There’s a lot of symmetry between the Church’s dogmatic and bigoted stand against gay marriage and the sheeple arguments against breeding Border Collies for sport or any other activity save trial “work.”
Both tradition-based cultures are authoritarian and exclusionary when it comes to who gets to breed and raise the next generation. Both keep extensive records of sex and who is allowed to engage in it with who else. Both sanctify the new offspring of this approved sex and offer papers in testament to membership within their ranks. Both fancy themselves as shepherds guiding their flocks. Both are intransigent, conservative, and suspicious of change. Both are thousands of miles and hundreds of years distant from the lands and cultures of their origin. And both are anachronistic and increasingly out of touch with modern culture.
Both are surprisingly quiet about how recent their actual institutions are and how often they’ve over-turned their own culture or administration, instead preferring to appeal to great longevity. The ISDS didn’t start publishing pedigrees until ~1950 and the ABCA is younger than I am coming to be in 1982. Likewise the Roman Catholic Church didn’t settle on what books were and weren’t in the Bible until 1562 and the Protestants said to hell with this soon after coming up with their own canon, and the King James Version for the Church of England–which was ironically founded around redefining marriage–wasn’t finished until 1611. Of course all of these shepherd schools have been revising their dogma ever since, with big changes like Vatican II ruffling a lot of feathers as recently as 1965, and new versions of the good book coming out almost continually.
![Consequences of Breeding Sporter Collies. [] Plague of Locusts [] Sheep Industry Collapse [] Death of First Born [] Ruination of the Breed [] Zombie Apocalypse [x] People breed quality dogs from familiar stock to meet their needs.](https://i1.wp.com/www.border-wars.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/consequences_of_sporter_collies.jpg)
Both the Church and the sheeple shun the opposing activity as unnatural and unproductive, and they tolerate it only insomuch as they can’t prevent it from happening save for cultural shaming, peer pressure, and ostracizing anyone who proclaims that it is not a sin or dare engage in those activities. Both holier-than-thou institutions also forget just how different their governing culture is from the culture of the governed. The Church is a male-dominated sexually segregated celibate hierarchy that draws its numbers from and ministers a doctrine of be fruitful and multiply to co-ed unions that are supposed to have lots of sex in the pursuit of growing membership. Childless men who live with men, women who live with women and are married to invisible deities who are fundamentally opposed to men living with men and women living with women who likewise can’t produce children from their union. Strange ironies.
The sheeple are likewise strangely ironic in their hypocrisy in that their foundational activity is agricultural improvement sport that began as adjuncts to fancy shows and now their biggest enemy is those self-same fancy shows. Just as the vast majority of people are neither celibate priests or gay, the vast majority of Border Collies are never going to compete in a trial or pageant and the number of sport bred dogs greatly outweighs either of these other competition concerns. And, of course, the number of “just pets” bred Border Collie dogs dwarfs all of the other categories combined. But like the Church, the lure of dogma and institutional power makes the minority in charge of the doctrine which impacts the majority.
And in this regard both priesthoods demand that other people not be given the freedom to associate and reproduce with whom they want out of an overly-prejudicial concern for protecting their own flocks. Mostly out of dogmatic concerns than any ability to document actual harm. The Church lashes out at gay unions on grounds that it will damage the traditional institution of marriage with no evidence of such. The sheeple lash out at sport and show bred collies on grounds that their presence will damage the traditional institution of shepherd work and trials with no evidence of such. The notion that people simply want the freedom to associate with and breed with others of their own choice is slandered by the Big Hats as trying to undermine and corrupt their protected group. But we know that gays marrying isn’t going to result in a corruption of straight marriage, nor will breeding sporter collies prevent anyone from breeding a shepherding-focused dog on a ranch.
Traditional marriage has its own problems which are entirely unrelated to gays and their desire to have their unions recognized. Trying to prevent or rebrand gay marriages as “civil unions” does nothing to mitigate those extant problems. Likewise, true working dogs have a basket of their own problems, none of which are caused by the growing popularity of Border Collies bred for endeavors off of the farm, and bitching about calling these dogs something other than “Border Collies” is likewise a pointless diversion.
The Border Collie genie is out of the bottle, there’s no shoving it back in and it’s an undeniable truth that the majority of people own and breed and use Border Collies for pursuits that have nothing to do with sheep trial sport or professional livestock ranches. Trying to carve these people out of the Border Collie family accomplishes about the same as ostracizing your gay children. It’s pointless division and engenders hatred instead of inclusive and adaptive family structures that can weather change and challenge together.
As it stands today, most breeds don’t even allow you to marry outside the family, and we all know that’s unhealthy. Border Collies aren’t much different, very few marriages are allowed outside the family and require blood tests, religious conversion, and a donation to the Church. Actual working people aren’t so dogmatic and breed within the landrace without papers quite often. This innovation is why the working dogs of the American West in 2014 aren’t particularly like the working dogs of the border regions of England and Scotland from the 1700s.
Despite being a popular breed, which genetically is a very good thing, the desire to create sub-species out of our breed and excommunicate a good portion of the dogs doesn’t help. It just throws up more barriers to people like me who want to live in the city and do city sports with my Border Collies and breed them in a way that preserves their genetic diversity and doesn’t double down on the continued squandering of the gene pool. There should be a place at the table for me and my dogs, instead most zealots think I’m Satan, or at least Judas willing to betray the doctrine of their made-up Gods for some perceived profit. I don’t demand anyone else breed like me or breed to my dogs against their will, but freedom and choice is not the name of the game with these people.
These people are convinced that their trial-bred dogs are the epitome of working dogs, that what they do is not a sport but actual agriculture, and that the biggest threat to that endeavor isn’t the collapse of the US Sheep industry, but the rise of Sporter Collies. And that such dogs need to be as shunned and ostracized as the show BCs. Ignore the real problems, don’t expand the market or the gene pool, don’t even preserve what you have… divide it and double down on intransigence in the face of change. And hey, trust us, we have Big Hats.
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It is good to know one is not alone. Thank you for expressing my deepest thoughts so eloquently.
So I’m guessing from your diatribe that you hate Catholics and working border collie people? What a douche. In your attempt to raise gays and pet BC’s up, you have taken your self to a new low!Congrats!!
Well you’re a bad guesser then, because I don’t hate Catholics or working border collie people. Sorry.
Pointing out and arguing against extant bigotry is not, in return, bigotry or even hatred. If you support the bigoted positions of the Catholic church or any other group that makes the same claims, then defend those claims with an argument. If you support the sheeple position, then defend it with a specific argument.
Your comment tries to shrink my specific and documented argument down to “catholics r bad, sheeple r bad!!” I’ve done more work than that explaining exactly why I’ve made the comparison, so if you have a complaint or different view, have some courtesy and actually address the points. Otherwise it’s very easy for me to just turn your statement around on you and say “So I’m guessing from your comment that you love bigotry and hate gays.”
Chris, Why do your suppose the bigot disciples of the Establishment hierarchy backlash to demonize those who have different viewpoints? I understand a bigot depicts an obstinate, unreasoning individual with an attachment to a creed or cause. However, credulity is not distinctively religious, but describes someone that is ready to believe without sufficient evidence with a proneness to accept the marvelous or expecting miracles. Could we say or be wrong to describe this complex human behavior as schismatic heretics or simply sanctimonious hypocrites? There is no support in the Bible for inbreeding …even a cousin as you know. Those that apply science and new breeding tools and knowledge seemingly are EVIL.and out to destroy the breed. What about the Covenant of Good Stewardship….Hmmm Genesis 1:28 and Chapter 9?
Well, where did it say you hated Catholics and raise gays and that your Border Collies are just Pets?
If you despise the history and innate talents of working border collies, that’s up to you. I don’t understand, though, why you would bother to even have them. Rather than breed away from what this breed IS, why not just find a breed that suits you?
There really are many of us, even who do sports with border collies, who feel it’s a privilege to work with well bred dogs that naturally have the mind and abilities that have been bred into them for many generations. Hundreds of working bred border collies excel in obedience and agility and frequently beat the “sport bred” types.
Why is there even a need to breed border collies specifically for sports when the real thing works so well?
I am talking about sports here. For conformation, I agree that a whole different breed is rewarded, which has little to do with working border collies.
Being against gay marriage, by the way, is not comparable to being against breeding away from working ability in dogs. Lame straw man right there.
Where do you see any evidence of that? If sport and pet breeders DESPISED the dogs’ history and innate talents they wouldn’t own them or use them in their programs.
This is what I mean by “Border Collies” are a genie that is out of the bottle. It doesn’t really matter if you or anyone else understands it or not, Border Collies are ALREADY an extremely popular sport breed, if not the most popular sport breed and thousands of breeders and owners and trainers already use them. They’ve already made the decision that starting with Border Collie stock “suited them” better than any other breed.
This is a wonderful thing. If the dogs you breed are better, people should be able to use them in their breeding programs. Having different lines that are healthy and able and somewhat genetically distinct is a major benefit to the long-term health of the breed and the dogs that people want. Nowhere will you find me arguing that people SHOULD NOT breed for work or for trial sport. NO WHERE will you find me supporting carving up gene pools into ever smaller and more perilous sub-breeds or different breeds just because people can’t tolerate diversity under the same name for the breed. The “bans” and division comes from the other direction. I am not, in response to authoritarianism, an authoritarian.
(1) People breed from dogs they see proven on the field. This means that dogs sold to sport homes that do well are going to be desired as parents of the next sport generation. This means that people who own sport bred dogs are going to want to breed from the dogs that perform for them. This means breeding for sport and selling to sport homes. Wiston Cap’s sire and dam might have become more popular when he became popular, but not nearly to the same degree he did, no?
Well, same thing applies to sport dogs. People will select from winning dogs and that means using THEM and not their parents in breeding programs.
(2) Of course sport buyers can research pedigrees and seek out parents from the same working breeder who sold the successful sport dog, and they do and they should. But over time this is not going to be a solution. When a 20 year old sport person buys a puppy from a 70 year old working breeder, eventually that working breeder is going to retire from breeding long before the younger generation is done with their desire for quality stock. Since it’s unlikely that working breeders are going to keep a stable full of successful sport breeding dogs on the side, the locus of sport breeding is naturally going to shift to the people who train and work and title and then breed the dogs.
This is no different than asking “Why is there even a need to breed Border Collies in the United States when the real thing on the borders of Scotland and England works so well?!?!”
Actually it is comparable, I made dozens of comparisons between the two and could go on making more. Claiming that gay marriage harms straight marriage is highly comparable to claiming that breeding for sport harms breeding for work.
Let me re-write your questions with this in mind. “If you despise historical straight marriage, that’s up to you. I don’t understand why you would even want a marriage if you’re gay. Rather than change what marriage IS, why not just find some other arrangement like civil unions that suits you?” Hrm, sounds a lot like arguments against gay marriage.
“There really are many of us in legal marriages who might experiment with open marriage that might even include homosexual activity, who feel it’s a privilege to have a marriage that is sanctified as it is for many generations. Hundreds of traditional marriages have produced gay kids, even gayer kids than are produced from gay civil unions. Why is there a need for gays to have their own marriages when the real thing, straight marriage, works so well in producing more gays?”
Chris it seems to be a social disease…lack of comprehension
Chris, you have proven your point Dogmatic Bigots. This is like Conformation in Rough Collies. When one has a genetically DNA tested clean collie with great conformation, good dentition, and floats with single tracing obvious, not inbred with incest breeding they say it is ugly. They are not only bigots in my opinions they live in a plastic bubble totally unaware that times have changed. If we do not help our pure breeds to adapt to the changing world these breeds will be lost forever.
I am considering getting a collie for my next dog. Can you recommend any breeders? I’m mostly looking at service dog breeders because of the higher health requirements.
Sorry for off topicness.
I’d do your best to meet dogs from previous litters and/or the parents. As much as a nice house or nice website lends an image of credibility, you have to live with the actual dog. You don’t take home a reputation.
If you find some specific breeders I’d be happy to pass along any warning signs if I know any. But getting to know the actual dogs is more important in my view.
And in general ask yourself if any breeder has such a focus on one thing that they would be willing to sacrifice qualities you would not want sacrificed.
If a breeder recycles their stock often, putting titles on them and then breeding them and then placing them in homes, what do they really know about longevity? If a breeder has 30 dogs on their ranch, do they really know what your puppy is going to behave if it’s the only dog?
The reason I wouldn’t jump to recommend breeders is that there are so many flavors of BC and you likely have different considerations than I do.
Some people want a breeder who will be an active mentor in some activity, or one that produces a certain type of dog and the breeder-buyer relationship isn’t important.
It’s good to take your time. Cute puppies sell themselves, so it’s tempting to look at litter photos and run with it. But remember that you will hopefully have the dog for well over a decade.
Huh. Thanks. I may take you up on that. 😉
I’m going to play a bit of devil’s advocate:
I don’t consider the trialing people to be all in the right — I think they are being very short sighted and not paying attention to some of the problems that are cropping up in the breed; they have become far too tunnel visioned with their deification of success in trialing.
In this they are just like the conformation Border Collie people, and the sport Border Collie people have by and large proven to be just as bad as the other two — linebreeding, winking at health concerns if the big person or big dog has it. So the jury is still out on whether or not I respect them any more either.
I think that we really should be working to preserve the inherent working characteristics of the Border Collie — and that means working livestock, as that is what developed the dog (this can be farm work, but let’s be honest, it’s going to become more and more trialing than it is already, the agricultural world is changing, so let’s be more proactive here) — and there is no reason why we should not also be working on developing Border Collies that are good looking and can do sport well, but the first and foremost thing is to consider the dogs’ health and soundness — the rest will follow (and in prioritizing this perhaps we can also make for a dog that has joy in life and is a joy to its owners, thus perhaps making a place for all of the dogs that will not make it to the elite or even top half of the trialing, sporting, or conformation show world but will need homes nonetheless anyway…and yes, all three groups are pretty bad about not focusing on that end of things, because the elitist (and highly lacking in common sense) mindset that many in all three groups are susceptible to.
So for now I guess I fall on the side of the sheeple: keeping the Border Collie traits are important. With the caveat: let’s not be so hasty and reactionary and drive people away, there is no reason why we should not celebrate Border Collies’ achievements in other areas (although the conformation showing will require a more moderated approach imhao) and let’s consider health and soundness first and above all…and no, just trialing or working the dogs will not always prove those; we can do better.
Heh, to bring it full circle: there are as many reasons to be leery of any of the big interest groups in Border Collies as there are to be leery of interest groups involved in gay marriage (which has several severe implications itself and has actors within it that are not at all innocent, ethical, or even very good people)!
Good solid iconoclasm . . . though perhaps ill-timed. How refreshing it is to hear the biggest hat in the Church ask: “Who am I to judge?” (remembering Luke 6:37) .
Ah, but when he said that, he was backing up Church doctrine that’s been around since the Church’s founding. The true Christian is to approach the individual with love and charity, as we are all sinners: judge not, lest you be judged; love the sinner and hate the sin sort of thing (which applies to the different branches of Border Collies really).
But it does not mean that one has to accept/approve/condone what someone else does without discernment; in fact, it could be just as sinful as dogmatic judgement without love and charity. (which applies to the dogs as well too I guess).
Jesuit priests are famous for being subtle in their remarks.
But back to the dogs — while I find the rancor between the factions very short sighted and wrong headed, I do think that it would be a mistake for breeders to not keep an eye to what the dog’s original purpose was when setting up their breeding program.
If innate herding abilities are not kept, then some other things might be lost along the way as well that would be counter-beneficial to any new purpose set before the dogs. Just as it is equally bad to advance trial winning over all other considerations.
ok . . . I’m a Labrador person. Do I consider the original purpose recovering fish that have slipped the hook in the Bay of Fundy? or retrieving shot game birds in the UK? or being a companion to a rural petty aristocrat in an age when affection and touching were inhibited? The roles of dogs in society evolve and change. I’m grateful that anachronisms haven’t stopped my breed from taking on new roles. If I want an assistance dog, why should I care whether it has good water entry? The breadth and diversity of the Labrador gene pool is one of the things that contribute to breed success. If herding instinct leads to making the suburban Border a highly-motivated chaser of cars and bicycles, what’s wrong with breeding away from it?
I think if you are breeding Labradors you should probably study the breed’s history, find the original usage(s) for them, and keep those abilities in mind when you set up your breeding program.
You most definitely could (and maybe should) consider other functions that the breed has shown a propensity for, and heck, you can even take your dog’s looks into consideration too.
And of course, above all else the health (in all definitions) and temperment should be prime considerations, as without those the other things are moot.
As for suburban Border Collies: a lot of dogs are not so high strung/obsessive who have been bred from working/herding lines, so there is no reason why, with proper selection, management, and training they can’t be good, if active, suburban dogs for the proper homes…and still be able to herd (and produce dogs that can either go trialing and sport) or just be somebody’s, active high input/output, pet.
But I really don’t want to see them taken so far out of breeding context that they no longer resemble what they were originally intended to be.
And there is no reason why you can’t keep a large gene pool and breed with a mind towards original intent.
If you have a good dog that maybe is a bit lacking in the retrieving/gun dog/water dog talents, but is very nice in other ways, then breed it to something that shows a lot of skill and might need some of the values the other dog has (of course with the caveat of good health, temperment, structure, don’t inbreed out the wahzoo, yada, yada).
Things don’t have to be all or nothing; things don’t have to go to one extreme or the other (in fact, I think they shouldn’t).
Even though I am religious (not Catholic, Episcopalian, which in the U.S. is very accepting of gays and other religions. In fact the Bishop at our church is gay) I find this absolutely brilliant! Well done!
I’m not sure I belong here. I’m a recovering Catholic and have pretty much the same opinion about gay folk as I do straight, please don’t talk to me about your sex life, as it makes me very uncomfortable, other than that, I’m good.
I can’t even weigh in on the breed wars as my dog (one of four) that comes to mind from this post is a large rangy herding dog/sight hound kind of thing. If he was bred on purpose it didn’t work, I found him at the pound.
He does, however, show a talent for Schutzhund, discovered by the trainer who helped me wrestle him under control.
Because of this, I have come to meet GSD bred specifically for this sport.
While we can hold our own in scent work and shine in obedience, we get our butt kicked in protection work by these beautiful animals.
The dogs bred for this sport arrive barking and slamming the sides of their heavy duty kennels. My failure of a dog lies quietly in the back of my car waiting his turn. The competition worthy dogs live for the bite and are carefully handled and worked to make sure it always lands in the correct spot.. My dog has embraced this discipline and learned to harness his aggression, as a matter of fact, he was so relieved to hand control of his bite over to me, it never shows up outside of practice, and then only on command.
Don’t get me wrong, if I was a serious Schutzhund competitor I would invest in one of these high strung live wires, they are bold, intelligent dogs.
As it stands, I’m extremely grateful my dog was bred from some “outside” bloodlines. BTW, he is a Quaker.
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