At my very first dog show, my mother and I were watching the Australian Shepherds massing at ringside before their turn to trot around the ring and my mother commented, “that one looks just like a Border Collie.” The handler’s curt and offended response was “you know, that’s not a compliment.” I just laughed, because the response was so unexpected and so orthogonal to the intent of the remark. Looking like a Border Collie is a high honor in this family.
But the offense the Aussie breeder took speaks to the reality of the Narcissism of Minor Differences:
“the phenomenon that it is precisely communities with adjoining territories, and related to each other in other ways as well, who are engaged in constant feuds and ridiculing each other.”
It is more important to this breeder that her dog not be confused with a Border Collie than it would be if it was confused with a more distantly related dog like a German Shepherd or a Flat-coat. A gross misidentification wouldn’t really speak to the merits of her dog, unless it kept happening; but a common misidentification is clearly more grating because it threatens the communal identity of her breed; and similar looking breeds are more likely to get confused for eachother. In the show world, the realm of Platonic ideals, things that are different need to look different. And even if the differences are small, the appearance should accentuate what is not the same and perhaps obfuscate the similarities.
Is that a Border Collie, Aussie, or English Shepherd?
It doesn’t matter that the list of attributes that describe both the Australian Shepherd and the Border Collie is much longer than the list of qualities which separates them. I suspect that it wouldn’t take a lot of searching to find an Australian Shepherd with a tail, a Border Collie, and an English Shepherd that would be indistinguishable from looks and conformation alone. Perhaps you could even find such dogs that would share a great deal of temperament and behavior as well. There are Border Collies who work more upright than crouched and there are Aussies that show stronger eye. Form does follow function and it’s entirely conceivable that a moderately sized cattle farm could chose any of our three look-alike breeds (or others) to satisfy their demands.
But this was a formal conformation event where some breeders are so eager to accentuate the differences that they work to create a line of dogs within their breed that is distinguishable from others in the same breed by looks alone. Have a look at these Border Collies and you can easily see what this particular breeder has chosen as their signature:
Can you hear me now?
I don’t know if those ridiculous ears are accentuating a difference–they are genetically/physically different than many other BC ears–or if they are obfuscating a similarity–those ears would look normal but for the breeder artificially styling them with tape and braces to establish a look that is not passed along in the genes; but, those ears are clearly being used as a trademark aesthetic of this breeder. My gut reaction to these “Sheltie Ears” is disgust that is likely generated by the NoMD. I don’t mind those ears on Shelties or Collies, but they look disproportionatly out of place on a Border Collie. They’re otherwise handsome dogs save for the radar dish ears. To me, these particular Border Collies fall down the “uncanny valley,” being in many respects more similar to the Border Collies I cherish than the Australian and English Shepherds depicted above, but my feeling toward them is unsettling.
But unlike the sheeple and showple I describe in the previous post, I don’t feel that there should be institutional barriers between these dogs and mine. I do not need a registry to prevent me from breeding to these dogs nor do I need a conformation breed standard that would tell me that those ears are correct and ideal for the breed (let alone pretend that they are not the work of glue and tape instead of inherent and inheritable conformation).
But the sheeple would tell me that those dogs are Barbie Collies so I can’t breed to them in their sand box, and the showple would tell me that some of the dogs in the previous image are not purebred Border Collies and thus I can’t breed to them in their sand box. Neither of them seem to appreciate that when you make your sand box so small by kicking other people and their dogs out of it, the only thing it’s good for is to collect cat feces.
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Anton
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Bravo! You have just solved one of the great mysteries of the universe (in my opinion at least), why certain English Shepherd breeders become angry at the very mention of Old-Time Farm Shepherds.
A friend was just saying to me last week how it was, for some unknown reason, not kosher to cross between closely related collie breeds. I am all for bringing down the walls of the breed clubs and being allowed to breed within the greater collie landrace without being ridiculed for it.
Andy Ward recently posted..English Shepherds In Their Native Habitat – England- 1901
I finally read this and I’m very much in support of this effort.
Andy there are stories from midwest of United States where cross breedings with faster breeds such as greyhounds were used in collies. This was so they could run down the coyotes. Old collie breeders tell of these breedings from the mid-west.
A sighthound crossed with a herding breed is a lurcher.
Jess recently posted..Random Doggage Video: Puppyman Sings for His Supper
Jess I understand but different bloodlines do display different attributes in the collie breed. There is also an array of head types not all collies have the extreme stove pipe head.
There are collie bloodlines that two single and double dew claws which likely indicates cross breeding into a number of breeds.
Jess well this is certainly interesting to me as I have had a few collies over the years that sing like this not bark. Likewise, one can likewise experience the Lurcher temperament in some of thier temperaments. Rather than be the friendly collie who accepts everyone prefers to study individuals before excepting even a pat on the head. These collies make good children and home protectors. They let the visitor know…you are being watched.
I can tell you that in the golden retriever this Narcissism of Minor Differences phenomenon operated this way:
1. They came up with a totally fantasy about the breed’s origins. One man, Col. William Le Poer Trench, contacted some game-keepers at Guisachan, where the main yellow retriever line was founded, to say that the dogs were derived from Russian circus dogs that were later crossed with bloodhounds. This is also where the bloodhound myth came from.
2. Breed away from the efficient, tested by time and in the field functional retriever standard. It wasn’t as bad at first, but the big Newfoundland-type goldens are an atavism from the old wavy-coated retriever that was often built like this– and all the founders of the wavy and flat-coated retriever bred away from.
3. Make sure people breed away from anything approaching an Irish setter color, even though these red and dark gold colors made up the majority of the founding breed. The Guisachan dogs were lighter, but the Guisachan dogs evolved within the wavy and flat-coated retriever breed. Those dogs were often heavily built because they were in keeping with the heavily built wavy-coats of that time period.
If you look at old golden and flat-coated retriever photos from the period around the time of the split, the two breeds are identical– some are heavily built, some are lightly built. Wavy and straight coats existed across both dogs we’d call flat-coats or goldens.
But as the breed split, flat-coats went one way, which approaches a very gracile dog that approaches a sight hound in its most extreme form. Flat-coats now have yellow as a disqualifying color.
This flat-coat, Don of Gerwn, was won the International Gun Dog League’s retriever trial in 1904: http://retrieverman.files.wordpress.com/2009/03/don-of-gerwin.jpg?w=450&h=253
His sire was one of the dogs from the Guisachan strain and his dam a liver flat-coat. Half golden/half flat-coat in our modern definitions. However, at the time, they were the same breed, just different colors.
Flat-coats that look like show goldens:
http://retrieverman.files.wordpress.com/2009/01/heavy-bodied-flat-coats-from-complete-english-shot.jpg?w=378&h=622
retrieverman recently posted..Introduced American mink causing trouble in northern Scotland
I LOVE the old red setter look on a golden. I used to be so puzzled at why you never saw it at a dog show. So ridiculous.
Had not been to a dog show for a decade or more but this past weekend did take a look see. I am please to report there were three much darker reddish goldens in the ring competing.
http://retrieverman.files.wordpress.com/2008/12/flatty.jpg?w=434&h=329
That is an extreme flat-coat.
retrieverman recently posted..Introduced American mink causing trouble in northern Scotland
Wow, an amazingly different conformation between this dog and the last link in your first comment. I assume much of this diversity has been bred out.
I also find the “just one color” ethic interesting. Is that a human thing (the human mind likes simple definitions for archetypes), a fame thing (the dog in the Disney movie was this color or this popular sire was that color, let’s copy them incessantly), a genetic thing (certain color is dominant) or something else?
I just find it discouraging that so many breeds shun color at some point. No yellow Flat-coats, no brindle Salukis.
I wonder why black and tan doesn’t exist in Border Collies or some of the other many BC colors don’t exist in rough and smooth collies and the other close breeds. Genetic drift? Policy? Happenstance? Fashion?
How about merle English Shepherds, or how about the blaze in Rough Collies, blazes are fairly common in ES, BC and AS but almost completely bred out of RC, in spite of the fact that Lassie had a blaze or perhaps it was a knee jerk reaction by show breeders to that fact.
Andy Ward recently posted..English Shepherds In Their Native Habitat – England- 1901
I found this interesting note:
http://www.showhorsepromotions.com/aussie/history.htm
Good read, I liked this.
“The Aussie is the direct descendent, and primarily the descendant, of the old-fashioned farm shepherd or collie, the “Old Shep” of legend, a heritage of which to be proud. ”
Andy Ward recently posted..English Shepherds In Their Native Habitat – England- 1901
“With regard to Aussies, it is well known that sables originally occurred and still do occur in the breed, even though now discriminated against”
Forgive me as I have been out of dogs for a while (almost a decade) and am now in the process of re-educating myself, so things I once knew without question, I am no longer sure of.
This quote caught my attention as when I left dogs, my breed, the APBT had just banned the color merle, and one of the things that came up on various boards was cryptic merles, in that merle was easier hidden in yellow colored dogs.
As in that same quote used there was also this statement
“that the original intent had been to establish an all-merle breed, but that genetic problems involved in breeding merle to merle makes this impractical and breeders came to realize that the solid colors were needed after all”
Would it not then be better to breed merle to a dark color to prevent those cryptic merles? Would this not be the excuse given for sables being discriminated against?
The quote used doesn’t say if sables are discriminated against by breeders or by show judges, and if it’s a which came first, the judges discriminated, so the breeders don’t breed for sable and try to breed it out, or if the breeders discriminated and as many judges are also breeders, that’s where the prejudice comes from.
If I’m not being clear, forgive me, I simply had a random thought regarding the quote used.
Herders aren’t my breed type, and the little I know about Aussies came from when I was researching merle coloration and going against the “fluffy butts” in agility, so I would have no knowledge of breed politics in the Aussie.
But genetics are genetics, no? And IF my half remembered thought about cryptic merles is correct, could that possibly be the basis for sable being undesirable?
I’d be interested in seeing (maybe I’ll put one together one of these days) a Venn diagram of the coat colors / patterns and the collie landrace now (and perhaps in the past).
Chris I think coat color patterns would document the minior differeces between the herding breeds specifically. Example, genetically, there are four ways a dog can have blue eyes. Three of these are linked with pigment loss in the coat. What I found most interesting that However blue eyes can be inherited as a completely separate gene, unaffected by coat colour. This gene is apparently rare. Surprisingly it can be found sometimes in the Border Collie and similar breeds, but mainly it’s seen in the Siberian Husky. Huskies can have one or both blue eyes, regardless of their main coat colour, ranging in shade from almost white to sky blue. The blue eyes on black dogs I find striking.
Actually I’ve seen a lot of rough/smooth collies with blazes, some very large blazes.
Not as many as say a BC or Aussie.. but it’s certainly not rare or bred out of the breed from what I have seen.
While not entirely bred out, I will stand by the statement that the blaze is quite rare among modern Rough Collies. Do a simple Google image search for “rough collie” and count the blazes.
Now look at some historical pictures of collies and count blazes.
It’s obvious the blaze has been bred out of the modern dogs.
Andy Ward recently posted..Scotch Collies in the Movies
Andy in Rough Collies the blaze is back in fashion again. The blaze for a time was consider to interfer with the collie expression. Fashion trends come and go about every five years. I hate the ear tape, glue …leading. If you can not bred the ear set ..maybe there is a darn good reason. There was a time when Collies had a much larger ear set on the side and set into the skull. Well they call this doggy ears. I personally think the ears on top of the head look like an after thought.
Hi Andy:
Does your dog have Domestication Syndrome? Chris do not see anything different between the foundations especially of late when had an old blood line of collie here. If this carefully protected blood line does not contain English Shepard strong genetic ties one would have to prove it to me.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2693131/Does-dog-domestication-syndrome-Scientists-reveal-pets-tend-baby-faces-white-patches-fur.html
White markings and spotting patterns in animal species are thought to be a result of the domestication process. They often serve for the identification of individuals but sometimes are accompanied by complex pathological syndrome even noted in the horse the last thirty years. Domestication syndrome: http://www.genetics.org/content/197/3/795.full
Did you read that the white on the head was earlier signs of domestication of canine breeds in fox studies?
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2763232/
http://www.grandin.com/references/genetics.html
Black and tan does technically exist – tricolour is the same gene as black and tan, with white spotting genes added.
If you are asking why there are no solid coloured border collies (of any colour) that would be because irish spotting (the traditional “tuxedo”white pattern on bcs) is recessive. With only one copy you don’t get the pattern (you get either a solid dog or a dog with white patch on chest and maybe white paws). At some point in history irish spotting spread through the bc population until every dog was homozygous for irish spotted. It’s impossible for an irish spotted dog to have solid puppies with another irish spotted dog.
It is however possible for a bc carrying piebald to look like an irish spotted, but actually be psuedo irish (carrying one copy of irish spotting and one of piebald) and the offspring of those can be solid or bicolour (or extreme white with only tiny patches of colour). Typically the bcs carrying piebald genes have more white than usual.
If there are any pure bcs left with a psuedo irish pattern and only one (or no) copies of irish spotting gene then it’s possible for a solid coloured bc to be born. I’ve heard about a few but I’m not sure if they are purebred or not (not that it really matters to me).
One of the original dogs used to create the breed was black and tan if I recall correctly?
I find the Border Collie a perfect example of selective breeding just as there use to be black Rough and Smooth Collies. It would seem the discovery of the K locus explains a great deal to the breeder. Dominant Black is found in K locus not at the A locus in phenotype expression. (old Little theory) KK is dominant Black. ..Recessive a/a in the A locus is recessive black from my studies.
KK a^t/a^t …neither sable or tan points will express in phenotype. However, the a^t/a^t can pass on the offspring. However, Kk a^t/a^t
The dominant black gene has three different alleles, or variants. The first allele, which is dominant, is notated as “KB,” or dominant black. The dominant black allele is actually a mutation that reduces phenotype expression of the agouti gene. Because this mutation is dominant, a dog only needs to have one copy of the mutation to affect the agouti locus.
Now this is where it gets interesting: The cannie that carries two copies of the dominant “KB” allele. The canine will not have fawn offspring. The dog will always pass on a copy of the “KB” allele to all offspring.
When one copy of the dominant black allele was detected. The agouti phenotype will be altered and in some breeds can result in brindle. We can see in old photos that there were Collies with brindle markings under a very dark overlay of the double coat?
The canine could pass on this allele, or either the brindle or fawn allele, to any offspring.
When the canine does not carry the dominant black mutation. The dog’s coat color will be determined by the agouti gene, and may pass on brindle or non-brindle.
For a canine to be a black-and-tan or tricolor, he must carry two recessives k/k ” for the dominant black gene, and have either two copies of the “a^t” allele, or have one copy of the “at” allele and one copy of the “a” allele. This is because the “a^y” and “a^w” alleles are dominant over “a^t.” A dog that is”at/at” will always pass on a copy of the “at” allele to any offspring. This does not ensure that the puppies will be black-and-tan however, this depends on the genotype of the other parent in the breeding.
Indeed the psuedo irish pattern which is not SINE/MITF like the piebald gene (white factoring). The piebald gene is recessive and dosage dependent. I have had this in collies as you state recently in a litter. Both parents carried what has been called white factoring. All Collies tested in studies findings revealed all carried the Irish Patterning, however to the best of my studies this allele has not be found as yet? On a canine with irish spotting, white is found on the legs, the tip of the tail, the chest, neck and muzzle. Many dogs with this pattern have a full white neck ring and a blaze. “Pseudo” irish spotting may look the same or very similar to true irish spotting, but is in fact not caused by s^i/ s^ i but by S/s^p, i.e. these dogs are really heterozyous or potentially even homozygous piebalds. The incomplete dominance of S means that an S/ s^p dog may show up to roughly half the amount of white as an s^p/s^p dog. These dogs do not breed true and when two are crossed the puppies may be solid, piebald or inbetween.
It is important to realize S/s^p dogs can show much white, or in some cases no white at all? The amount of white on a piebald heterozygote appears to vary drastically and some may look exactly like homozygous solids.
The expression in ten puppies was surprising. No merle gene present in sire or dam. Three male puppies are sable tri factored colored headed whites. One puppy does not even have a white collar but a dot of white. Studies continue but Old Little Theory gives way to the Winge Theory of that decade.
Oh yes. The Saluki/Afghan/Tazi/Taigan complex in their countries of origin most definitely share many more characteristics than differentiate them. I can look at the purebred dogs in my own yard and see the similarities. Lots of them. It’s only once you get to the West and the show ring that the differences get more accentuated, to the point of caricature in the Afghan.
Jess recently posted..Closed Registries- Dogs in the Handbasket to Hell- Part II
Ooo ooo ooh, is that Part II there in your commentluv? I’ve been waiting for that.
Yes, and this one was not fun. I ended up with so much information I could hardly process all of it and get it down to one relatively short article.
Jess recently posted..Closed Registries- Dogs in the Handbasket to Hell- Part II
I don’t know if that’s an automatic thing to use my Facebook icon for the Coalition Allies, but thank you for using Socrates’ picture, Christopher.
Jess recently posted..Closed Registries- Dogs in the Handbasket to Hell- Part II
Handpicked by me. Socrates was a handsome fellow. Good dog, good dog. Now you need to get a gravatar so your comments will look the same on all these blogs.
He was a good boy. Kali is his dam, btw.
Jess recently posted..Closed Registries- Dogs in the Handbasket to Hell- Part II
For me the link to the handbasket to hell article does not work. What’s up?
Jess has a new blog. Those two excellent posts can be found here:
http://cynoanarchist.wordpress.com/2010/11/18/closed-registries-dogs-in-the-handbasket-to-hell-part-i/
and here:
http://cynoanarchist.wordpress.com/2010/12/13/closed-registries-dogs-in-the-handbasket-to-hell-part-ii/
We have you wayyyyyyyyyy beat.
American Pit Bull Terrier vs American Staffordshire Terrier
There aren’t 2 people on the face of the earth who could reliably identify one from the other.. and yet some insist they are different breeds. or different strains of the same breed. or the same breed.
Don’t get me started on the “American bully” …. disgusting mutants being accepted by the UKC as a “normal variation” of the APBT despite the protests of the national APBT club…
Oh dear yes. Perfect example. I avoid talking about Pibbles because they get me in trouble. But I have seen some outlandish claims about how so very different seemingly identical dogs are.
though on the other hand, the Staffordshire Bull Terrier (the English precursor to the APBT) is clearly a different breed and almost always can be readily distinguished from the APBT. At least so far, in part because the SBT is comparatively rare in the US. But more and more small black SBT-appearing dogs are showing up in shelters, especially in California. Some of these may be APBT-SBT mixes. A few of the Vick dogs have been identified by experts as SBTs or SBT mixes. One is, IMO, an ABPT/bulldog mix, but the rescuer insists she knows who the breeder is. whatever.
There is some overlap where small APBTs may be identified as SBTs (and it CAN be hard to tell the difference) and in England, some tall (20″+) SBTs clearly seem to be APBTs (which are banned in the UK). SBT people often assert that their dogs aren’t “pit bulls”.. though if you define “pit bull” based on historic breed function, they definitely ARE. Though you have to go further back in SBT time than in APBT/AST time to find those dogs.
meh.
Here’s a kennel ad section from a 1940s issue of Dog World that says differently.
coming to this late. Belgians have it pretty much beat because not only can the Belgian “shepherd” folk not decide what color/coats they do/don’t want, God forbid anyone suggest any relationship to those Dutch dogs or any other European herding dog (like Altdeuchers). Even where there is a “all one breed” concept (say Belgium), there is a prohibition about some colors (like shorthaired black) in the conformation ring and prohibitions about IV breeding (like Malinois/Groenendael) — some of which are refused registration. And the denial about the change in type is sometimes hysterically amusing — while Belgians may not be as exaggerated for the show as the American GSD vice working HGH GSD, it’s still apparent that the show fad hype for pencil heads and silhouette resulting in straight shoulders, not to mention the “more coat is better” trend has had it’s impact. The write up of the herding trial of 1892 (here in translation on my website http://www.kuymal.com/BreedingHerdingArticles.html) shows that the original dogs were FAR more varied than they are today. P. Richter
Christopher,
I was surfing around your website and I find interesting and provocative reading. Have you written anything about the differences in working styles/temperament between Border Collies that herd sheep for a living and those dogs that are used for trials? I know that gun dogs that are used for hunting trials work a little differently than gun dogs that are used for “real” hunting and I’m guess the same is true for sheepdog trials and dogs that actually herd sheep for a living.
I think I am what you call the Third Estate type of BC consumer. I’ve been looking for a new BC for AKC style obedience for a while and when I talked to trial breeders, I was really annoyed that the sample I investigated didn’t do any health checks. One breeder told me that she could tell her stud dog was going blind when “he started to run into fences”. The conformation breeders appear to do lots of health checks, but their pedigrees are sadly lacking in any kind of performance titles. Many performance breeders appear to focus on agility dogs and I didn’t want a dog with that much drive because I wanted a dog that was easy to live with. (I have an over the top German lines GSD and she’s a pain, a lovable pain, but a 65 lb pain never the less.) What to do?
I finally opted just to get a rescue dog and I must say, I could not have gotten a better temperament from a breeder. Roscoe is a great dog, eager to work, friendly, affectionate and really smart. Roscoe has drive, but he’s not over the top, and miracle of miracles, he has an off switch. He plays/trains like a mad dog as long as I want and then he is done. Roscoe’s only fault is that his tail curves over his back when he’s happy and I can live with that!
Thanks for the interesting reading.
T. Cremers
Hi Terry,
Thanks for reading and for the questions. The first one (working vs. trialing temperament) is one that I’d love to have more first hand experience with before I offer an opinion. I suspect that you are correct and that there are probably marked and key differences in what sort of dog excels at a trial as its highest purpose and a dog which is on a working ranch and does not trial.
Trials are an abstraction and IMO they are meant for human gratification more than they are for testing breeding stock. What tells me this most is not the primary details of how trials are designed but the secondary characteristics of the clubs and associations that the community engages in. For example, the industry really doesn’t have a seat at the table. They don’t inform the trial boards about their changing wants and needs, to add or remove elements of the trial that no longer speak to what professionals want and need in a dog. Trials today in America are very much like they were 100 years ago in England and Wales. Tradition!
The winning dogs don’t get contracts to work commercial sheep farms, they keep trialing year after year. What’s the purpose in that? Human gratification, not the evaluation of stock. The focus of discussion and advertising started dogs is likewise to other trialists, not to the working-but-not-trialing community.
Of COURSE the working community gets their dogs more from the trial stock than from the show stock, this is a no brainer. But I’d contend that if you really did a census, you’d find that the unsung dog here is the non-pedigree working dog that is likely purebred but not necessarily. Pedigrees are also a means of documenting human ego, and for real working folks I think the bottom line is more important than any pedigree.
I’ll note that one of my dogs is on a working cattle ranch in Wyoming and was bred to a dog without papers, and their offspring are now used on several other ranches, all without papers. I’ve never advertised my stock as go-to dogs for any and all work or trials, so this particular rancher was obviously more interested in some other aspect of my dogs or willing to go off recent work heritage on the pedigree.
My experience here, and in doing predigree research on my dogs and the dogs they’ve been studded out to has shown me that people who do cattle work are not particularly interested in sheep trial stock. I’ve gone through generations of western and particularly Texas cattle lines and they more often go back to the NASD or AIBC and not the ABCA which among many was considered the “trial” registry when other registries were considered the “working” registries. They’ve since gone defunct an the ABCA is still around.
My take on all of this is that the excesses of trialing are not of interest to most people who have a bottom line and not an ego at play. Why pay a premium for trial dogs, why pay for papers at all? Why pay for shipping puppies across the country when you’re more likely to know and have a good opinion on the working dogs you see one ranch over than a trial dog from a part of the country that is totally unlike your conditions.
My “estate” mental model folds all “working” dogs together, but I suspect now that this is overly generous.
* You’re unlikely to find any health checks at all in the working community. Again, why pay more for a hip exam than you would for just getting a new dog? Long term health is also harder to track on a real working dog as it’s a hard life. I personally know 3 related dogs to my dogs that are on working ranches who have been killed before old age by car strikes, etc.
* Don’t be too fooled by conformation health checks. The available tests are for diseases that are a joke. CEA? No big deal, even when your dog has it. TNS? Probably pretty rare and it’s unlikely that the dog will survive past 8 weeks if it’s affected. There are no tests for things like Cruciate Ligament tear susceptibility (can cost you $4k a knee), Epilepsy (heartbreaking and present in Border Collies), kidney disease, heart disease, cancer, etc. Things that are really expensive, really heartbreaking, and much more likely to hit your dog. Hell, even the hip evaluation tests are just guesses and we are mostly ignorant of the causes of hip disease.
* Chasing titles of any sort is, I’ve found, a matter of time and money as much as it is talent in the dog. I trained my two dogs right up to competition level (minus the weave polls, didn’t get those down yet) when life got turned upside down and now competitions are a luxury. But the way the titles work is more of attendance and meeting minimum standards than it is a real head to head competition of the best, etc. Go enough, spend enough, and you can get a title.
* And yes, as you’ve seen, when there is another concern on the brain of breeders, temperament suffers. I can’t say that I have fallen into this trap. My breeding stock are AWESOME. I get complements on how loving and sweet they are on a daily basis. I personally am enamored with them. Had they totally failed on stock, tripped over the lowest agility jump, and never caught a frisbee I’d still feel confident in breeding them. As it is, I really only breed for myself so if I’m wrong, the damage done to the breed will be small. And if I’m right, at least I’ve satisfied my own needs, which so far I have.
If I were to be a more active breeder for purpose of sale of puppies, I’d probably have paid someone to trial my dogs and title chase just to answer those questions for people at large who obviously can’t see the ability my dogs have that I have seen during their training.
* It sounds like you’ve got a great dog is Roscoe, and yes, Rescue is a very viable option, especially for BCs whose only fault that might have ended them up in the shelter is not being a piece of furniture like some other breeds. I really like that you’re not fixated on the “damage” done to the dog before. I’ve met too many people who dwell on their rescue dog’s “abuse” which is usually just a lack of basic training and socialization… things that CAN be overcome (and not take years and years). There are several blogs I read too in which it appears to me that the writer has enshrined their dog’s few faults as EPIC and DEFINING for the dog, seemingly for life. I feel sorry for those dogs.
And that curled tail? Totally acceptable! For some reason the show people think that the dog needs to have the tail low and tucked all the time, but that’s just bunk. ALL my dogs have crazy tails that sometimes curl loosely over their backs. Gemma even has a “J” tail with a real tight curve. I love them all, so expressive and beautiful like a flag.
All the best.
Christopher,
I’ve heard that real hunting dogs have a much different style than trialing dogs. In fact, the differences are almost diametrically opposed to each other. To retrieve a bird that falls on a peninsula, a trial dog will take a direct line, through water and over hill and dale to get the bird, whereas a good hunting dog will take the route that requires the least effort, running over land instead of swimming. In the field, you want to save the dog to hunt all day, and a dog that keeps himself dry and less tired but that still gets the bird is more desirable than a dog that just runs in straight lines and wears himself out with unnecessary swimming. This really makes me wonder about herding trials. Are the desired characteristics as different for herding trial dogs and working sheep dogs?
Your comment about herding cows is most interesting and leads me to wonder about differences in sheep herding and cow herding Border Collies. Cows and sheep are really different critters and it makes sense that cow herding and sheep herding dogs would be different. Somehow I have it in my head that cow herding BCs are smooth coated, much tougher, and more like McNabs? Are BCs the breed of choice for cattle? A friend of mine said that her Dad had Catahoulas on his cattle.
I understand your comments about the health checks. To my mind, as a doggie consumer, asking about health checks is a way to stack the deck in my favor. When a breeder tells you that they can tell if a dog carries eye problems by whether or not the dog runs into fences, it makes you wonder what else the breeder is thinking about, if anything.
There are lots of advantages to rescue dogs. I didn’t want a puppy because I work full time and I didn’t want to leave a puppy home alone all day. The rescue organization helped me find a dog that met my needs exactly. Roscoe is about a year and a half old and I don’t need to worry about leaving a baby dog home unattended. I could feel good about the adoption because a year or so is prime age for a dog to get dumped in a shelter. Also, Roscoe moves and jumps pretty well and my hope is that he at least doesn’t have really bad hip dysplasia.
Ellie Mae taught me about rescue dogs and what they are capable of.
At age 10, my first rescue BC, Ellie Mae, was returned to her breeder for biting a child. I had no intention of ever taking on a rescue dog, let alone one that was 10-years old and I certainly didn’t want a Border Collie (I’m a GSD snob.) but Ellie looked up at me and told me she was my dog. (“My name is Ellie Mae and I’m looking for a position with some educational opportunities and a good medical/dental plan and you know I’m YOUR dog.”) Ellie was my dog. When Ellie came to me she was in really bad shape because she was much neglected. She was kept outside, not groomed and her breeder had to cut all of her fur off to remove the mats. Ellie was not housebroken and was unsure about living in the house. Ellie could not eat because she had been allowed to play with rocks and her teeth were ruined. In fact, one of Ellie’s molars was split in half inside her mouth. Ellie’s dentist, when told that Ellie bit someone said “Ellie must have hurt everywhere, no wonder she bit someone.”
We did a lot of veterinary work and got Ellie fixed up and I started formal obedience with her because I was getting really bored with throwing balls for her 24/7. Our trainer had an opening in a class that was too advanced for Ellie, but that was okay, because I was not serious about training; it was just something to do with a 10-year old dog. Ellie didn’t know what to make of training at first, but after a while, she got the hang of it and liked training a lot. In a few months, Ellie shot to the front of the class that was too advanced for her. In a little over two years, Ellie earned five obedience titles, AKC CD and CDX, ASCA CD and CDX, UKC CD, and two UKC CDX legs. At age 12, Ellie placed first for all her AKC CDX legs and for the third (title) leg finished first out of 24 dogs in Open A with a score of 193/200. At age 12.5, Ellie got an AKC UD leg. At that point Ellie started to go deaf and was uncomfortable in the show ring, so I quit competing with her, but I’ve no doubt that without the hearing problem Ellie would have gotten that UD. Ellie and I did agility and even a little sheep herding. Ellie was unflappable and took it all in with joy and relish until she passed away at age 14.5 years . Ellie had an element of magic about her and she was an affectionate and cuddly little dog. None of our veterinarians or our trainer can believe that Ellie actually bit someone. We all think it was a story fabricated to justify getting rid of her.
Roscoe has a few rescue issues (not damage, just issues) that we need to work on. He’s a little leash shy and tends to be suspicious of me when I approach him with his leash. I’m working that with a treat every time I attach the leash. Roscoe’s recall also needs improvement. We think Roscoe is about a year and a half old, 10 year old Ellie learned how to learn and got a UD leg in two years, and I have no doubt that as Roscoe matures and learns his rescue issues will fade away. Working through rescue issues gives you character as a trainer.
I’d rather have a dog with Roscoe’s goofy tail and his wonderful temperament than a dog of great physical perfection and a rotten temperament. Roscoe is a really weird merle (brown, black, and with a few blackish merle areas on his face) and he has a broader face more like a conformation dog. His behavior and movement are 100% Border Collie. I pretend I’m insulted when people think he’s an Aussie, but I’ve never picked a dog just on looks and I never intend to!
Weave poles are easy to teach. Try walking backwards along the line of poles and lure the dog (facing you) through the poles with a treat. Don’t use guides, as they are just something to take away later, but you can use your body to block and direct the dog. As the dog learns, you turn yourself so that you and the dog are eventually pointed in the same direction. Ellie learned to do weave poles in no time as a 10-year old and I’m not a very good trainer at all.
Thanks
Terry
Terry,
You are 100 percent correct about retrievers.
“Retriever field trial water tests are where a dog’s training in lining is most severely tested and most highly valued. The judges like to set up tests with long angle entries to test the dogs’ state of training on lining.
When a dog is faced with a long angle entry his natural tendency is to either run down the bank or to bail into the water early at an angle closer to 90 degrees. In general a
Retriever has a natural tendency to take the fastest route out and back on a retrieve. That means he will generally try to take the driest route. . It has nothing to do with how well he likes the water. He takes the dry route because he is in a hurry to make the retrieve and he inherently knows it is the fastest route.
Field trial judges have made a science out of this canine tendency to take the drier, faster route. Nearly every water test you see in a field trial will have a major bank running component, and any dogs that run the bank will be dropped. The bank running aspects nearly always outweigh the other performance aspects of the water tests.
Looking at bank running from the aspect of value to a hunting dog, one must say that bank running is valuable in a hunting dog. Bank running bears directly on how many ducks a dog can retrieve in cold water. Cold water is a heat sink, and soaks up a dogs body heat. The longer a dog spends in cold water, the lower his body temperature goes. Dogs are susceptible to hypothermia just like people do. When a dog gets cold enough he will die. The drier the route the dog takes on retrieves, the more retrieves he can make before becoming hypothermic. Thus bank running is an asset in a hunting dog.”
–Robert Milner: http://www.fetchpup.com/about/usfield.php
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Does that means field labs will be unconsciously selected for blubber? I means… seals and dogs are not that far apart on the family tree.
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I wonder, does anyone consider “Swimmer’s Tail” a defect to be bred away from? Or is it just something you put up with?
Why are we doing all this trialing and testing? What does it prove? Are we getting the information from trials that we think we are? Is it useful?
I do competitive obedience (actually not very well) because it gives me what I think I need from my dogs. Teaching obedience is more fun than throwing balls 24/7 for both me and my dogs because the obedience exercises are varied and interesting. The dogs learn to respond to humans and that makes them easier to control and more comfortable with their veterinarians messing with them. I have no intention of breeding dogs and outside of my own narrow purpose, I’m not sure what formal obedience is good for.
Similarly, do all those tests and trials have any purpose outside of fun for humans and maybe their dogs?
We are breeding for blubber on Labrador Retrievers. Take a close look at conformation dogs. Conformation Labs have diverged from their working brethren and are shorter and squatter.
You just put up with it.
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I wonder as well Chris, and hoped someone more familiar could reflect. What I understand Limber tail, cold water tail, or swimmer’s tail, is an excruciatingly painful condition that seems to affect swimming breeds of dogs such as Labs. Usually the day after they are swimming or have had a bath with cold water, their tails are extremely painful, usually at the base? They will react painfully if you attempt to lift their tail, or touch them near the tail base. Often they will walk with their tail tucked.
It seems suspected perhaps there had been some abuse, because the dog’s tail was so painful by one Rescue owner. So a full workup including X-rays and blood tests, and all was normal. It would seem these dogs manage to strain or pull the muscles at the base of their tails. I ask my Vet and he stated treatment is pain medication in the form of NSAIDs (nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs) such as Rimadyl and Metacam, and they get better.
Terry,
These trials are basically the working dog equivalent of dog shows.
A lot of things trial dogs do actually pushes them away from having good problem solving skills and a good sense in general. Mark Derr writes about this very well in Dog’s Best Friend:
“Specialization is so far advanced in dogdom that even among working lines there are divisions between trial and hunting or herding dogs. Whereas not too many years ago field trials were merely a way to keep a dog employed during the off-season, they have become ends in themselves. Trial dogs, be they pointers, retrievers, spaniels, setters, herders or hounds, tend to be as a rule possessed of high energy, drive, and speed. Some of the trials are timed event with scores awarded for the number of animals treed or flushed, while others require precise execution of prescribed tasks. Intensely trained and drilled, the dogs work close to their handler, taking direction from him or her.
Working dogs must be more independent. Situations on the hunt, the ranch, or the farm are considerably more complicated and subtle than those in a trial, where the goal is to make everything uniform so the dogs can be measured against each other or against a standard of behavior– for example, whether a retriever can follow a beeline for a duck on the ground and bring it back with minimal human direction. A super trial dog, trained to point one tamed bird at a time, might forget forget entirely what to do when in the field on a hunt it encounters a whole covey of wild quail intent on scattering to all points of the compass. Or it might face pheasants whose idea of fun is to keep moving along the ground, forcing it to hold point over empty space or to engage in a kind of moving point, which its handler has worked to discourage.”
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More here:
http://retrieverman.wordpress.com/2010/03/16/the-specialization-of-dogs/
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Thanks, Retrieverman
Point well taken. Your comments have certainly given me something to think about. I don’t think I will ever look at getting a new dog or puppy the same way again. The quotation from Robert Milner is particularly revealing: “Today a puppy form the Field trial and Hunting Retriever breeding pools has a 40% to 50% probability of being calm enough and cooperative enough that the average hunter can train him and keep him under control.”
Where does that leave those of us who want dogs that will be easy to live with as house pets?
Thanks
Terry
It leaves you without a seat at the table, vilified and hated by the breeding interests in the first three estates at the same time that they want to dump their extra puppies in your lap for $$$.
For some, like me, it leaves you wanting to breed your own dogs instead of settling for what’s being offered and writing a blog exposing the lies and shedding some knowledge and analysis on the darkness.
Christopher,
My GSD breeder breeds for those of us who want nice, healthy puppies. She uses German lines and breeds to her own standard of temperament and appearance. And you are correct, she is vilified and hated. People ask me why doesn’t this person do Schutzhund, AKC obedience, or SOMETHING to prove the worth of her dogs. Her response would be that she gets reports back from the families of her puppies and that is the best trial or test for her. I have increased my respect for her as a result of our conversations.
My place at the table seems more and more pointed toward rescue.
Thanks for the intersting conversation.
Terry
This is what retriever trials and test (in the US and Canada) want:
This golden is supposed to run and swim straight out and straight back. They don’t want the dog to even stop, drop the dummy, and shake the water off.
It’s a line running contest. Not an evaluation of a retrieving dog.
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This is how they are supposed to be used. See how they come back in the most efficient manner– finding holes in fences or where the lowest gate is?
American dogs are trained not to think.
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Handsome crew, that.
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British trial.
See how the dogs have to hunt for the hares? They take direction, but holding the line isn’t as important.
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Watch them hunt up the grouse.
That’s never done in American trials.
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It’s the same with lure coursing versus live game coursing in sighthounds. The best lure coursing hounds will often run themselves into the ground with exhaustion, bloody pads, & soft tissue injuries as they drive, drive, drive to catch the lure. The best hunting hounds conserve injury, give up if the chase is obviously going to be unfruitful, & are able hunt all day. They also tend to be crummy lure coursers because they either are completely un-enthused about the plastic bag or because they figure it out & just run to the nearest pulley & wait for the lure to come to them, lol.
I think the real point of trials of all sorts is just so people can get a thrill out of watching their dogs display athletic prowess & to enjoy the training process. It’s a perfectly acceptable way to live with dogs. My only beef is when trialing is held up as an accurate way to determine which dogs are going to be best for real life work rather than the stylized sport version. Right now I’m running into this in the protection world. All the trainers I can find local to me want to train as though I am going to compete in ringsport with my dogs, when what I want is personal protection training. Ringsport training is something my dogs will not only suck at (because, like a hunting hound vr a lure coursing one, they’re not fooled by the game) but it teaches them things that will put them at risk of injury in case of a real life scenario.
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I was extremely lucky – when I started herding, my instructor (a diehard trialling border collie man) told me “You’ll never have a trial dog, but we can teach her to load a cow on a trailer)
That was when I realised that trial awards only grant the illusion of usefulness in a dog, because afterwards he admitted that those lovely trialling border collies couldn’t load that same trailer.
I teach my dogs service dog tasks when we’re both bored, more than I teach them obedience (though we do compete in obedience when time/money allows). I like to have dogs that are genuinely useful, and I’m pretty sure they like being genuinely useful as well.
Just stumbled on here and have some breaths of fresh air. Thank you.
What a thread! I wouldn’t know where to jump in for fear i’d still be typing 3 days from now.
But the show cat people got you beat! Because cats are pretty much the same, so if you want a breed which doesn’t look just like a normal cat, you have to either get a serious mutation, or really split hairs about exactly what you breed is.
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Paddyannie: I agree Chris creates such topics to consider. Indeed some Cat breeders must actually care. http://www.vgl.ucdavis.edu/services/coatcolorcat.php
Now what is not uncanny is deafness in cats as well as dogs. There is an established link between the white coat color, blue eyes and deafness. The tapetum lucidum is generated from the same stem cells as melanocytes (pigment cells). The blue eyes in a piebald or epistatic white cat indicates a lack of tapetum.
In dogs this is called merle ocular abnormalities: Piebalds are are called pinto, parti-colored & colored-headed whites in canines. Piebalds are dogs at least 50% white (& typically much more, 80-90% being common) where there is a white base coat with a few, large round-to-oval areas of color which differ in dogs where color pigmentation in harlequin is more ragged or lacy. Typically color on the head & at the root of the tail is the last to be lost. The piebald gene many breeders in various breed have much difficulty accepting because : Geneticist referred to as “excessive white”? They cling tightly to the Old S Locus theory of Little regardless of Scientific findings.
Anecdotal in nature question…Do Cat Genetics only accept piebald because they cling to the W for excess white?
http://www.eyecareforanimals.com/animal-eye-conditions/canine/296-merle-gene.html
Now this comparison study of cats and dogs with missing or lack of tapetum should not be ignored or denied in my opinion.
Deafness is caused by an absence of a cell layer in the inner ear that originates from the same stem cells as well. In odd-eyed white cats, the ear on the blue-eyed side may be deaf, but the one on the orange-eyed side usually has normal hearing. Not all blue-eyed whites will be deaf since there are several different genes causing the same physical attributes (whiteness, blue-eyedness) so it all depends on the cat’s genotype (its genetic make-up) not its phenotype (its physical appearance). Some people claim that 99% of blue-eyed white cats are deaf. This is inaccurate because blue-eyedness and whiteness can both be caused by different genes. It all depends on what genes the cat has inherited. These are the actual figures from scientific studies around the world. The percentages are given in ranges because results are different in different areas, partly because of the different genes found in the cat population. Where a cat is classed as deaf, the deafness may affect one or both ears.