According to the latest charter (1986) the Foundation aims at: a) The promotion and the consolidation of the Studer Collections. b) The support of scientific canine research, the propagation of the results and the dissemination of cynological knowledge. During the first years of it's existence the growth of the collections made good progress, but scientific results showed only very gradually. After a complete stand-still following the death of Theophil Studer, research on the collections re-started under the leadership of Prof. Walter Huber (1917 - 1984). The results were either published by himself or by numerous of his students. More and more cynology once again became a focal point of the Museum. In addition to problems on the origins of domestic dog, problems that were crucial to Studer and his contemporary, new questions arose: The changing of breeds, variability, the heredity of deformities and physiological problems in connection with body size. Independent of this research at the Natural History Museum there was an anatomical and medical research of high standard at the veterinary faculties of Berne and Zürich. Although there were no connections between those research topics and those more oriented towards prehistoric topics at the Museum, they should be mentioned here. And, to be complete, since about 1940 there was one more research topic: canine ethology.
In the meantime the funds of the Foundation have constantly risen and the Foundation is lucky to be able to grant research funds for many scientific projects, mainly to students of the veterinary sciences. One main reason for the good contacts to the faculty of veterinary sciences was that the board of trustees once again found a veterinary, Dr. Mark Flückiger, as a member. In order to inform the public on the results of such scientific work, it has been decided that abstracts of all projects funded by the Foundation had to be published in the official paper of the Swiss Cynological Society.
It should be noted that in the last years several exhibitions on canine topics could be produced and shown. One of the largest exhibitions with over 40 panels was first presented in 1979 at the world exhibition in Berne. As the title "From Neolithic to Modern Dog " suggests, we tried to show the long way from the wild ancestors to modern dog.
Supporting scientific research is but one of the activities of the Foundation. This is done by the members of the board of trustees. The main duty of the author is to care for the collections here at the Museum. As previously mentioned, these collections mainly consist of skulls. At the moment (October 1994) we have 2,038 skulls from 174 breeds, 216 furs from 99 breeds and 187 complete skeletons from 83 breeds in our collections. The whole of this collection is mostly well documented (pedigree, photos, reports from judges, etc.) and the most important measurements are registered in a database. A very well cared for library with over 500 volumes on dogs and a collection of reprints are not only accessible to the scientist but to the public as well.