolated sires and dams, genetic diversity may be low from the onset. Low genetic diversity, whether present from inception or acquired over time, has had negative disease and lifespan implications for many pure breeds of dogs (Pedersen 1999; Proschowsky et al. 2003). Therefore, the goal of breed development should be to maintain maximal genetic diversity to minimize genetic disorders, while standardizing and solidifying the desirable phenotypic traits. Such strict genetic management has not been heretofore possible; pedigrees were notoriously unreliable and genetic tests have been unavailable or too costly. However, there has been an explosion of genetic knowledge of the dog and simple, rapid, and inexpensive genetic tests have been developed. It is now possible to manage the genetic makeup of a breed.

Because many dog breeds are already inbred, the goal is to identify emerging breeds that may serve as models for genetic management of future breeds. The Kintamani dog of Bali, Indonesia, is one such breed. The objectives were to characterize the genetic evolution of the Kintamani dog from indigenous feral dogs (Bali street dogs) and to document its current genetic diversity. Such information will be useful for the maintenance of diversity as the breed is officially recognized and gains popularity.

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