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BREEDING BETTER COMPANION COLLIES
By David Hancock

 In January 2018, the Associate Editor of the Spectator magazine devoted his weekly column to the sad story of his rehoming his Hungarian Vizsla from its central London home to a more countrified one, asking his readers if he 'had done the right thing'. This gentleman, Toby Young, a well-educated, gifted, knowledgeable man may have done the right thing in rehoming his hunt-point-retriever in more acceptable (to the dog) surroundings but what was such an intelligent man doing in owning and therefore condemning a hound-like gundog, bred for a century or more by the Hungarian nobility, to a restricted and soulless life on the streets and small parks of London? But everyday on our city-streets we see hunting dogs and pastoral dogs slowly dying of acute boredom in an environment wholly unsuited to their innate nature, inner desires and powerful instincts. When they react to such torture we place them either in another 'loving home' or into 'rescue'. But it may well be that the breed suffering the most from sustained inactivity is the Border Collie now a popular pet, once only seen in the pastures, long despised by the Kennel Club as being just a mongrel, lacking a recognised provenance. City life and even suburban life is torture for a dog bred for a thousand years for just one purpose - working livestock.

  I had, what used to be called farm collies, for over thirty years. Mine looked exactly like what became recognised as Border Collies, with unregistered dogs being termed 'working sheepdogs'. Mine actually came from farms and mostly lived with me in the country; only one had that powerful working instinct with that sustained 'strong-eyed' gaze which sheep respect so readily. I tried endlessly to give her spiritual outlet but wished I had succumbed to the urgent pleas of the farmer who bred her, once he found that all her litter mates had huge working potential. I come across such dogs quite regularly, usually straining at their leads - longing for real exercise. They get into trouble chasing cars, kids on bikes and deterring postmen from approaching the house, victims of their own strong instincts - now unwanted and left unfulfilled.

There are of course farmers who have no need for herding dogs and who have little understanding of what might be termed the 'collie-culture'. A decade or so ago, when I moved into a quite remote hamlet, my nearest farmer-neighbour must have spotted  me, his new neighbour, taking two dogs along the public footpath crossing his land. For he wickedly released a small herd of his cows to deter me from doing so ever again. My dogs had never been threatened by cattle before but they astonishingly swiftly, herded this over-inquisitive bunch of potentially aggressive cows into a corner of the field and 'held' them there - wholly instinctive and totally untaught behaviour. It was a lesson in inherited instincts revealing themselves. Those two dogs would have hated being paraded around a show ring, probably finding it insulting to a working dog that could think for itself. It might well have been kinder to this type of dog if enthusiastic exhibitors had not persuaded the KC to recognise this particular pastoral breed.

  The late arrival of the Border Collie onto the show scene has led to some ‘beautification’, but their use is ever more widespread, from the pastures to the hearth, to the agility, obedience, fly-ball and disabled-assistance support dog roles – all with great success but favouring a hyper-type not so acceptable away from such activities, perhaps the most versatile breed in history. These are difficult days for farmers and farm dogs. The glamorous Rough Collie may grace film-sets and the likeable Bobtail may star in paint advertisements but neither breed works any more. The world-famous and unsurpassable Border Collie now features in the show ring, but only after considerable opposition from the International Sheep Dog Society, which rightly feared a loss of functional ability and working physique. These dogs may have moved from the pastures to city streets but really they are only spiritually happy when working and quite a few are too hyper-active to make good house pets. (I had one that when alert carried his tail high and was the toughest dog I ever had, active till 17 years old. When I wrote of this in Dogs Monthly, a reader Christine Foord wrote in to say her collies had this feature too and were clever and assertive. Such a feature, if demonstrated on an exhibit in the show ring, however good the dog, would lead to the dog being unplaced.)

 The challenge for their fanciers is to breed them for their new role, without losing their essential characteristics, for that is how all breeds survive. The fairly recent arrival of the breed on to the benches needs to be balanced against the long-established trial scene. As pointed out in the June Newsletter of the International Sheep Dog Society (ISDS), 1983, when considering early pedigree registrations: “The Kennel Club Gazette in its May 1983 edition, gives some interesting statistics: it shows the registrations for Border Collies since 1978. They read as follows:- Border Collies registered in 1978 – 368; in 1979 – 843; in 1980 – 735; in 1981 – 718; in 1982 – 756. Compare these figures to the Society’s registrations which have run consistently at 6,500 approximately for each of the years in question.” Such background gives some balance to the contemporary show scene, where town-dwelling owners are unaware all too often of the roots of their breed.

   It is far from easy to review the shepherd dogs of Britain covered by the titles of Border Collie (when registered with the KC) or working sheepdog (usually registered with the ISDS, although KC-registered dogs, described as working sheepdogs do compete in agility, obedience and fly-ball contests). In the pastures you see highly efficient if not always very handsome dogs, diligently performing their centuries-old tasks. In the show ring, from the ringside, it is reassuring to view top quality dogs such as: Australian and English Ch Waveney Kozmonant,  Fayken I am A Legend, and his litter-sister Fayken Indecent Proposal, judged to be Border Collie of the year, and runner-up respectively, in 2013. But, in the same year, it’s alarming to read one judge’s report that states: “I haven’t been around the show world for about four years. The Border Collies presented to me came in four different types. Slab-sided and narrow headed (athletic). Square incorrect height to length ratio, incorrect forehand, i.e. forward placed shoulder, steep upper arm and square croup, short-coupled (majority). Dwarf small usually profuse coat (glamorous). A finer version of an Australian Shepherd especially in the head and stifle area. This made my judging to The Standard very difficult…This dip in quality happens in dog breeding where the generation of ‘greats’ is weakened in the next generation. This is not a slur on breeders, etc. It is what is available in the gene pool, how it is used, and if there are no lines with ‘nicks’ in them, then mediocre rules until such matings are found.” Clearly now is the time for inspired selection of breeding stock, strict observance of the Breed Standard and the pursuit of soundness so often demonstrated in the trials dogs.   

 Competitions between dogs and their owners have long been a feature of rural life. They have been accused of developing dogs principally for the trials, spaniels too ‘hot’ for your average shooter to handle and retrievers too light-boned for sustained work in the sporting field and ‘flashier’ sheepdogs to satisfy their appeal for the judges. But a desire to compete was behind the first sheepdog trial, run between ten dogs at Bala in North Wales, in 1873. But, as Eric Halsall has pointed out in his Sheepdogs – My Faithful Friends of 1980: “A trial is simply planned to assess ability and is obviously of great practical value in determining the qualities of the dogs taking part. Good dogs can, and do, delight in their prowess; the human braggards – whose dogs perform wonderful feats on the hill! – have their teeth drawn; and the watchers choose their potential breeding stock. Wherever sheep are farmed, trials are held and in today’s competition when entries reach towards a hundred, even at the remotest trials, it is a very good collie that wins.” It is good to know that there are now field trials for show collies, whether Border or Beardie. Herding sheep makes unique demands on a dog; their role depends on control.

 In this role, a certain type of dog is needed. The dog's instinctive defence of territory is harnessed to guard a pasture. The dogs then, without human direction, place themselves between an approaching predator and the stock in their remote pasture. This is in stark contrast with the herding breeds, hyper-active dogs which stalk, chase, bully, bark at and even bite sheep to impose their will on them. These are the 'header-stalkers', using classic canine predatory behaviour, inherited from wild ancestors. They usually feature the prick ears and long muzzles of those wild ancestors, although drop-eared dogs like the Pointers and Setters of the shooting field also make use of this instinctive ‘restrained’ focus. These dogs have to be controlled by human voice or whistle.  Just as the Beardie combined the skills of driving and herding, the shorter coated working sheepdog, usually described as a 'collie', using the 'header-stalker' technique rather than that of the flock guardian, not only matched them but suited the changing ways of farming. As the railways did away with the need for drovers and the acreage of common grazing land decreased, there was a need for dogs able to move stock from one fenced pasture to another, to pen them for shearing and health checks and get them on to vehicles for market. It is likely that these shorter coated farm collies were not widely used in Wales and southern England until the livestock industry adapted to new transport opportunities. The Border Collie or working sheepdog of sheepdog trial fame is the best known 'strong-eyed' breed in the world, so-called because it exerts control over sheep by assertive eye contact and aggressive body positioning.

 In his The Farmer’s Dog of 1975, John Holmes has written: “To revert to the question of ‘eye’, this is a subject which is often misunderstood. First of all ‘strong eye’ is not essential in the working dog and I have known many excellent ‘loose-eyed’ dogs. It can be, and often is, a liability rather than an asset…It is, in fact, a comparatively recent innovation, having been developed to its present-day strength only since sheepdog trials started, and then solely in the type of sheepdog which proved most successful at the trials.” But in his Sheepdogs at Work of 1979, Tony Iley writes: “In approximately 1790 the presence of ‘eye’ was recorded by James Hogg, the Ettrick shepherd-poet. He refers to it in a matter of fact way without surprise, leading us to believe that it was not a new innovation…James Scott of Overhall, Hawick (International Champion 1908 and 1909), said that he had not seen ‘eye’ in dogs until 1875, when he saw it in a bitch owned by John Crozier, a herd at Teviot Water, who got her from Northumberland. Because of this it can be concluded that ‘eye’ developed in various isolated families of dogs in the period between 1740 and 1870. At this time it would not be widespread, and its value would not be fully realized until the early trials began, starting with the first trial at Bala in Merioneth, Wales, in 1873.” In 1894, the supremely capable Old Hemp, reputed to have ‘eyes that blazed’, became the father of today’s working collie. He died in 1901 but not before siring over 200 top-class offspring. 

 The ability of a dog to identify individual animals is illustrated by an anecdote in the Rev. Charles Williams's 'Dogs and Their Ways' of 1863: "Lord Truro told Lord Brougham of a drover's dog, whose sagacious conduct he observed when he happened on one occasion to meet a drove. The man had brought seventeen out of twenty oxen from a field, leaving the remaining three there mixed with another herd. He then said to the dog, 'Go, fetch them,' and he went and singled out those very three." Different terrain and difficult sheep-rearing country led to different instincts being instilled in the sheepdogs. In their stunningly illustrated Hill Shepherd – A Photographic Essay of 1989, John and Eliza Forder write: “’Cur’ or ‘barking’ dogs have been used in the Lake District for generations and are bred especially for the job of shifting sheep in difficult terrain. They are trained to bring sheep away from crags, cliffs and undergrowth, while a sheepdog from lower, ‘cleaner’ country may resort to sinking its teeth into them through sheer frustration. Herdwick sheep, local to Lakeland, will outwit shepherds and dogs if they can.” Waist-high bracken, unfenced pastures and cruelly-concealed crags challenge both dog and shepherd; they simply have to work as a team, in this timeless rural scene.           

  There are of course pedigree KC-registered Border Collies that can herd sheep too. I acknowledge that but make a plea for the hundreds of frustrated herding dogs, bought unthinkingly as pets, aching to be used, to be useful, to be active, to exercise their remarkable talents in the pastures. The show ring creates its own criteria in its registered breeds, caring more for cosmetic points than fitness for role and being built for pastoral work. Here are two worrying critiques from show ring judges on the breed:

  Border Collies, Championship Show, 2011: “The founders of the BCC of GB (Border Collie Club of Great Britain, DH) were among the group of dedicated people who worked very hard to devise a Standard that described a sound, fit, working dog and this is reflected in the fact that this Standard uses such phrases as ‘impression of endurance’, athletic body’, and ‘muscular hindquarters’. I struggled to find more than a handful of dogs who were in a reasonable working condition; most of them being considerably overweight and lacking in muscle tone.”

  Border Collies, Championship Show, 2013: “It was noticeable that there appears to be less depth of quality in the breed than in the past…Some dogs were far too fat and this affected their movement and outline.”

 This is cause for concern; this distinguished but humble breed needs to be bred in the mould of a working dog - not a canine model fit only for display. As Robert Leighton wrote in his The Complete Book of the Dog of 1922:

  “The townsman who knows the shepherd’s dog only as he is to be seen, out of his true element, threading his confined way through crowded streets where sheep are not, can have small appreciation of his wisdom and his sterling worth. To know him properly, one needs to see him at work in a country where sheep abound, to watch him adroitly rounding up his scattered charges on a wide-stretching moorland, gathering the wandering wethers into close order and driving them before him in unbroken company to the fold; handling the stubborn flock in a narrow lane, or holding them in a corner of a field, immobile under the spell of his vigilant eye. He is at his best as a worker, conscious of the responsibility reposed in him; a marvel of generalship, gentle, judicious, slow to anger, quick to action; the priceless helpmeet of his master – the most useful member of all the tribe of dogs.”