An American Hound
Silken Windhounds are a modern American sighthound first developed in Austin, TX in the 1980s. The first litter of Silken Windhounds was whelped at Francie Stull’s Kristull kennel in 1985. Stull, a breeder of Borzoi, aimed to create a small to medium sized sighthound with a long coat to fill an otherwise empty niche in the sighthound fancy.
Until the late 1990s, Silken Windhounds were bred in relatively few kennels. However, word eventually got out, and the International Siken Windhound Society (ISWS) was chartered in 1999. That same year, ISWS approved a breed standard and held the first national show, “Silkenfest”, in Austin, Texas.
Not a "Designer Dog"
To develop the breed, Stull crossed small lurchers from Walter A. Wheeler, Jr’s Massachusetts Windsprite kennel to her show and field champion Borzoi. Additional Borzoi and Whippets were later brought into the breed to improve genetic diversity, structure, and performance.
DNA testing indicates that the Borzoi, Whippet and Shetland Sheepdog (Sheltie) are the foundation breeds behind the Silken Windhound. Although the Borzoi and Whippet comprise the bulk of the Silken Windhound heritage, no direct crosses between Borzoi and Whippets have ever been used in the development of the breed. Consequently, Silken Windhounds are categorically not “Designer Dogs”, as that phrase is used to denote the offspring of two purebred dogs of different breeds. Instead, Silken Windhounds are a breed all their own.
Modern Breed, Modern Methods
In 2000, the ISWS closed the studbook for Silken Windhounds and began to require that parentage be confirmed by DNA testing for registration of all dogs. In addition to recording breedings and pedigrees, the ISWS Registry serves as a canine DNA database. Its data is used to identify individual dogs, parentage, and dogs whose genomes could contain genetic abnormalities that could pass to their offspring. To this day, if a dog’s parentage is not DNA verified, it may not be registered as a Silken Windhound with the ISWS.
Too many dogs suffer from heritable diseases and other deleterious effects of the small gene pools that closing studbooks can inadvertently cause. To protect the future health and welfare of the Silken Windhound, the ISWS oversees a strict genetic diversity protocol by which diverse alleles may be brought into the breed.
Per the ISWS genetic diversity protocol, certain Silken Windhound breeders may perform careful outcrosses to Borzoi or Whippets. After a few generations, the resulting “genetic diversity dogs” may be evaluated by a team of longtime Silken Windhound breeders. If these evaluators agree that the dogs satisfy the Silken Windhound breed standard, the otherwise closed ISWS studbook will open as the dogs, and their genes, are accepted into the breed. However, such outcrosses occur only rarely: only two Borzoi and one Whippet have been brought into the breed since 2000 (Figure 1).
Links to the pedigree databases in Figure 1:
A Thriving Fancy
In the approximately 40 years since the initial founding of the breed, the Silken Windhound fancy has grown. As of Summer 2024, the ISWS website lists almost 100 different Silken Windhound kennels across 11 countries, including such far-flung places as Japan, Finland, and Hungary. The ISWS also lists over 70 kennels in the United States alone, many of which can also be found in SWHCOA’s Breeder List here.
The number of Silken Windhounds born each year is on the rise (Figure 2). Since 2000, the number of Silken Windhounds born and registered with the ISWS each year has increased by a factor of 7, from an annual average of 65.6 ± 9.8 dogs in the 2000-2004 time period to an annual average of 460.5 ± 37 dogs in the 2020-2023 time period (Table 1; values are given as multi-year averages ± the standard error of the mean).
As Silken Windhounds commonly live to be at least 10 years old, we can infer from these statistics that there must now be thousands of Silken Windhounds spread amongst hundreds, if not thousands, of households worldwide. SWHCOA is proud to be part of such a flourishing breed.
