Saturday, May. 10, 2008

Doggone It! My border collies are bred to work

That's a mutt.

Ever hear those words? I do. All the time. And the dogs that are called mutts are my registered border collies.

Does it hurt my feelings? Nope. Why? Because I have "boney collies."

What are "boney collies"? They are border collies that are bred to work, not for their looks. As far as the American Border Collie Association is concerned, a registered border collie can be any size, any color, any coat type. It's not about looks in that registry, it's about working ability.

Unfortunately, in the dog world, certain breeds have been split right down the middle because of conflicting reasons for breeding. Some folks want a gorgeous dog that can take a conformation championship home, and some of us want dogs that can do what they were originally bred to do.

Now, before I get all the conformation folks riled up, saying that their Labrador retriever will still retrieve, let me explain.

I have been to a ton of sheep dog clinics, and I have seen what happens when border collies are bred for their looks and not for their working ability. The dogs still have the instinct to herd sheep, but that isn't what it takes to be a true working dog.

Here's an example: A couple of years ago, we took a rescue dog up to the hills to see if she had any working ability. A friend of ours was giving a clinic, so we loaded up Jill, the rescue dog, and headed up into the hills.

There was a bunch of dogs at that clinic, everything from border collies to corgis. Almost all of the dogs were pets or show dogs, at the clinic to test their instinct. A lot of the dogs were conformation champions -- beautiful dogs with big, fluffy coats and perfect ears.

Most of those dogs still had some instinct. Even the little stubby-legged corgi got out there and pushed the sheep around. For a while.

There's the rub. All those dogs worked for a while. But when they got hot, or tired, or found some sheep poop to eat, they forgot about the sheep. I watched dog after dog work for a few minutes, and then go looking for its owner, who was usually standing in the middle of the sheep pen.

The guy giving the clinic was super nice, he always found something nice to say about the dogs, even the ones that quit working.

But later, when we were all eating our lunch, that nice man told my friend and me that any dog that quit working wasn't a true herding dog. In the real world of working dogs, those quitters would be out the door. The dogs need more than that flicker of instinct - they need the drive to do a job and do it until it is done.

One dog did have that drive. It was Jill, our rescue dog. We knew nothing about her, only that she had ended up at our animal shelter, and we took her home on the day that she was scheduled to be euthanized.

When Jill went out to work those sheep that day, she had the instinct, just like the rest of the dogs there. But when Jill got hot and tired, she didn't quit, she got serious. She didn't go looking for shade, or water. She buckled down and starting making those sheep go where her handler asked her to put them.

The guy giving the clinic told me and my friend that Jill came from someone's good breeding, from sheep dog breeding. Jill didn't look like the show border collies that were there that day. She had pricked ears and a totally white face, and her hair was short and curly.

But she was 100 percent working border collie. She worked the sheep that day like a champ, and never, ever quit.

Jill would never have made it in a conformation ring. She probably would have even been called a "mutt." She was lean and fast and not a very pretty dog. She was a boney collie.

The other dogs at the clinic that day were what we call "Barbie collies." They are border collies that have perfect coats and perfect ears and just the right amount of white.

But at the end of that day, when we were all packing up to go home, the guy who gave the clinic only asked what the breeding was on one dog. Jill. That guy didn't care how all those Barbie collies were bred, they couldn't pass muster with him.

So when someone calls my dogs "mutts," I just nod my head and smile. It doesn't bother me a bit to have my dogs called that, because I know that when I need a working dog, I have one. I have boney collies and I'm proud of it.

Reporter Carol Reiter can be reached at (209) 385-2486 or creiter@mercedsun-star.com