Who comes up with this stuff?

[Eileen Stein]

I've just been reading the BCSA's new AKC standard for the border collie. It goes without saying that no right-thinking person would judge a border collie by its appearance, but even aside from that, I'm just baffled by some of the stuff that's in there.

 

Did you know it's part of the border collie ideal that "In profile the top of the skull is parallel with the top of the muzzle"? Where on earth does something like that come from? It wasn't in the old standard, so that means somebody (or more likely, lots of somebodys) in an organization that claims to understand border collies actually decided that a valid defining criterion of excellence in the breed is whether the top of their skull is parallel with the top of their muzzle in profile. Can anyone explain this? Or even explain why this parallelism is supposed to be a good thing?

[Dawn Bailey]

Hi Eileen,

 

so does this mean some Barbie Collie noses and/or heads are sloped one way or another? Do the show dogs have a problem with roman noses like some horses have? Or the reverse would be the nose tilts up, now that would look strange!

 

I wish I could help you with your question, but I think I have seen the description before in other breeds. And I still do not understand it.

 

I did take a quick look around here at heads and they all seem normal to me, but I did not take the level or measuring tape out to check for parellel heads and noses!

 

Dawn Bailey

Eatonville, WA

[SoloRiver]

Generally, breed standards are supposed to describe, in an "actionable" manner (i.e., objective enough so that breeders and judges can reasonably and replicably evaluate dogs against it -- although how objective they really are is something I would debate) what is considered ideal "breed type." In most breeds, this is usually based on some idea of what the original dogs looked like. Let's say there were in days of yore dogs from North Terriershire who tended to be about as tall as a man's knee, to be black and tan and to have wiry beards on their faces. This would be encoded in explicit language so that the ideal height would be between 12 and 15 inches at the shoulder (or however high a man's knee is) and that the ideal dog is black and tan of the highest quality possible (i.e., the black and tan are distinct and bright and don't run together) and the beard has to be there but specifically only on the chin and ideally yea long and thus and so on.

 

So I'm assuming that some committee went back and looked at a picture or pictures, say, of Old Hemp or some other early dogs and found that these dogs seemed to have muzzles and tops of heads that were parallel and so they codified that. Do I think it makes sense or matters diddly if a dog has a Roman nose or not? No, but I guess the BCSA does.

 

What I do know about the BCSA standard is that it was written specifically by people who were worried that the old standard was encouraging the breeding of dogs who would be conformationally incapable of doing a Border Collie's work -- dogs with too much bone, too much coat, too short legs, dogs that would be too slow, too unathletic, dogs that would overheat if asked to do a real day's work. (They didn't, of course, address the problem of too little brain.) You'll notice that in many aspects the new standard is much more vague than the old one except where it specifically speaks against too much coat, too much bone, etc. If the new standard is adopted, the show Border Collies that do well in the ring will start looking different from the ones that are doing well now. So, there are a lot of conformation breeders who think the new standard sucks and are working against it -- or at least that's the impression I have.

 

It's an attempt by people who believe the Border Collie can really do "it all" to write a standard that would not exclude the majority of good working Border Collies (the pretty ones, anyway) and would specifically exclude the super-Barbie types who look like Corgis on steroids. And as far as it goes I guess it's a decent try -- except of course it's not the working of the standard so much as its existence that's really the problem. I look at it as a salvo in a losing battle.

 

-- Melanie, Solo the Red, and The Fly

[Eileen Stein]

>

 

Well, I hauled out my copies of Key Dogs and The Blue Riband of the Heather and found what might have been expected -- a few of the old-time dogs had parallel tops of heads and muzzles but most did not, in keeping with the huge variation in appearance among these dogs. (Old Hemp himself wasn't shown sufficiently in profile to judge.)

 

I think Dawn is right that this particular requirement is in the AKC standard for other breeds. I know it's in the English Setter standard, for example. The few English setters I've seen do look this way, but their appearance is of course more standardized than the border collie is (to date, anyway).

 

>

 

I must say I didn't notice that at all. The standard seemed more specific in most respects, such as this particular one (which certainly doesn't speak to conformational capability to do a border collie's work). Blue eyes are now permitted, but predominant body white (which appeared to be permitted before) is now out. They do say coat shouldn't be excessive, though, FWIW.

 

>

 

Well, I kinda doubt that. I don't see anything in this standard that would keep the border collies which are currently being put up from being put up in the future, and fads and fashions have more to do with what's rewarded in the ring than the standard anyway. But maybe their heads will look more parallel.

 

Anybody who knows how this specific requirement came to be, no kidding, I would really like to know.

[SoloRiver]

Well, I kinda doubt that. I don't see anything in this standard that would keep the border collies which are currently being put up from being put up in the future, and fads and fashions have more to do with what's rewarded in the ring than the standard anyway. But maybe their heads will look more parallel.

And thank GOODNESS for that, right?

 

For those who are interested, the original standard and current revisions are here:

 

http://www.bordercolliesociety.com/bc/stan...rentrevised.htm

 

The parts that I see as addressing what were seen as particular problems with the old standard are there -- they're buried, but they're there. The references to substantial bone were removed or replaced with statements such as Bone must be strong, medium being correct but lighter bone is preferred over heavy.? They got specific about length of leg because the dogs who do well tend to have relatively short legs (a trend that I think is true across breeds -- the "Corgi" trend is something a friend with Sibes was also complaining about). They inserted a statement that rough coats were not to be preferred over smooth coats to counter the general tendency to reward huge coats regardless of the breed or what its standard says. And there's a passage in there about the appropriate gait of the Border Collie, that judges should not expect the dogs to be raced around the ring with their heads up and chests thrown out which is the generic show dog posture (by the way, there's some suspicion that breeding for conformation dogs who habitually carry themselves this way is inadvertently selecting for pushy and problematically aggressive dogs -- that wouldn't surprise me at all). These changes in particular -- especially the one about leg length because it is quite explicit -- would exclude some of the current conformation champions. Six of one, half-dozen of the other, I'd say. I don't know that it would be an improvement, but I guess it would be different.

 

Of course, there seem to be enough cases anyway in other breeds that judges seem to totally ignore the standard and just put up whatever's biggest and fluffiest, so I guess it's kind of like spitting into the wind. Why is there a statement about parallel planes in there? I dunno. I'm guessing the real conformation folks wrote the head part (because who the hell else cares that much what their heads look like?) and that's the way head standards are written. It could just be that you have to make SOME statement of those sorts of relationships and parallel was thought to be preferable to concave or convex?

[Smokjbc]

I don't think the new, revised standard will make judges pick more appropriate dogs, after all- these are dog show judges- they want a show dog. Who has the show dog types? "Maybe" those people will modify their conformation dogs slightly, but its doubtful considering a good number of those dogs are from lines developed in countries without the new revision. Then you add the type dilemna. In my 4-H judging days, it was really hammered into us that you cannot work with "off-type" animals. They either have to be on top, and you discard the rest, or they have to be on bottom, you can't use them in your lineup because they just don't compare- good or bad, with the rest of the class. So, completely hypothetically, a dog show judge being presented with 50% show type dogs, all of which are very similar, and 50% "working type" dogs, which can be very disimilar to both the show dogs and each other- which can you expect him/her to use in the class? I have three adult working "type" dogs. They all fit within the "standard". One is small, lean, smooth coated. Another is a compact medium flat coat, medium size bitch. The oldest has about 10-15 lbs on the other dogs, is leggy and long backed (not excessively),with wavy rough coat. I couldn't pick which one was the best example of the breed, physically. They all fit the "standard". I don't think we could expect an AKC judge to do the same- and we certainly can't put any merit into an Border Collie winning a conformation class. In the scheme of things, the only way to know which of the working types fits the standard is to see them work.

[SoloRiver]

I just wanted to make it VERY VERY VERY clear that I am not saying that I think the new standard (if it is adopted, which it may not be) will make things any better or that the breed ring is ever an appropriate way to select the "ideal" Border Collies. I'm just trying to explain what I have been told was the goal behind the rewrite that is presented on the BCSA website.

[Eileen Stein]

I understand that, Melanie, and that's the way I interpreted your posts.

 

What I think is kind of pathetic about this proposed standard generally (using "pathetic" not to indicate scorn, but as "evoking pathos"), if indeed its intent was what you say, is that most of the verbiage on which they're resting their hopes is stuff like "Any aspect of structure or temperament that would impede the dog's ability to function as a herding dog should be severely penalized" or "Because sufficient length of leg is crucial for the type of work the breed is required to do, the distance from the wither to the elbow is slightly less than from the elbow to the ground and legs that are too short in proportion to the rest of the body are a serious fault." But as Jaime points out, dog show judges are looking for a show dog. How on earth would they know what structure "would impede the dog's ability to function as a herding dog"? As far as they're concerned, a corgi IS a herding dog. An old English sheep dog IS a herding dog. The AKC says they are. Corgi owners and OESD owners often say they are. They're in the Herding Group. So why would show judges judge the leg length and coat length they're used to seeing in the OZ and NZ show border collies as being an impediment to doing the job of a border collie?

 

Bottom line: What the drafters of the standard profess to be trying to do just can't be done. Is it even remotely possible for them not to realize this?

[Dawn Bailey]

Hi Eileen,

 

you wrote:

 

"Bottom line: What the drafters of the standard profess to be trying to do just can't be done. Is it even remotely possible for them not to realize

this?"

 

Maybe, Hope springs Eternal? or they (the drafters) are trying to please everyone. What will it hurt to broaden the standard, everyone will be happy, but all know that the same type of dogs that win now will still be the preferred type.

 

A few years back the Papillion standard described one type of muzzle, but the dogs that were winning, had a muzzle more like a pom. Show judges will pick the dog they like.

 

It was the English Setter I was referring to in my previous post. My Aunt had them, and I did a portrait of her dogs for her and got a small education on the show setter head type. Weird it would be the same breed of dog you talked

about.

 

just my 2 cents.

[Bill Fosher]

Eileen,

 

You can probably see the same artifacts in the breed standards of other former working breeds -- references to the physical characteristics that made Labrador retrievers able to swim through cold water, etc.

 

Jaime's hit it on the head, though -- judges are going to put up the dogs that meet their expectations and that look "correct" from their persepctive.

 

If this new standard is adopted, all that *may* (and I emphasize may) happen is that a slightly different type of show dog will be seen.

 

Like the conformation breeders who have absconded with every working dog before them, these folks are rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.

[Guest PrairieFire]

Who comes up with this stuff?

 

Well, the folks on the committee still run novice at USBCHA trials in this area...if that tells you anything...

 

Yet these same folks charge for lessons and put on clinics for the asca, ahba, and akc folks...

[sea4th]

I started out in the AKC venue 20 some years ago. (OK, so I've just dated myself). I've even had 2 bench champions of other breeds. I also spent a lot of time working in the ring with judges, as a steward. Dog people are good people, so this is nothing against them. These are merely my observations (and disgust)of the system.

 

What is paraded in the ring are the result of generations of manipulation of what was once a working animal (except for the toy breeds). In most cases, they only bear a resemblence to the "original" dog they are supposed to represent.

 

Conformation judges often make their decisions for the dog that takes "breed" on what will make the best showing in group. Their choice will reflect their popularity and future judging assignments depends on their popularity. In most of those cases it's the exaggerated, "fad" representative that winds up in the group ring. A plain, albeit sound dog, is not an eye catcher, not to the judge, nor to the crowd sitting by ringside.

 

Look at the Labs--currently what's "hot" is a dog with short legs, a compact body, and on first glance, sometimes it's hard to tell if it's a Rottweiler or a Lab. I spoke to someone with field labs a couple of years ago. They call them "pigadors". Who in their national breed club decided this is what the ideal Lab should look like, I don't know, but I can tell you this much. They will have a ready explanation why an ideal lab needs to look like that in order to work.

 

The breed that really saddens me is the GSD. This breed has been manipulated to the point that the American GSD is a genetic disaster. You know that there has to be something seriously wrong when police departments in this country are going to Czechoslovakia or Germany for a working GSD.

Yet these genetic disasters they call a GSD in this country, look nothing like their working cousins. I was told that a certain popular GSD handler in this country is responsible for the current look--that over-angulated appearance, that in a lot of people's opinions looks flashy when the dog is posed, but when the dog moves, is sad indeed. This overangulated appearance that typifies the American GSD was supposedly originally meant to resemble livestock in a show pose, with one rear leg stretched back---only with the show dog people it's been taken to an extreme. I've seen 3 month old GSD pups walking on their pasterns, their rear wobbling so badly, but being told this is "normal"---for what? I've watched GSD's being "moved down and back", and it hurts to watch them move.

 

Breed standards might start out with the best intentions, but in a lot of cases is nothing but a bill of goods sold to the public as what's ideal & what's not. Breed standards can also be manipulated to fit what's winning already, so you don't really have to breed a dog to fit the standard. If you've got enough clout, you change the standard to fit the dog--especially if it's your dog.

 

I do have one question for show BC people. If the purpose is to find the best representative of a BC, a working dog, why is the head being yanked up when trotting the dog around the ring? I have yet to see any normal BC move like that. But then, I'm sure there's an explanation. When the dog is working in high grass, how else is it going to see the sheep unless it's moving with it's head held high.

 

Lengthy rant. Sorry.

 

Vicki

[dcsbcs]

Wouldn't it be fun to stand ring side and watch

Dodie Green walk Soot in to be judged in conformation?

 

I'm sure we all know dogs that are not particularly good looking...until they start working, and then they are a work of art.

 

Standing in any trial field should be all the education the standard creators should need, if indeed the idea is to come up with a description of the ideal border collie who is put together just right to get the job done.

 

There are so many different body types and head types for that matter. How can they confine it to a standard?

[Guest PrairieFire]

The unfortunate thing, Donna, is that many of the folks on the committee, I think, HAVE seen good dogs run good courses...

 

I know a couple of the folks, they've come out for lessons, and I've seen 'em run novice trials (one of them stepped up to PN at the Jordan MN trial because she was going to run PN at the BCSA National Specialty USBCHA sanctioned trial)...and they have stock and they have dogs and they have some experience in running the dogs...

 

So why the...strange...emphasis on looks?

 

I don't know, unless it is the fact that they haven't run at the ultimate level (open) - and like many folks THINK that all it is, is practice and training...and that anybody can do it with their "versatile" dogs...

 

Or could it perhaps be because it is important to them that they HAVE "versatile" dogs - as defined by titles and thier registry - and they MUST have a conformance standard in order to participate in their registry?

 

I suppose it is the latter, I have no reason to suspect these folks are dumb, quite the contrary...I think they are smart like a fox...and manipulated the HA into sanctioning last years BCSA National Specialty...and have already made progress in suckering the ABCA into thinking they aren't a threat...

[Sue in France]

Well, I have recently had "chats" with a persona Big Hat in the AKC and it became very clear after repeated exercises in explaining that working dogs are not just farm yard mutts but something to be more sensitised to, that she would never understand.She couldn't get her head around the sublimely different nuances of a working dog which had absolutely NOTHING to do with what it looked like but ALL to do with how it interracted with stock.

In fact her get-out clause here is the mantra---we don't need this dog as a working dog anymore. We have quad bikes now!!

I have a short -legged bitch and a long-legged male.They are both very effective on stock in very different ways. Now how is someone judging a BC show dog who is trying as hard as s/he might,going to know that without the sheep(and I add different sheep) in the show ring?

ISTM that those who compile designer dogs are trying with their calculators to come up with an impossible prediction of what a working BC should "look like".

Isn't this how the demise of the working GSD started?

A dog designed by a committee.

Not mine. I want mine to move a stubborn ewe who has just birthed a couple of lambs, through the flock and into the barn.

That, to me, is the ultimate beauty.

I don't care how long their legs are.

Cheers

S.

[Bill Fosher]

Sue in France wrote:

 

In fact her get-out clause here is the mantra---we don't need this dog as a working dog anymore. We have quad bikes now!!

 

I would like to show her the terrain of the power transmission lines that I worked the summer before last, where I was nearly killed trying to navigate some of the easier parts with a quad bike.

 

I would like her to show me how I could feed 600 hungry sheep in a field with just a quad bike. Are the sheep going to stay off me while I unroll a bale just because there's a riderless quad bike parked in the field?

 

I would like to show her the slopes we are paid to graze because the soil is too fragile and subject to erosion to allow mechanical control of vegetation.

 

I would like her to show me how I could worm 500 sheep in two hours using a quad bike to fill the working chute.

 

I would like her to show me how a quad bike would notice, after gathering several hundred sheep, that there were still a dozen sheep out in a salt marsh that needed to be collected before the tide came in and drownded them.

 

I would like her to show me how a quad bike would climb over the backs and under the bellies of a truckload of lambs and get them moving down the ramp in an orderly fashion.

 

I would like her to show me how she could maneuver a quad bike to hold a single ewe off a lamb that needed tending, while at the same time making sure that she didn't break back to the rest of the flock and lose her lamb. Again, with no rider.

 

Most of all, I would like her to show me how a quad bike could look up at me at the end of an exhausting day of trailing sheep, loading lambs, worming ewes, or whatever, and thank me for letting it help.

[DeltaBluez Tess]

I would like to see the QUAD also swim out about 100 plus yards in waist high water and move 5 ewes stuck on an island and then force these ewes off the island and make them swim the 100 plus yds back to land.

 

Tess especially would have liked that QUAD to do that for her last year. Considering she didn't know how to swim when she first plunged into the water to get the ewes.

 

Diane

[SoloRiver]

I think the mentality behind people who work their dogs who also support a conformation standard boils down to a statement that begins, "Well, all things being equal, ideally..."

 

I think they have some idea that they can further refine this breed by taking dogs who they believe work to the highest standard and then only breeding the pretty ones. There are also arguments that ideally, a dog would have "sound" structure (defined by some sort of vague conformational engineering model) because dogs with structural faults will be quicker to have physical problems and to break down. Which I think is true if a dog is put together badly enough and worked hard enough, but I also don't think the engineering requirements on dogs are nearly as strict as they are made out to be. Dog conformation "theory" seems to be heavily influenced by equine conformation "theory," which is fine to a certain extent. But dogs are built differently, they are orders of magnitude smaller and lighter and we don't usually (with a few exceptions in the cases of dogs who are used for packing or freighting) ask them to carry weight on their backs for long distances.

 

I think it WOULD be theoretically possible to breed dogs who have "it all" and come up with a group of dogs who were unilaterally excellent workers and faultlessly beautiful. But it would require having access to every single good working dog on the planet, having the highest standards both for working and for conformation, being willing to produce thousands of puppies, to cull ruthlessly, to evaluate every single dog in the program both in herding and in conformation. It would require several human lifetimes, a singlemindedness of purpose that probably hasn't been seen since von Stephanitz (I probably spelled that wrong), and millions of dollars. And at the end, I'd still say, what the heck is the point?

 

The problem with "all things being equal, ideally..." is that all things are never really equal. It's not like there is a pool of dogs who are of interchangeable working ability and that one is as good as any other and therefore we can select from that pool on the basis of looks. But people who don't or refuse to know any better don't know that. They don't understand or have the need for dogs who can do what the best dogs can do, so pretty is good enough for them.

 

For a lot of breeds, I don't see any problems with breeding for all-arounders. You end up with dogs who make nice pets and that owners have fun with. For this breed, I think it's totally missing the point. But to a lot of people this is just another breed and can be refined in exactly the same way as any other. That's just messed up.

[Sabreur]

Well, all I have to say about the breed standard is that neithter of my boys could possibly be border collies according to the standard--Merlin doesn't have an undercoat, and Turbo's ears flop.

 

Oh yeah, and they are both neutered.

 

Fortunately, it doesn't matter a damn to them or their ability to work.

 

Cheers, MR

[Bill Fosher]

Melanie,

 

I'm inclined to disagree with your proposition that it's theoretically possible to breed for conformation and working ability at the same time, even with all the caveats you've put in place.

 

Consider that we really don't understand the genetics of working ability. Certainly some physical characteristics come into it, but I think most of it is mental and behavioral. A great deal of selection pressure must be applied on this one collection of traits just to maintain it, let alone improve it.

 

Even if it were theoretically possible to start selecting for conformation traits while not taking any selection pressure off working ability, I suspect we would find that there are unknown links between "desirable" conformation traits and undesirable working traits.

 

Consider the standard collie. Was it just coincidence that the breed started to become plagued with Collie Eye Anomoly at the same time selection pressure was placed on sable coats and pointy snouts? Is there a genetic link there, or was it just random luck that the sires and dams that were selected also happened to be CEA carriers, and further selection tightened the gene pool enough that CEA became the norm rather than the exception?

 

I'm not qualified to say, but I have seen that every time humans have started selecting animals for an appearance-based ideal, productivity or performance has suffered. (Actually, I don't know enough about horses to include them in that statement, but it's certainly true of cattle, sheep, swine, poultry, etc.)

 

At the extreme, the same is true in the other direction. The Holstein cow has been selected so heavily for single-lactation production records that her average lifespan has been cut to just under four years. But farmers are starting to see that they need to give up a little bit on each lactation in order to get a cow that can support her own weight and perhaps live through four or five lactations, rather than just under two.

 

It seems to me that the problems arise when we start looking at single traits a little too closely and ignoring others, or selecting for things that don't really matter because they will somehow differentiate our animals from the great unwashed. I believe the BCSA is in the business of doing the latter.

 

We can bet they won't concentrated the CEA gene the way the standard collie folks did. But that's only because they know about CEA. When the standard collie people were breeding their long-coated sable dogs with pointy snouts they didn't know there was any such thing.

 

The show ring breeders in Oz and New Zealand have already managed to find one genetic disorder -- CL -- that was unknown before they started "improving" the breed. I'm sure the US conformation breeders will be able to find others as the years wear on.

 

But anyway, my main point is that even if you were able to simultaneously select for conformation and working ability without compromising either, I think you'd narrow the gene pool far enough that it wouldn't be healthy, so the new breed would not be sustainable.

 

In many respects, I think this would be like trying to take a Suffolk sheep and select it for maternal traits. You might get a few, but there'd be so few that you couldn't really close the gene pool and call it a breed. You'd be selecting across purposes.

[wc]

Did anybody notice this sentence in the standard? It says it all. If the border collie is unspoiled, what dogs are spoiled, the XXX dogs perhaps?

 

 

"The Border Collie is, and should remain, a natural and unspoiled true working sheep dog whose conformation is described herein."

 

Then there's unspoiled and conformation all in the same sentence.

I looked at all my dogs and only one has a parallel head, but unfortunately she would probably have to be shown in labrador classes. Well guess I better not bother registering.

[Shawna]

Just to add to what Bill F said.

 

I don't remember where I read it but there was a fox farm who were producing beautiful pelts (not into furs myself so don't slam me) but the foxes were somewhat unruly temperment wise.

 

The owners of the farm started to select the foxes with nicer temperments in order to breed a more managable animal but found that the temperment was genetically linked to the animals appearance. When focusing on temperment they had foxes being born that were spotted and had thinner coats. I believe it also said that the bone structure changed somewhat until they began to look more dog like and less fox like.

 

Theoretically this shouldn't have happened. The appearance and body type of the fox was bred that way 'forever', and so should have been genetically solid. Because it changed with selective breeding for temperment one can only conclude that breeding for certain physical traits will also alter the behavioral traits.

[SoloRiver]

All true, Bill. My point is that to get even close to the mythical dog that has "it all" would require a breeding program on a scale that has never been done before. And yet, the Brand X Border Collie people claim to have created these dogs in the space of a few years. It boggles the mind.

 

Shawna, you're talking about Belyaev's experiments. I wrote a long post about those a while ago but it was probably purged in the recent housecleaning. Here are some links for those who are interested:

 

http://www.sigmaxi.org/amsci/articles/99articles/Trut.html

http://www.floridalupine.org/publications/...t-fox-study.pdf (this will get you straight to the American Scientist artible)

http://www.devbio.com/chap22/link2208.shtml

[Margaret M Wheeler]

Whaddaya do with these showring newbies!!!!

 

Whatever this crowd knows about the ancient, useful activity of herding, I'm thinking there ain't a one of you who has whiled away countless hours outside a conformation ring, much less inside one.

 

They had to put something in about head. Face it. If your critter's head or (worse) ear set is weak don't bother. In my experience, all the minutae of judging the conformation of any dog working or otherwise can usually be summed up thus: head, bone and coat talk, function walks.

 

Besides I'll bet I can successfully establish a direct correlation between the perpendicularity of forehead and muzzle and the political clout of the owner/handler in any given conformation class. Why would you want to clutter up the judge's decision making process with irrelevant issues of functional conformation?

[Shawna]

Thanks for posting the links Melanie.

 

I had actually read something about it in a dog book (sorry but I don't remember your posts). It seems to me it might have been a Stanley Coren book that my Mom leant me, could have been some other one.

 

At any rate the links will make for some good reading.