Historic Footage of Border Collie?

[BNM1980]

I was looking at some historical footage of vaudeville routines on YouTube when I saw a dog that looks suspiciously familiar.

 

What do you think?

 

The dog in question makes his entrance at about 2:55, right after the roller skating baboon.

 

 

And please note the leg-weaving with the sorry-looking baby elephant!

[NCStarkey]

Hello Everyone,

 

I would imagine that the dog in this video is likely a "Farm Collie" or "English Shepherd", as those dogs were very popular in this county around the turn of the 20th century (when the video was filmed).

 

Here are links for more information about the Farm Collie and the English Shepherd

 

I started watching the video at 2:50, so I missed the roller skating baboon, but my heart goes out to the elephant after watching some of its performance (especially when it was crawling around the stage). How sad indeed.

 

Regards to all,

nancy

[BNM1980]

Hello Everyone,

 

I would imagine that the dog in this video is likely a "Farm Collie" or "English Shepherd", as those dogs were very popular in this county around the turn of the 20th century (when the video was filmed).

 

Here are links for more information about the Farm Collie and the English Shepherd

 

I started watching the video at 2:50, so I missed the roller skating baboon, but my heart goes out to the elephant after watching some of its performance (especially when it was crawling around the stage). How sad indeed.

 

Regards to all,

nancy

 

Hi Nancy,

 

I'd never heard of a farm collie before. Wikipedia doesn't have anything on them, but according to its border collie article, many border collies 'can be traced back to a dog known as Old Hemp' and another dog called 'Wiston Cap.' The sires of these studs were initially referred to as 'working collies' or 'farm collies' before the word 'border' was added around 1860.

 

Does that sound right to you? And in that case, isn't a farm collie a border collie by another name?

 

But then the History of the Farmcollie on the site you link to says,

 

In Great Britain, the Border Collie, Collie, and Shetland Sheepdog continue to develop as other branches of this (the farmcollie) family.

 

So I guess if the dog in the video is a farmcollie, it is at least an extremely close relative of the border collie.

 

And I agree with you entirely about the baby elephant.

[juliepoudrier]

BNM,

The English shepherd isn't the same as a border collie. All of the breeds (Lassie collie, English shepherd, border collie) probably had a common ancestor that was a farm collie of some sort (with variations in looks from region to region). At one point the Lassie collie and the border collie were the *same* dog (a farm collie--collie is a pretty generic term--of some sort) because before the advent of kennel clubs and stud books, etc., during the Victorian era, when people began selectively breeding dogs to try to "standardize" breeds people just bred useful dogs, and those breeding remained pretty local. So collies didn't all look the same, nor did they all work the same. Victorian breeders (including the Queen) took the collie (farm collie?) and bred it into what we know as the "Lassie" collie today (the long face and height came from an infusion of Borzoi genetics). The dogs left on the farm were still farm collies, and among those were the dogs that became known as border collies (to distinguish them from the newly created "Lassie" collie). Even back then the kennel club co-opted the word "collie" and so those who had the stockdogs had to come up with a name that differentiated their own dogs, hence "border collie." In the UK today, many of these latter are simply referred to as working sheepdogs.

 

It's my understanding that when North America became populated, at least some of the people who came here (essentially the shepherds and farmers) brought with them some of their working dogs to help manage the farm stock. These dogs, which would have been the same dogs from which the collie and border collie were developed, were then selectively (relatively speaking) bred over here to ultimately become American farm collies or English shepherds.

 

I'm sure I've left out some specifics, but at the time of the video, the dog could really have been any of the breeds listed or something else, because Kennel Clubs were somewhat in their infancy and breeds simply weren't standardized then as they are now.

 

J.

[NCStarkey]

Hi again BNM,

 

Julie provided a lot of information about the origins of the various breeds that all have fairly common ancestry and are generically known as "collies". Here is a link where you can find more information about the origins of the Border Collie. Border Collie Museum

 

The dogs that were mentioned on Wikipedia, ones that were instrumental in the foundation of the Border Collie (Old Hemp and Wiston Cap), resided in the British Isles, which is where the Border Collie originated. The two breeds that I mentioned (Farm Collie and English Shepherd) originated in the United States, and since the video that you posted was a Vaudeville act, it is likely that the dog in the clip was one of a breed that would have been likely to be found in the US at that time. It is certainly possible that the dog in the video was a Border Collie, or it could have been a mixed breed of the generic collie type. But, I fully agree with you that the dog would have been related to our modern Border Collie.

 

Regards,

nancy

[Stoga]

Sorry... double post