<aside> 🐶 This experiment was done over 4-5 hours between 15-16 May 2023.

</aside>

The goal: a public model that classifies Pembroke vs Cardigan corgis

After completing lesson 2 of the fastai course, I wanted to create my own model from scratch and publish it online, and also learn how to get my own dataset without relying on the default datasets. As everything in my life has to be related to my pupper Fitzroy, I decided to see how a ML model might distinguish between a Pembroke Welsh Corgi vs. a Cardigan Corgi!

Differentiating between these two breeds based solely on photos is difficult, even if you are familiar with the breed.

• Cardigans have a diverse array of unique coat patterns, such as brindle and blue merle. However, they also share common coat colors with Pembrokes, like red and sable, which leads to confusion and similarities.
• Cardigans are often slightly stockier compared to Pembrokes.
• Pembrokes often have docked tails (especially in the US), cardigans do not. However, docking is becoming increasingly uncommon, especially in countries where it is now illegal (e.g. Australia).
• Personality, unfortunately, doesn’t translate through photographs. Pembrokes, generally speaking, are often more vocal, energetic, and exuberant compared to Cardigans.

So, while these corgis obviously look different, and you could say “yes, I can tell they look like different types of corgis” -

Pembroke Welsh Corgi

Cardigan Corgi

It becomes a lot harder for certain types, such as these (I promise they’re different!):

A Pembroke…

and a Cardigan!

Were you able to tell the difference? Let’s see if you do better than a model…

Play with it yourself!

• You can tweak/view my model here in Colab.
• You can upload photos or view the examples and try to classify your corgi on my HuggingFace space.