Page 130 - THE SLOUGHI REVIEW - ISSUE 13

T H E S L O U G H I R E V I E W 1 3 0

Borzoi of old type by Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolaevich 1888 by P.Mahler
And this is where it gets exciting. Boldareff writes about the fact of the different types of
Borzoi: “The English would have solved this question according to the method of Alexander,

who simply cut the Gordian knot. They would have founded a club whose majority, relying
on the most votes, would have simply declared one type to be the 'right one', but the others to
be defective, and would have continued to breed on that basis. We, however, were fairer. I
would even say we did it more rightly; for it would have meant a somewhat insurmountable

blow to the Borzoi breed if all types had been suppressed in favour of one. This would have
made any progress impossible from the start. After all, every hunter has the right to prefer a
particular type.”

Boldareff also writes the following about breeding, after unsatisfactory breeding results

were seen due to a lack of knowledge of the old blood: “According to the known law of
heredity, the crossing of two breeds consequently resulted in bastards that were inferior to
their producers.”

So what we see here is that without knowledge of the original types, good breeding
results are not possible and deterioration of breeding is inevitable when everything is
crossed. Conversely, however, this also means that with good breeding the types must
remain stable and this in turn means that the changes of a type through selected
breeding may be less pronounced than we would like to imagine today.