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Query: evolution of language


Donald McCaig

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Dear Smarter-than-Moi,

 

If I recall correctly, the article hinted that body language and some form of sign language was prior to vocal language. Prior to, how? In evoutionary history? In human learning? Iinfants have mastered a fair amount of body language before they venture into speech but so what?

 

Almost certainly they meant in evolutionary history. Human babies are processing human language almost immediately (possibly even in utero) even though they can't produce it for some time.

 

Not having heard the report, hard to say what claims they were making; however, body "language" and vocal/signed languages are rather different critters. Whether that difference is one of degree or kind isn't 100% settled, though most of the evidence points to difference in kind. Personally, I'm mostly (though not entirely) convinced it's a difference of kind and that the difference is linked quite specifically to the differences in the human brain/mind relative to the brains/minds of other species.

 

Charles Hockett developed a kind of typology of features of communication systems (one version of it). Some of what distinguishes canonical language from other systems of communication, including human body language, are things like the ability to communicate about things at different points in time; in different places or things that don't exist at all. Another thing that distinguishes language is the ability to build larger and larger (and completely novel) utterances with a relatively small set of building blocks.

 

Other species simply can't do this kind of thing with their existing systems of communication. You can't tell a stockdog that tomorrow they're going to take a slow come bye flank to find some sheep or any number of things like that. The honey bee, which can communicate about things in the past, only dances about food. The vervet monkey and prairie dogs referenced in an earlier post only cry about specific threats--and they can't combine the threat calls to say that there's an eagle up above and a snake is probably on the way.

 

No other species has developed anything close to human language. Some individual members of other species (notably Kanzi, a bonobo and Alex, an African grey parrot) have shown evidence, with a great deal of human intervention, that they can communicate using something very like human language (though of course not vocal language). I've found that evidence very persuasive, personally, but I'm not sure what it really tells us. There's no evidence at all that either bonobos or African greys are developing these capabilities as a species. Given the amazing advantages of a communication system like language, it seems that if species could develop such a system, they would.

 

These are Border Collie boards. Why inquire here?

 

I know - not surmise but know - that our dogs' first language is body language and they speak and comprehend it with great precision and over considerable differences. It isn't merely an inferior version of vocal language and, in some respects (reading emotions) may be superior.

 

Experienced sheepdoggers begin training by appealing to their dog's inherited (and learned?) body language and simple vocables. These vocables become, over time, very sophisticated and if dogs' own vocal language is fairly crude - Coppenger to the contrary, greeting barks aren't the same as 'stranger coming'! barks and fox and coon hounds have fairly intricate speech.

 

I am interested in the segue from body langauge to the other.

Donald McCaig

 

Those are really apples and oranges (given current understanding). The evolutionary segue wasn't from body language to vocal language. The segue was from a mind that couldn't process (or produce) grammars to one that could.

 

Not to say superior or more/less sophisticated--obviously, dogs have an extremely sophisticated communication system and they are most amazing in that their communication system has evolved over time to be accessible in some ways to humans. Still, dogs don't bark about a stranger coming tomorrow or to alert you to the fact that a stranger came last week or that a stranger went to your parents' house, or about a stranger they are imagining and how exciting it would be to meet, etc. A 3 year old human can communicate with you about all that.

 

One of the really exciting lines of research that I've been following lately coming mostly out of Hungary has been trying to understand whether or not canines are actually a better species to work with in terms of the capacity for something like human language because their social structures are much more similar to those of humans than are the social structures of other primates. Dogs, for instance, demonstrate what's called a "theory of mind", which means that they understand that an individual might have different knowledge than they do. Neither wild canids (like wolves) nor non-human primates can do this. This is shown in the pointing studies, for instance, but also at some level in what stockdogs trust about their handlers (i.e.."there are sheep out there even though you can't see them. Go left for a long way and trust me, you'll find them."). Thus, particular kinds of minds are probably not the only thing that had to develop in order for humans to develop (in the evolutionary sense) language.

 

Still, it's quite apparent that dogs don't understand language the way that humans do, by which I mean specifically the grammatical complexity that a 3-year old child understands effortlessly, one might even say instinctively.

 

That said, I think you're completely right that there's a great deal yet to learn about the mechanisms of communication between handlers and stockdogs and that doing so would probably tell us some interesting things about both general communication and possibly also the nature of human language.

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Donald,

 

This may not be what you're getting at, but I know of several families who have taught their infants ASL a long time before they could speak. It was mostly single words and fairly basic ones at that -- more, water, milk, out, in, cold, hot, love, hug, carry, etc.

 

It didn't take these infants long to start using signs in combination in creative ways. I saw a kid ask her mother for "more hug milk."

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Dear Bright Sparks,

 

I thank Ms. Pippin's person for he fascinating reply which will feed my puzzlements for some time. A couple minor notes:

 

She writes (about the difference between body language and signed/vocal language):

 

Personally, I'm mostly (though not entirely) convinced it's a difference of kind and that the difference is linked quite specifically to the differences in the human brain/mind relative to the brains/minds of other species.

 

Whenever I read about x being the difference between us & other mammals, alarm bells ring. When the Greek academy defined man as "the featherless biped" someone with a sense of humor tossed a plucked chicken into the courtyard. Historically, we have spent enormous intellectual energy making sharp distinctions about what has later turned out to be a continuum. Not to say there isn't a "difference in kind" but these distinctions have never held up before. It is quite safe to say that "Man is the animal that makes nuclear bombs.

 

Ms. Pippin's Person also wrote:

 

 

 

One of the really exciting lines of research that I've been following lately coming mostly out of Hungary has been trying to understand whether or not canines are actually a better species to work with in terms of the capacity for something like human language because their social structures are much more similar to those of humans than are the social structures of other primates.

 

 

19th century thinkers fudged the dilemma that chimps were clearly more "intelligent" than humans but dogs were much more "useful" by saying that dogs are "sagacious". This may be the root of the odd, interesting claim that Border Collies are "The wisest dogs in the world."

 

 

Donald McCaig

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Whenever I read about x being the difference between us & other mammals, alarm bells ring. When the Greek academy defined man as "the featherless biped" someone with a sense of humor tossed a plucked chicken into the courtyard. Historically, we have spent enormous intellectual energy making sharp distinctions about what has later turned out to be a continuum. Not to say there isn't a "difference in kind" but these distinctions have never held up before. It is quite safe to say that "Man is the animal that makes nuclear bombs.

 

Just to clarify--I don't believe I suggested that the development of a particular kind of mind was the X that strictly distinguishes humans from other species. I fully agree with you that such attempts are likely to fail and are pretty arrogant.

 

ETA:snipped some irrelevant stuff.

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The fact is that there is a great deal of desire in the academic world to find a continuum for language :rolleyes: . The rub is in the brain structures and organization, because anatomically the apes should be able to speak or sign half-decent. But they are not. The idea of a signing primate keeps popping up, because it is very appealing, and yet none of the claims in favor of language wielding primates were supported by a half decent scientific experiment. The best, to my knowledge, experiment with signing chimp was the one with Nim Chimpski, which was designed to prove that chimps can sign the way people do. Terrace thought he could do that, and only after he started analyzing the data seriously he realized that the quality of the discourse of the chimp was very different from human, and changed his mind. Not to mention the fact that actual ASL signer did not accept many of Nim's "signs" as ASL signs. I can try and dig up the quantitative and qualitative differences between a human child's and Nim's discourse, it is quite surprising really.

 

It is very hard to conduct experiments on human language because of the medium - human language. We cannot step outside the language to study it, or step outside our mind to study the minds of other species. We can only study it through our mind and thus we are very likely to interpret things through our mind rather than the animal's mind. I think everybody has experienced the problem of assuming that the dog understands a word the way we do, and then it turns out, it is not so. The problem with projection is tremendous in such experiments, because there is no question that most species can communicate. But that's different from using human language.

 

Many, many people spend lots of time trying to prove that human language is not different from other systems of communication. My question is why? Why not try to prove to prove that a chimp can trill like lark? Or a dog meow like cat? Why a lark's song and a cat's meow is readily accepted as a unique feature of a lark and a cat, while human language is a source of endless attempts to reduce it to the system of communication of other species? I am not saying that you said it, I am just wondering here, since for me nature is beautiful in its variety, including humans. I try not to make dogs like humans, because their "canineness" is beautiful. And the degree of communication across these two species is also beautiful.

 

Also about continua: I agree that it is very often the case. I am from a cognitive linguistic branch which is a firm believer in continua rather than discrete sub-systems of language. So there is a continuum between the dog's sense of smell and ours. So on a continuum of sense of smell we may put people...cats...dogs. But it's not only that dogs can smell better than we do. From what I have observed they also smell different. That the way they process the olfactory information it different from the way we do. So I think it is similar for language.

 

These are just my additional thoughts, I agree with Pippin's person's statements.

Maja

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Maja,

 

My dogs smell different all right, but I'm not sure it's always better :rolleyes:

 

Is the jibberish that develops often between twins considered language? It's clearly communication, but none of the adult twins that I know can remember any of it. I still remember snippets of the French that I learned in elementary school, despite not having used it in eons.

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I don't have too much to add

 

But this

 

Wolves howl for different reasons.

 

One type of howl means- stay away this is our territory

Another- Come hunt, lets go hunt- I suspect sometimes it changes with what prey are around.

Another -we are here

Another- Where are you?

Another- We have made a kill, come - this is said to family. wolves are very territorial.

wolves also howl for a dead mate.

 

 

If you listen long enough to wild wolves you can start to understand these differences.

 

Wolves harmonise when they howl- it makes it seem that there are many more wolves.

 

Wolves can pick up in this harmony the status within the group- Is there a mated pair, young pups

 

They have like dogs alot of body language. Which is the first thing we teach interns when they come to us.

 

However it is true that they cannot pick up on our body language like dogs do.

 

 

on another note

 

My old Pop bit his first kniuckle to say- Oh my what a beautiful woman

bit his thum to say something...er....like...uh....screw you

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Wolves howl for different reasons.

...

Another- Come hunt, lets go hunt- I suspect sometimes it changes with what prey are around.

 

Rhys bach, my ever returning foster, howls to say "come on, lets go and hunt (i.e. go and patrol our territory).

He also has a "happy howl".

 

Our local coyote family howl in chorus -- and sometimes in beautiful antiphony.

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Dear Theorististas,

 

I like the notion that dogs understand that we have a language they do not and that the difference between our (vocal) language and theirs is grammar.

 

I am probably stupid to wonder if some of the same considerations - turned round - might apply to scent. We know they have a scent language we do not and that it is one of their primary ways of understanding the world. (The first time i ever walked a dog in Greenwich Village, he sniffed furiously and determinedly for about five minutes than gave up and sniffed no more. Scent burnout.)

When sniffing another's mark, we guess they can determine health, sex and perhaps attitude. What else - can there be a "grammar" of scent?

 

As important as scent is to the dog, I wonder why they rarely-to-never use it (or often hearing) to locate concealed sheep on an outrun. It is as if, because we give promacy to sight, they must also.

 

I did say, "As if" . . .

 

Donald McCaig

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As important as scent is to the dog, I wonder why they rarely-to-never use it (or often hearing) to locate concealed sheep on an outrun. It is as if, because we give promacy to sight, they must also.

 

I did say, "As if" . . .

 

Donald McCaig

 

 

How do we know they don't use scent to locate sheep? There might be a rich stew of scent and sound that we humans aren't aware of, and that canines in general may use to navigate/locate/avoid. I can also imagine that a gifted and well trained sheep dog might pick up scent cues that stock are highly stressed, that a ewe has recently given birth, or that a sheep/cow has an injury.

 

Since I've started doing some scent training with Shoshone, I see the difference in focused scenting activity - the movement is very subtle and can't be seen from a distance of more than 15 ft or so.

 

This is a wonderful discussion - you guys are calling out the amateur geek in me!

 

Ruth

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Dear Theoritistas,

 

Ms. Ruth wonders:

How do we know they don't use scent to locate sheep?

 

Some years ago, Ed Gebauer was spotting sheep in tall grass and noticed Ralph Pulfer's spot stopping to stand up seeking them. Ed claimed Spot was scenting.

 

I've been sensitive to the question ever since.

 

I've often seen dogs standing to find sheep but never seen one using his nostrils and sometimes when I've been able to smell the flock, my sheepdog hasn't. So - I don't think they do it. Ditto with hearing - mine don't seem to know that bleat=sheep.

 

Donald McCaig

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Dear Theoritistas,

 

Ms. Ruth wonders:

How do we know they don't use scent to locate sheep?

 

 

I've often seen dogs standing to find sheep but never seen one using his nostrils and sometimes when I've been able to smell the flock, my sheepdog hasn't. So - I don't think they do it. Ditto with hearing - mine don't seem to know that bleat=sheep.

 

Donald McCaig

 

Mr. McCaig,

 

I've no, none, zip, zero experience with working sheep dogs, except from the distance of a spectator. What I do know from watching hard at work tracking/scenting dogs is that the taking in of air for scenting is a subtle thing. When air scenting, the dog's muzzle is lifted and the head is turning. There's a subtle motion of the cheeks, just below the eyes, as air is drawn in rapidly and exhaled. If you're not watching for it, it's easy to miss. The dog often visually spots the scent item as well as scenting it, and there's a sort of "THERE it is!" little explosion of attitude change as the dog approaches the item/person, etc.

 

I think we'd probably have to blindfold a border collie or kelpie and see if it could find sheep in order to really, absolutely positively know. Scent is so much more important to dogs than people, I believe that dogs would use it in almost any situation.

 

Ruth

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A dog can be taught to search for sheep via scent, but it takes more effort than to just get them to trust you on a long outrun.

 

As to dogs, complex language and grammer, I think we underestimate them to a degree. Just a few examples from my own Border Collies:

 

Went hiking in the mountains, got lost in dense fog and didn't even know which direction to go. I had a dog with me who had been taught "go home" (go home and get help) and tracking (following a scent trail). I told the dog to track me home using a combination of the go home command and my tracking command. Dog dropped his nose and worked to find the trail, then took off. I followed him. He took me home the short way, not on the trail we had hiked out on, and returned to the back of the cabin rather than the front.

 

Locked myself out of my truck but the driver's side window was open a crack. Asked the dog to hand me the keys. He had been taught to hand me dropped objects. He picked up a pen. I said, "No, not that one." We repeated this several times, each time he picked up a different object. Finally he got the keys and held them pressed against the crack until I could hook my pinky through and pull the keys out. (OK, so not hard for a Border Collie, but it sure impressed AAA.)

 

Dogs knew the "names" of all of the individual parks in the area I used to live. I Would ask them, which park do you want to go to today? Lake? Waveny? Beach? Dog Park? etc.... Dogs would bark and get excited when I named the park they wanted. This changed depending on the day and the season. They were certainly smart enough to choose parks with water on hot days. Some might argue that I changed the pitch of my voice based on which park I wanted them to choose. If this was the case they would have agreed with me, at least most of the time, but they didn't.

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Dear Mr. Exquisitely Inquisitive,

You wrote: "I am probably stupid to wonder if some of the same considerations - turned round - might apply to scent."

I tried to indicate something to that effect. However, I don't think dog's olfactory channel of communication needs to have grammar to be significantly different from ours in kind and to be quite outside our experience. I am fascinated by dog's sense of smell, since I have done some garden variety scent work with my first BC -Kelly.

 

Dear All Wonderful People Interested in Communication,

I will draw a picture for you later today , which I think will clarify some issues.

 

Maja

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Dogs knew the "names" of all of the individual parks in the area I used to live. I Would ask them, which park do you want to go to today? Lake? Waveny? Beach? Dog Park? etc.... Dogs would bark and get excited when I named the park they wanted. This changed depending on the day and the season. They were certainly smart enough to choose parks with water on hot days. Some might argue that I changed the pitch of my voice based on which park I wanted them to choose. If this was the case they would have agreed with me, at least most of the time, but they didn't.

 

 

But, did they ever suggest just staying home and lolling about on the couch??? :rolleyes:

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Dear Theoritistas,

 

Ms. Ruth wonders:

How do we know they don't use scent to locate sheep?

 

Some years ago, Ed Gebauer was spotting sheep in tall grass and noticed Ralph Pulfer's spot stopping to stand up seeking them. Ed claimed Spot was scenting.

 

I've been sensitive to the question ever since.

 

I've often seen dogs standing to find sheep but never seen one using his nostrils and sometimes when I've been able to smell the flock, my sheepdog hasn't. So - I don't think they do it. Ditto with hearing - mine don't seem to know that bleat=sheep.

 

Donald McCaig

 

I am not an animal behaviorist, a chemist or even a person that has ever seen sheep worked in person, but I have a couple of ideas about this.

 

Many of you may have experienced a situation in which a bitch with a young litter goes outside for a potty break and returns to find one puppy missing from the whelping box. She will sort through the pups, and not finding the missing pup, will begin to look for it.

 

Many see this as evidence that dogs can count. I don’t know if dogs can count or not, but I have a different explanation for her discovery that a pup is missing. Everyone knows how acute a dog’s sense of smell is. They can smell nuances in a complex medley of scent that we couldn’t sort to save our lives. It’s my contention that the combined smell “notes” of each puppy produce an “olfactory chord” – with a “note” for each puppy. When the bitch returns to her litter, the “chord” is wrong. The “notes” don’t add up to a full “chord” – there is a dissonance - so the bitch goes looking/sniffing for that puppy’s “note.”

 

When she finds you in the next room, holding the missing pup, she will invariably give it a sniffing over. Yup, that’s the missing note all right!

 

I would imagine that it is the same with a dog and “its” sheep. If it is used to working a home flock and is accustomed to the “scent chord” produced for its flock, it will know immediately if one is missing. This, to me, accounts for the dog that vanishes over the hill, despite frenzied whistling from its handler. The dog is looking for a missing “note.” The handler, having walked the truant sheepdog down, will be gratified to find his/her dog with the stray lying down with a new lamb, an injury or something else that prevents the dog from returning it to the flock in the usual way.

 

In a trialing situation, the dog would be sent for a group of sheep it has never seen. It is unfamiliar with the individual scents of the sheep, and has not become acquainted with the “chord” produced by the group set out for it. The dog is sent in a specific direction with a whistle, a command or other signal. Why would the dog use its nose right away in that circumstance? Certainly it knows that it has been sent for sheep – but unless it is the very first run of the trial, the ground and air will be riddled with the scent of many sheep. It makes more sense that the dog would look for sheep, since it knows that there should be a group of three or four sheep in the direction it has been sent, and once found their interaction is likely to be of short duration, and very likely it will never work those sheep again, and so will never need to find them outside its line of sight.

 

As a side note: I don’t know if sheepdogs ever run more than once in a given trial, but is it possible that the dog that, on its second run, goes off the course, ignoring the direction given by the handler, has caught the scent of the first group of sheep it has worked and is endeavoring to find them to bring them in?

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I've often seen dogs standing to find sheep but never seen one using his nostrils and sometimes when I've been able to smell the flock, my sheepdog hasn't.

Donald McCaig

Is it any more fair to claim your dog doesn't use scent to smell the sheep that you can smell than it is to claim some handlers don't use sight to see sheep that Dan King can see? The air flow is different at their height than ours. Since their sense of smell is so acute would they need to use heir nostrils if you can smell the sheep? One also has to wonder if their sense of smell for locating sheep on a property where sheep scent is profuse isn't simply saturated with the sent of sheep.

 

I have the vague memory of hearing that a pack of hounds is used because the individual dogs may loose the ability to track a scent due to saturation.

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Dear Theoretistas,

My friend Mark wondered,

 

The air flow is different at their height than ours. Since their sense of smell is so acute would they need to use heir nostrils if you can smell the sheep?

 

 

Well, er. Yeah. If I can see and smell the sheep. I think if I can smell them and they can't find them w/o many redirects, they aren't using their noses.

 

Donald McCaig.

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If you can smell them wouldn't they be swimming in a sea of sheep scent?

If that were true would they be able to locate the source?

 

With Training, a Dog's Nose Almost Always Knows

 

Yet it is also not uncommon for dogs encountering a room full of drugs or a bag loaded with, say, suspect mangoes to fail to alert their handlers. Although the reasons are unclear, the odor in those cases may be so overpowering and evenly distributed around the room that the detector dogs cannot pinpoint the source, Dr. Myers suggested, so they do nothing.

 

Also, their noses can become saturated with particular odors and desensitized to them, he said. Then, the dog literally needs time to purge the odor-laden mucus from its nose.

Taking this latter point, one might argue that a sheepdog's nose could become saturated with the scent of sheep.

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If you can smell them wouldn't they be swimming in a sea of sheep scent?

If that were true would they be able to locate the source?

Taking this latter point, one might argue that a sheepdog's nose could become satruated with the scent of sheep.

 

That occurred to me as well, I did an extensive search on Border Collies using their noses and ears to find sheep, and this is all that I turned up:

 

"Listening for and scenting stock

 

Other aspects of real mustering ability arc the instincts to listen and scent for stock. First, the dog must be calm and sensible, and willing to stop and stand in one place and look for stock, rather than just going flat out without a thought in its head.

You will see a good pup, when cast out blind, looking both ways as it casts out, and sometimes it will go so far and then stop and have a good look around. If it can't see sheep it will then break back out and continue casting (this is different to a dog that simply stops or hesitates because it is getting impatient, or is about ready to give up).

But some dogs will stand and look around, and also lift their nose and scent the wind, and listen. All (or nearly all) dogs can see, and hear, and smell; but very few use these senses to anywhere near their potential. Very few look for stock in the far distance, or listen, or notice scents on the wind (or on the ground), or react to them, either when they're standing still or when they're on the run. But these are all inherited characteristics of the best mustering dogs.

I have a bitch now that - if sheep disappear in the distance over a rocky or bracken covered hillside, and she is sent after them (not having seen them go) - will get on their trail with her nose to the ground. She will follow the scent and disappear out of sight over the hill. Perhaps five minutes later she will return with the sheep.

Another of my dogs, Campaspe Bounce, is only young, but I have seen him track a mob of sheep that have gone through a gate 10 minutes earlier, and he will not deviate from their path until he sights them. If a dog has this instinct, it is not hard to train it to 'find' stock to command.

Others will react to scents without such an obvious display - You will see them cross the path sheep have taken and double back to go after them.

You can sometimes see signs of such abilities in pups. For example, they might stick their nose in the air and scent the wind, or follow scents on the ground, or you will notice that they can see sheep a long way away on a hillside. But once again, without a calm temperament, ‘distance', and minimal eye, such abilities will never surface when at work."

 

from Working Sheep Dogs: A Practical Guide to Breeding, Training and Handling by Tully Williams

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If dogs don't scent sheep, how do we explain sending a dog out at night to gather sheep and the dog being able to find them and bring them? Do they hear movement, see eye reflections, something else?

J.

I wondered about the stories of dogs finding missing sheep buried in snow that drifted up against a fence. A dog would need a pretty good nose for that.

 

I remember reading somewhere here on the Boards that American Border Collies, (or was it East Coast Border Collies?) were "losing the ability to work large areas" because most of the dogs were worked on small holdings, with small flocks, and trialed in smaller areas than in the past. It was speculated that the ability to cover large flocks and large areas was being lost.

 

I have no idea if that is true, but I can see how it might come about. And I think that if it is true, then it might be easy to see how the ability to range far and use the nose to find widely scattered groups of sheep might be lost, simply because it would not be missed, and therefore not selected for.

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I remember reading somewhere here on the Boards that American Border Collies, (or was it East Coast Border Collies?) were "losing the ability to work large areas" because most of the dogs were worked on small holdings, with small flocks, and trialed in smaller areas than in the past. It was speculated that the ability to cover large flocks and large areas was being lost.

If those dogs were never tested on large acreages, then this might indeed be the case, but many east coast dogs travel out west to trials and fare quite well, so I think this claim is probably not entirely true.

 

J.

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