This is not an apple, it's a pipe.
It is the nature of Evolution and the human mind to repurpose what exists into what could be: to innovate, experiment, and sometimes to improve. The fate of such change is almost always failure–99.9 % of all species to ever have lived are extinct and 95% of new businesses fail within 5 years–but occasionally unplanned, unimagined, and even unwanted uses and abilities surpass the ability, potential, or popularity of the original.
This isn’t a simple re-purposing, such as using an apple or corncob to create a pipe; such uses don’t surpass the original nor are they particularly exemplary in their new form. Though I couldn’t resist bringing surrealist painter René Magritte into this thought stream by combining two of his images which both ask about the fundamental nature of reality, representation, symbolism and existential identity.
In branding, especially in branding dogs, I think the community is way too hung up on the past–and often an artificial past–in how we define and value our dogs. We turn them into symbols and representations and we place the story over the existential truth.
Conformation shows are very much about the painting of the pipe versus the pipe itself. The goal of a painting is to exhibit the skill of the artist, not to make a superior pipe. The painting just has to LOOK like a wonderful pipe. Then, as artists are want to do, trends and abuses turn into movements and in some epochs the art is realist, even romantic, other times it’s impressionistic and then downright absurd.
Conformation is all about the change, never about performance.
The trialists are also absorbed in the past, but in a different way; they are fundamentally against the evolution and repurposing of dogs. They find value in the antique nature of the breed and revel in stasis and reenactment. While a performance standard does speak to an existential truth (and this is why we don’t see the grotesque distortions we find from conformation artists), it doesn’t prevent the performance task from becoming obsolete or surpassed in popularity.
Trials are all about performance, never about change.
So what happens when we don’t constrain either of those variables and take a measure of what is produced in an existential, realist, and measured manner?
The Internet is for social networking and porn.
The Internet was funded by the Department of Defense for use by the military. National defense and elite scholarship were the original use and designing factors governing its design. Now, the military and elite institutions are taking more and more of their networks offline and spend fortunes putting up barriers to those that are still connected to the Internet.
In reality, the Internet is primarily for social networking and pornography, not national defense or scholarship. An impartial observer who was not indoctrinated in what the Internet is supposed to be or what it was in the past would hardly notice the national defense and scholarship aspects and would declare it to be a massive undertaking which people use to convince others that they are having lots of sex followed closely by actually viewing images and videos of strangers pretending to have lots of sex.
Last year, social networking surpassed pornography as the most popular use of the internet and more social networking activity takes place over the Internet than any other outlet. Likewise, pornography is the second most common use of the Internet and more people get their pornography over the Internet than any other source.
These are unintended and arguably unwanted developments in the use of the Internet, but the reflexive superiority of the task and the platform are undeniable. It’s not for education or defense, it’s for social wish fulfillment and fantasy.
Love and other drugs: Viagra and Ecstasy are far more popular for carnal pursuits than for their original medical uses.
While we’re on the subject of unexpected innovation for purposes of initiating or aiding sexual activity, here are three examples of other tools (all pharmaceuticals in this case) which have surpassed their initial use in pursuit of that goal. Viagra was developed specifically to treat hypertension and angina, with zero thought or design given to a secondary use as an erection inducer. It wasn’t until the drug made it to human trials that it was found to be useless for angina but effective for increasing blood flow to the penis. That is now its primary use and it is the primary drug prescribed for that condition.
Methylenedioxymethamphetamine was first synthesized a century ago as an intermediary product in part of a Merck plot to plagiarize a successful Bayer drug used to treat hemorrhages. Its psychotropic effects wouldn’t be appreciated for another six decades after it had been investigated as an appetite suppressant and decongestant like Ephedrine, and later as an analog to Mescaline in a study done by the US Army. MDMA found its way to the streets by the 1970s and soon into the basket of drugs offered to patients by psychotherapists. Ecstasy was classified as a Schedule I controlled substance by the mid 1980s, but that didn’t prevent its rise to prominence as a recreational drug second only to Marijuana in popularity, passing Cocaine and Heroin as drug-of-choice for first illicit drug experience.
Latisse is a far more popular cosmetic than it was a medical treatment.
Bimatoprost (“Lumigan”) was a rather unremarkable member of a family of drugs (prostaglandins) used to treat glaucoma until it was discovered that a side effect of the drug was the darkening and thickening of the eyelashes. Rebranded as “Latisse” the drug is now FDA approved for cosmetic use and is being sold as a beauty product. Its value as a cosmetic has already far surpassed its use as a medicinal drug. It is the only drug approved for cosmetic eyelash enhancement, so it currently dominates a much larger market than its previous incarnation as one of many treatments for hypertension in the eye.
This is not a phone. It's a clock with some extra features.
Perhaps the most obvious approachable and active nursery for useage drift is the cell phone. It’s hardly a phone any more, as by any measure what used to be subordinate bonus features are now vastly more popular than the once sole raison d’être of the phone: to make voice calls. Teens send 6 times as many text messages as phone calls and even the least likely to text adults still use that feature more than dialing calls. The most popular use of the device is actually to tell the time though, and the ubiquity of cell phones has made the wrist watch an increasingly obsolete tool. Applications and Games have recently surpassed Internet browsing and e-mail as the largest share of data bandwidth and now people spend more time listening to music on their phone than making phone calls.
We might call it a phone, but that’s hardly its main use anymore. While there are still single purpose phones in the world, their use is dropping like a stone and the number of cellphone only households has surpassed the number of landline only households and the recession has caused many dual-phone households to ditch their landline to save money. The landline will likely live on, but only at a fraction of its previous popularity and in instances where the downside of cell phones (reliability, battery driven) make them impractical.
A dog is what you make of it and more people are making sport dogs than working dogs.
All of these tools were manipulated by man into filling a niche use. So too is the dog a man-adapted tool that has been continually manipulated to fill existing and new human niches.
So what IS a Border Collie then? By far its most popular use is as a pet. Not only does this use easily make up more than 90% of Border Collies, they are quite successful and good pets–easily a Top 10 breed and perhaps as high as Top 5. This has probably been the case for over a century going right back to the very founding days of the breed as a trial dog. It’s an undeniable truth that despite having the goal of creating winning trial dogs, the majority of puppies in a litter never stepped on a trial field. This is true for all competitive endeavors, it’s just that all the hype and branding comes from the minority use.
Among the fraction of Border Collies that are trained and compete, there are many times more Border Collies who play Frisbee, Flyball, Agility, and Obedience than have ever entered a sheep or cattle trial; and their ability in all these venues is exemplary. There isn’t another breed that can hold a candle to the Border Collie at dog sports, they are so dominant that they have been given a Border Collies Only division to compete in. Participation and growth in dog sports is robust and although some performance events started as a side show to conformation shows, they are now independently sustainable and there are numerous organizations that organize dog sport events that have no connection to and compete directly with the AKC.
This isn’t a “paradigm shift” in the formal sense, as the sport dog in no way precludes the use of the “working” dog despite surpassing it in popularity. I’ve been accused of putting dog sport Border Collies forth as “the new paradigm” but I make no such claim. Not only is ‘paradigm’ so over-used as to be meaningless, the original definition required a true revolution in understanding such that the use or way of thinking before the shift was eclipsed and supplanted (think “the earth is flat” to “the earth is round;” when you accept the latter, the former is meaningless).
Sport dogs and working dogs can co-exist and the value of the breed stock is not mutually exclusive. Creating pet and sport Border Collies is not a revolution, it’s a concurrent evolution. The reality is such though, that the market and demands of the sport world are larger and more intricate than the working breeders can provide. Thus, breeders can and will continue to breed to a sport and pet standard despite the moral cries from the sheeple that they should not do so.
This is not speculative advocacy on my part, projecting what I wish the reality were, it is a simple observation of the extant truth.
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great thought piece.
I offer one minor correction: in the USA, there aren’t “border collie only” classes in any of of the major agility/obedience/tracking venues. As far as I know, that’s a UK thing. At least in agility, the sport I know best. The existence of the bc-only classes has to do with the requirement to place (1st/2nd/3rd) before moving up to a higher division and the extreme difficulty for most non-border collies of beating most border collies in those height classes. In the USA, advancement has solely to do with individual performance at each level against the standard. So any dog can achieve the highest level titles and compete in the national competitions that exist ( where of course generally the border collies win in their height classes)
But in support of your general observations, the movement in the USA is to open up sports associated with particular breeds to other/all breeds. So now, for example, there are AKC lurecourse events for the “other than sighthound” breeds.
There are increasing numbers of people who want to DO things with their dogs, and they don’t want to be limited by what breed they choose. Even the AKC has opened up most of its performance events to mixed breeds. Though I suppose you would say that’s only because they are losing so much in their purebred dog programs…?
Pragmatism will defeat dogma eventually. If the AKC decides that financial survival is more important than purity at all costs, then perhaps we’ll get breed clubs who will recognize that breed survival (and dare I say health) can also trump purity at all costs too.
Don’t be silly.
Jess recently posted..Goodnight, Sweetheart, It’s Time to Go
I second what Jess said.
Ain’t gonna happen.
Retrieverman recently posted..“Beagle and Fox”
Maybe not on an institutional level, but I think individuals will come around.
Unfortunately, what is needed is for the institutions to come around. I feel that by the time they DO come to accept that things need to change, it will be too late for the individual.
Jess recently posted..Goodnight, Sweetheart, It’s Time to Go
We need something like a dog fancy version of Vatican II.
Until that happens, individuals won’t be able to make that much of a difference– at least as much of a difference to actually fundamentally change things.
Retrieverman recently posted..Red golden retrievers having fun in the snow
That’s a pretty brilliant analogy, actually.
I have a strong feeling that Dog Fancy II will only happen under threat of legislation.
Jess recently posted..Goodnight, Sweetheart, It’s Time to Go
It’s like you’re dealing with a church hierarchy.
They’re not going to make any adjustments against the main principles of the faith– which in this case is blood purity fetishism– even if it would save them.
It’s like asking the Catholic Church to admit that the historical record on Jesus’s existence is a bit fuzzy. It will not happen, even if it destroys them.
Because admitting it would also destroy them.
Retrieverman recently posted..“Beagle and Fox”
But don’t forget all the hypocrites we’ve outed in the staunchest of churches. Say one thing, do another. I suspect that there is a good deal of pedigree fraud done either to cover up an oops litter or to genuinely bring in new blood when lines go infertile due to purity.
Funny you should say that…
*cough cough*
http://www.thedogpress.com/Editorials/088-AKC-Registration-Fraud_Editor.asp
The AKC STILL will not allow mixed breed dogs in their herding trials, however, but WILL allow purebred Boxers to compete. In areas where the AKC rules supreme with little or no competition in herding trials, it’s almost impossible to engage in that sport . . . thus turning hybrid herding dogs to other sports.
Interesting read and points. Ours is squarely in the pet camp however we’re looking to get into some sort agility/flyball type activity…even just at a hobby level. Not really up on the politics but seems pretty interesting!
Border Collie Ned recently posted..Border Collie helping a chick hatch
Extremely thoughtful and well written. I give it an A for structure and content, A+ for critical thinking.
Royalty, the C church and its offshoots, the KC and its offshoots, are fossilized corporatocracies. Just as a new hip will not make an old ex-athlete regain former performance, the age of these corporations makes them mummified relics from hell- which can’t be reconstituted to perform at peak levels, no matter how many body parts are exchanged out. Each change will just make it more of a frankentocracy than a bionic being. Both relics also just happen to be losing users at high rates of speed.
A Mitt Romney type is needed to come in buy out the KC, dump most of the assets, run up the debts, fire the workers, and walk away leaving dogdom to start from scratch. Short of that, nothing will change until the crumbling is complete.
I think there should be a national dog registry that should perform all the major tracking in all dog’s lives including things such as birth and birth weight, vaccinations, DNA tests, illnesses, accidents, cause of death.
The fees would not be used to support impound centers or collecting strays, but only for the microchip, original registration, tracking, and keeping the database available to the public. The stray problem has diminished, and should continue this trend as all dogs are tracked from birth and returned to the breeder.
I hope mass use would make dna testing and typing very inexpensive and part of the tracking system.
Kate Williams recently posted..In Support of the Backyard Breeder.
If dog tags were written in qr codes, a lot of information could be recorded and kept on the dog. I don’t like microchip technology yet, but I like the idea of an original microchip, perhaps imbedded in all dogs as part of the first rabies vaccination procedure.
Kate Williams recently posted..In Support of the Backyard Breeder.
IMO border collie excels at dog sports because of their working ancestors that were bred purelly based on working performance. For me even if the dog is going to be a house pet it should have good working ancestors in his pedigree. This way the owner can do whatever he wants with the dog and fell what’s a real border collie is like. The extreme addiction to things like tennis balls, the extreme will to please/work, the speed, stamina, intensity…
New Zealand and Australian show lines ” border collies” are sooo different…
Undoubtedly Border Collies excel at dog sports because they excelled at trial sport. There’s little question of this. The agility dog was not created from scratch.
As for good working ancestors in the pedigree, that’s guaranteed, there’s not a single Border Collie that doesn’t go back to dozens of good trial dogs. This is what established the stud book and there are numerous popular sire studs (who are also trial winners of merit) that show up in all or most of the modern breed.
I don’t think however that there’s some magic around breeding for trial success that guarantees balance and optimal selection for all other uses. Nor are there even enough breeders of “working,” working, and trial dogs to meet the demand even if they were the perfect dogs. It’s rather a moot point. Not only ARE people going to breed within their own circles, the idea that you can turn back the clock or prevent reinterpretation of the dogs is wishful, but not rational.
Chris very well stated as usual. The Border Collie is being chosen by active young people and families that desire alot of interaction with thier family pet. These functions are growing alot faster than the conformation ring functions. Unfortunately, the collie has continued to lose popularity.
Number one request today, a collie that could help an eight year old with learning at 4H in herding. We were quite happy as the grandmother was an AKC judge who raved at the comformation of this normal eyed non carrier, no missing teeth, coming down from two OFA excellent parents. We blushed with pride when she said, “I have not seen this quality in a collie in years even at Westminister”. We said, but he has pricked ears,,,”Oh find someone to surgerically fix them…everybody does”. OK
She now wants her grandson to learn Junior Handling and put a championship front and back. Providing couch potatoes does not seem the avenue the young progressive young are going? Kathy
Hopefully that just means that naturally active people are being drawn to BCs and similar dogs, and that the mistake of getting a dog one can handle and really wants, not just one that looks “cute” from some TV ad, is what is happening. Because stories of people picking the wrong dog for them, from a person all too happy to just sell a pup to anyone, are abound.
Given the obesity rates in the country, I imagine we are still pumping out a lot of young NON progressives. 😉
I don’t think the working-line dogs necessarily make better pets – it depends upon how one defines “pet”. For a lot of people, it means a dog that’s affectionate, calm, playful, and content to do nothing for 8 or 9 hours a day. Speed, stamina, and intensity aren’t really compatible with suburbia.
Then there are the ones like a certain agility dog I know, who occasionally refuses to do a “down” on the pause table. He will go into a crouch, and simply gets stuck like that (he is trained to sit/down, but in high-stress environments the crouch is his default).
He’ll also chase a tennis ball, but when it stops will crouch and give it “the eye”. Sometimes he’ll bunt it with his nose so he can reposition himself and stare at it from a different angle. He’s an interesting little character.
That’s my only concern as well; what the “pet” family expects,as well as how well breeders interpret that expectation before selling pups to companion homes.
I think here Chris speaks of “Pet” as opposed to traditional sheep worker on a real working ranch. He also swears to be very picky with the homes he places pups in and I don’t doubt the truth of that whatsoever.
What I’m curious about is, well Chris, given the past is the past but it’s also the past that makes the BC the great sports dog it is today, and that conformation fetishism leads to its own troubles, what do you actually see the BC evolving into, ideally?
A sports home that can understand the BC as it is, or even was, well, it can accomodate. Modify the BC a little bit for a less active family or one with less time due to their jobs, which there are a tons of, and is it the BC anymore? Where do you see the line being drawn? And does concentrating on sports mean losing herding abilty and if so, is it a BC anymore also?
I know this sounds like a setup for the “Don McCaig” defense but I’m really open to feedback. We cannot deny a changing world.
“Ideally” changes that question significantly. If you remove that word then you’re asking for prediction on what the BC will evolve into. This would best be answered by a dispassionate analysis of the extant factors plus a little guess work.
If you include it, you ask me to make a value judgement and hypothesize what I would want or wish to happen. Frankly I think there’s too much of this in Border Collies and dogs in general. Specifically, people who have some ideal in mind and want to enforce this vision and exclude others from creating the dogs they want by restricting access to the gene pool and by trying to own the breed name and thus image.
My answer which is sort of between the two above scenarios, basically a look at what exists in the breed now and my own opinion on the merits of the different “estates” as they apply to me, is covered in my post:
The Third Estate of the Border Collie
Yes, actually I was asking about your own value judgements. All breeders have them, even if it’s something as simple as avoiding certain color breedings because you value good sight over a quirky color pattern.
“I know this sounds like a setup for the “Don McCaig” defense but I’m really open to feedback. We cannot deny a changing world.”
No, we can’t, and I’ll tell you what else we CAN’T deny, and that’s cultural/societal change. Happens all the time. It’s unavoidable.
I see people who don’t hunt or lure-course with their dogs, who are big into conformation shows and ‘preservation’ breeding, who continually lament that the role of the Saluki has changed in the Middle East (it undeniably has) and that the dogs being bred over there are no longer Salukis.
They don’t see the inherent ridiculousness of their position.
The old dog books are littered with references to dog types that are now extinct, because human culture moved on and didn’t need them any more. Adapt or die.
Dogs are a product of human culture/society. Change in culture, change in dogs. It’s perfectly natural and living in the past and treating the dog like it’s some kind of artifact behind glass does the dog no favors.
‘Border Collie’ and ‘Saluki’ and ‘Beagle’ are cultural constructs, what they *are* is defined by the culture they exist in. As the culture changes, the definition of ‘Border Collie’, ‘Saluki’ and ‘Beagle’ will change with it, because ‘Border Collie’ and ‘Saluki’ and ‘Beagle’ are just names, labels, they don’t matter because WE construct the dog and define it within our own minds. We will apply the label we feel is appropriate and hang the other guy. This is why I can say “yes, it’s still a Saluki even though there’s a Greyhound five generations back” and someone else may say, “No! Impure!” We have different definitions of what a ‘dog breed’ is, much less what a ‘Saluki’ is, even though we use the same word, due to which ‘dog culture’ we live in.
Jess recently posted..The Evolution of the Teshie Nose
Most assuredly we construct it. After all, these conformation shows have only been all the rage for the last 150 years or so, is it? They have done a lot of shaping, and we can change things again.
I won’t deny I CAN see how some folks may have a fear of losing certain traits that make border collies and salukis amazing in their own ways. As the past is the past, the origins of these dogs will always hold some mystery, and the circumstances surrounding their creation will always seem somewhat like chance because there are different tools available today to breeding that did not once exist. Thereby, BCs and Salukis were made by “chance” to some, and what are the odds of that happening again?
If the DNA is there, you can bring it out again.
And now for something, a little different. A potential contender for the BC in sports.
Not “contender”. Competitor.
Slowly but surely, deliberate sport mixes (generally bred for Flyball) are making inroads in Agility. They cannot compete in FCI Agility championships, but can compete in other world championships, and of course can now compete in all Agility venues in the U.S. Considering the way Flyball dogs tend to “trickle down” into Agility, I wouldn’t be surprised if we start seeing more people training Whippets for Agility as well. They are outstripping Border Collies for pure speed in Flyball.
There’s an awesome Whippet that is now competing in Disc Dog sport, Davy Whippet, which I believe comes from Flyball sport breeding. Very impressive dog and I hope that BCxWhippet crosses will work their way into the BC pool and help combat hip dysplasia. Whippets are impressive little dogs and their running is gorgeous.
and, predictably, there are some very popular studs (purebred) being used in the sport dog crosses. It is rather chilling to see the worst practices in purebred breeding crossing so quickly into cross-bred and mix breeding. From conformation (merle, tipped ears/non-tipped, blue, tri, etc) to performance (a common sire saturating multiple lines), exaggeration is god. What it looks like makes more money than what it is.
At least it’s a popular sire that would not have been used in the breed otherwise. As always, no system is perfect, but the more chances there are to be breeding different dogs and to be improving or at least measuring and appreciating dogs along different metrics, the better.
I agree with your point. I have been following the fads (flyball specifically, BC, Staffy, Dutch generally)for a few years now, with an eye toward acquiring a sport dog of my own eventually. I am seeing a few breeders account for a dis-proportionate amount of the sport crosses. And it is getting to the point where you can guess the line/sire/breeder based on nerves/head/ears/temperament/health issues. This is the opposite of what I was expecting when I first imagined a community of canine sports enthusiasts collectively contributing to a dog that fit this life style. You definately see diversity, but you also see traits that a person wouldn’t breed for if health, temperament, character, and vitality trumped name, color, shape, and latest fad.
man you went so far in this text
I’ve been reading a lot and in between all of the excitement which is pedigree dogs exposed Im still trying to make sense of what exactly is the “Border Wars”! Call me slow but I am getting there I think.
For one thing I had no idea BCs were so popular in America as pets but sticking my neck out here why would anyone want a border collie as a pet?
I could be wrong but the few I’ve known as pets have been utterly and exhaustingly insatiable in their need to be kept busy. Unless it’s reached stage four snoring it’s demanding attention from its keeper almost 24/7. Not an ideal pet surely? At least my JRTs another hyper type can be occupied amongst themselves in their favourite activity the perpetual pursuit of mice.
Many other hunting/working dogs similarly and ordinarily don’t make very satisfying pets either do they?
I was reading on a forum about the introduction of fox hounds to the KC. Someone is deliberately choosing fox hounds from working dogs with lowered prey drive to turn them into suitable pets and showing dogs à la Krufts hopefuls.
All the while pedigree dogs are being exposed.
There is outrage and vitriol spewed from the well heeled hunting classes at the very notion. Leave our hounds alone etc. However it seems amongst them no other than a highly respected Master of Hounds from a particularly feudally entrenched county has turned turncoat and is actually supplying this woman with suitable “well formed” dogs who don’t past muster in the field.
Gossip is flying and accusations hurled as to the exact relationship this woman has with the Master, none of it worth repeating in polite company. These dogs should have been culled along with her if my impressions aren’t incorrect. She has managed nonetheless to secure some striking duds from one of the most influential packs in the country and fox hounds are now shown at Crufts, the next thing in pets.
While the hunting fraternity are happy to accept “show hunters” commodiously shaped fat sleek beasts who couldn’t reach a gate across a muddy field never mind clear it a show hound is a complete anathema.
All the while hunting fox with hound has all been but banned.
Strange and interesting times. Im seeing some light in all of this. At least a bit closer to understanding The Border wars maybe.
So a question for you then, does the breeding of a fox hound for the show ring or for pets prevent anyone in any way from breeding them for work?
Does the air I breathe deprive you of oxygen? Do my children make you infertile?
This is one of the fundamental questions of this blog. Why is there an implied paucity of opportunity in dog breeding? That any puppy bred for one purpose necessarily takes away the ability for one to be bred for another?
It’s a mistaken paranoia of working breeders, as they see their opportunities for work dwindle to assume and blame the people who utilize their dogs for other concerns.
Sort of like the dinosaurs blaming the shrews for their demise.
“Sort of like the dinosaurs blaming the shrews for their demise.”
BWHAHAHAHA!
This fits the state of the dog world, which values tradition far too highly, in sooooooo many ways.
Jess Ruffner recently posted..Afghan Hounds in ‘The Egyptian,’ 1954
No. Not at all.
No you don’t. No they don’t.
I recognise that.
In the case of the Border Collie I agree one hundred percent having been convinced by your argument on this blog, not with much effort I might add. I think I might have come to the same conclusions without much further thought about it.
However there are other breeds where I wouldn’t agree with this.
Unfortunately the moussaka needs rescuing and resting but I would like to try at least and give you an example where I think its not working for some breeds at all. Another time.
Ahh yes found this thread at last.
I was thinking of working dogs where the entire registry is handed over to an organisation like the AKC or the KC. Where the breed has it’s roots in working and is suddenly moved lock stock and barrel into these as a “recognised” breed without proper thought to what this might entail for the breed. The first catastrophe becomes the standardisation and close breeding to standards followed by closed registries for the breed etc.
This is also of course a danger for breeds which suddenly find themselves without a job like the fox hound. But is the extinction of a dog breeds so tragic?
The enticement for breeds to be registered and recognised by national kennel clubs is (was in some cases) all very real for some as this recognition of their dogs holds a personal prestige. Not least for newcomers who are hell bent on introducing the breed to other countries namely America but any country. It also has for some a certain commercial advantage. But quite significantly the biggest incentive can be that it dissolves all politics, infighting, agendas and quite frankly responsibility for a breed. Its all so much easier isn’t it? Not only will this appeal but is/was again often couched in terms of preservation too?
I have in the past been involved with some very rigourous years and years of campaigning to keep certain breeds (in this case in particular one breed) away from all this. To try and foster the working and appraisal system some working breeds do well under and how they first started out, continuing under a club and association system.
The break through which was “pedigree dogs exposed” came I have to say at a very opportune moment and was sufficient in its influence to hold off at least the wholesale sell out of the breed concerned. So a good number if not the majority remain outside the breeding for showing disaster area. Instead they are now bred along the lines of other livestock landraces with open or in some case under different associations (politics) with double registers.
The show breeders somewhat marginalised and stigmatised unfortunately but that’s what it took. There will be two types now working and showing no way around that. In the case of the BC a third is called for?
Is this a problem? To have a breed split up and isolated in pools selected for different criteria Im not sure. Im assuming it can be with limited founder dogs even if they themselves were selected from a very broad base of type or even breeds? Are sheer number any kind of guarantee?
Many of the questions Im trying to find answerers for seem to be here somewhere on this blog and others so Im having a good time of it finding some clarity. (: But for sure Im delighted most definitely by the timing of PDE.