Border Collie Wars - Page 1

I found this extremely interesting review on Amazon's website. Everyone who values the working dog needs to read it, and, if possible, read the book it's written about!

In 1848, Queen Victoria was introduced to working Collies at Balmoral Castle. She became captivated by these intelligent dogs and brought a few back with her to London, where they became the rage -- hitting center stage just as the first dog shows were starting to take off in the U.K.

With the rise of organized dog shows between 1860 and 1890, a show standard was written up for the Collie by John Henry Walsh (aka "Stonehenge"), a man who himself did not own or work Collies, but who felt himself expert enough in nearly every breed of dog to write a standard by which they could be judged by appearance alone.

Needless to say, dogs were soon being bred to this "standard," which assigned large numbers of points to head shape and size, coat length, and coat color.

A Collies ability to actually work sheep or take commands was not allotted a single point.

In 1893, the fate of the Collie took another bad turn when the very young Czar Nicholas II sent 15 Borzois to the aged Queen Victoria. Intended as a diplomatic gift to curry favor with an aged dog collector who also happened to be his wife's grandmother, the Borzois more than left their mark, as they were soon crossed with Queen Victoria's Collies, thereby helping to create the strange-looking, impossibly narrow-headed dog we now know as "the Lassie" Rough-coated Collie.

By the 1920s, these non-working and narrow-headed Collies appeared to be a different breed from the working Collies found in rural parts of Scotland, Wales and the rest of the British Isles.

While the show dogs were increasingly homogeneous, the working dogs were of varied sizes and colors. Some had short coats and prick ears, others had longer coats and folded ears. The dogs themselves ranged from 25 to 75 pounds, and they came in a wide variety of colors from brown or red, to black and white, from dappled Merle to various hues of gun metal gray. In fact, almost the only thing all these dogs had in common was an obsessive devotion to work created by breeding worker-to-worker for generations.

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"Big one, little one, handsome one, ugly ones, long-coated, short-coated: nobody gave a damn. How's his outrun? Can he read sheep? Can he move a rank old cow?" - Don McCaig, Dog Wars

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Needless to say, these were not the kind of questions being asked by the folks at The Kennel Club shows!

As a result of divergent selection criteria -- working ability versus conformation -- the smart, working, heterogeneous collies that had been so admired by Queen Victoria in 1848, were systematically selected out of The Kennel Club gene pool in favor of more homogeneous conformation stock.

Could these pretty show dogs herd a cat across a living room? Perhaps, but no one had much illusion that they would be of any real use on a mountain side with 500 head of semi-wild sheep to pen before an approaching storm. Shepherds looked elsewhere for their working dogs.

But what did that matter? How many people really had sheep to pen? Never mind that the sheep and the hill created the Collie. How could a dog be harmed if it still looked good? A non-working Collie could be bred to a non-working Collie, and it would still chase a stick. What else was needed?

In fact, by The Kennel Club's light, what mattered was not the dog, but the name. And so, in 1924, when the International Sheep Dog Society (ISDS) brought working Collies to Hyde Park for a sheepdog trial, The Kennel Club objected. How could these feral-looking dogs be called Collies, they demanded!? They had no resemblance at all to the dogs in The Kennel Club ring!

"Fine," the ISDS replied, and promptly began calling their working dogs by a new name: "Border Collies," to differentiate them from their non-working Kennel Club cousins.

Much the same story played out with working Fox Terriers at about this same period of time (complete with Queen Victoria in a supporting role).

Here too a breed of working dog, was quickly wrecked by Kennel Club breeders focused on pure conformation standards within a closed-registry system.

And here too, the true working dog continued to live on in the countryside under a different name -- the Jack Russell Terrier.

Move forward 100 years, and the tale plays out anew, as the Kennel Club bureaucracy circles back to try to round up two popular working dog breeds that somehow (how?) slipped out of sight and off their roles.

"The Border Collie? The Jack Russell Terrier? Oh, we must have them."

Never mind that these dogs had already been pulled onto the Kennel Club roles. By now the Kennel Clun dogs were ruined beyond recognition and operating under a different name. Time to try again!

It is here, at the start of the Second Battle for the Border Collie that Virginia sheep man and writer Don McCaig begins his tale in The Dog Wars: How the Border Collie Battled the American Kennel Club.

In its simplest form, McCaig's book is a battle between what works and what doesn't.

On one side you have the American Kennel Club -- a 19th Century organization driven by 19th Century genetic theories and an almost Kremlin-like bureaucracy in New York City. These people have the strange notion that all canine breeds can best be judged at a glance while trotting a dog around a ring on a thin string leash.

On the other side, you have a small collection of not-too-sophisticated farmers and sheep dog trialers; the very people who made the working collie what it is. These folks may not own a tuxedo or ball dress, but by God they know two true things; 1) that the show ring has never made a working dog, and; 2) that the mettle of a Border Collie can only be determined on the hill while working cattle, sheep or goats.
 

Continue reading here: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0983484503?ref%5F=sr%5F1%5F1&s=books&qid=1424616507&sr=1-1&keywords=dog%20wars&pldnSite=1

What needs to be noted here is how the AKC fought against having ANY sort of work required as part of the breed standard. Several rival groups were trying to be the one to represent the border collie under the AKC, and the AKC went with the one that didn't demand that the dog actually be able to herd sheep.

What if the GSDCA demanded the GSD have at least one working title before it could get a championship or go 'select'?  Are there ANY AKC breeds that demand performance titles of their dogs? Or is that only breed clubs that are not under AKC? (The majority of border collies are NOT AKC registered, as the breeders realize what a joke the AKC is.)

I have a special soft spot in my heart for the collie breed, as most of the dogs I knew as a child were working farm collies. I hate with a passion what has been done to this breed. I recently had a rough collie come in to the kennel for grooming. The owner had, through ignorance, neglected its coat. She was trusting her teenage daughter to groom the dog, and the girl just didn't realize it was important to groom the WHOLE dog, and get right down to the roots of the hair to comb out undercoat.

The dog had SO much coat, and was so matted around its rear end that it took me 15 minutes of careful clipping to even find its anus. It was SO matted back there it's a wonder the dog could even poop! 

Of course, you can imagine how such a huge, fluffy coat would be an impediment to a dog that actually had to work, and move easily through underbrush, weeds, etc. while herding.

No discussion on this?

I was gonna say '' that dog don't hunt'' or ' is this the room for an arguement?'' but SS you said it all!           nice post

Much the same story played out with working Fox Terriers at about this same period of time (complete with Queen Victoria in a supporting role).

Here too a breed of working dog, was quickly wrecked by Kennel Club breeders focused on pure conformation standards within a closed-registry system.

And here too, the true working dog continued to live on in the countryside under a different name -- the Jack Russell Terrier.

I disagree with this. I have owned smooths since 1985, took my female and 2 of her one yr old sons to a big go-to-ground trial with70 jack rt entered....my fox terriers placed first, second and third...the motherdog first place And she was runner-up for Championship behind a Jag terrier. So the 70 supposed 'real' hunters were shut out.

http://jarvsostigen.se/english_2.htm

Here's a good example of 'real' Fox terrier. The Jack Russel would not exist with out the Fox terrier.

Interesting read. Our herding trainer (he trains and judges for the AKC, AHBA and USBCHA) has told me before that Rough Collies have virtually no herding instinct any more and that it is VERY hard to find a good one. I assumed it was just because they were bred to be pretty, but this really helps to explain it. Wow. Very sad.

It is amazing to me how far dogs are now from their intended purposes. :(

In the US, ultimately it's the breeders who make the breeding choices, not the AKC or the parent breed clubs.

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When I was a kid, one of my uncles had a purebred Scotch collie. She was sable and white, like the Lassie collie, but there the resemblance ended. Her shape and size were more like the border collie. She was a terrific farm dog, very protective of the property, and helped herd the milk cows.

It wasn't until many years later I realized she must have been one of the few true remaining Scotch collies that hadn't been crossed with Queen Victoria's borzoi mutts! 

I know a lot of people who would have given their eyeteeth to have had that dog, and bred some pups from her!

A lot of people are not aware that there is a Border Collie and a Welsh Sheepdog. They are actually two different breeds. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welsh_Sheepdog

I have one of each (as well as my GSD). Both have a strong herding instinct but both work differently. Sometimes it is hard to discern which 'breed' is which as they can look different to how described on Wiki http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Border_Collie

It is possible sometimes to hazard a guess by looks which is which in the breed but usually they are very alike in looks but it's how they work that that the difference is noticeable. My two look nothing alike but the WC still gets called a Border Collie. Both extremely clever dogs, what you'd call 'sharp'

I love both as a breed and of course the GSD.