Kelpies vs Border Collies--long (but fascinating ;) )

[mjk05]

[zenotri]

Sue, sure you can use them, I think Sams give a bigger picture of what happens, but think they add a nice balance.

 

Sam, yes they were taken with the Nikon. I really love it, I still haven't really worked out how to use it & just use the auto settings, but I WILL do the course one of these days.

 

I'm pretty sure neither of the dogs in my pics are Avenpart, but will check. One of my close friends has an Avenpart pup & I got to start her last weekend which was really good fun & great experience for me.

 

I'm not sure when we'll trial, I guess I have chickened out. I just don't feel ready, although people keep telling me you never feel ready. There are 3 trials coming up near me in the next month, so we'll go to watch & help out. People keep telling me I'll kick myself for not entering when I start watching, but...it's too late now.

 

We haven't done any backing, and probably won't, but I have spent a lot of time up in the yards lately, watching & learning. It's like a whole new ball game & very interesting.

 

Blackacre, I have only been involved in herding for 18mths so while I have some observations, I don't really have the experience to give them. The discussion I generally hear (from kelpie people, LOL)is that the kelpies are much easier to trust & when you need to rely on them to make the right decisions, they can work unsupervised without losing it or needing to be managed. Many kelpie people seem to consider the BCs high maintenance when working. They say they do not have the same work ethic as the kelpies.

 

It could just be the people I hang around with, who are mostly triallers...in comparison to Sam who probably hangs out with real working people.

Most of the BC's I train with are trial bred. I have heard kelpie people refer to them as watered down & push button. I would say general consensus is that BCs are better paddock trialling dogs & kelpies are better yard dogs. Most of the very large sheep stations over here tend to have kelpies.

 

I don't think I can make any real generalisations in regard to temperament. I have seen some VERY hard headed kelpies & some very soft ones too & can say the same things for BCs. I grew up with working kelpies & have a lot of respect for them, but it will always be BCs for me.

 

One of the most beautiful things I ever saw was a 12 week kelpie put into the yards for the first time. He was just amazing, very calm, thinking straight away, beautiful balance & distance. He was so small that he went under a fence in an effort to keep an appropriate distance to the sheep & back in again when he needed to.

 

Vickie

[blackacre]

Samantha,

Re: NZ trials. 10-15 minutes seems like a long time to do a simple gather and hold or smaller gather, drive and pen (my translation of the components of the various types of trials) don't you think?

Vickie, it's fascinating to hear that much the same preconceptions exist on both continents. Must be a grain of truth to them. Here's how it was put to me by an Australian shepherd who now lives here and trials border collies in USBCHA: "over the history of the Kelpie breed, the dogs that were bred were the ones that ignored what some frustrated, clueless sheep farmer was yelling at them from a long distance away and just went ahead and did what turned out to be more or less the right thing. (I paraphrase, and jump to transmit the gremlin for 'tongue in cheek'.)

Andrea

[SoloRiver]

Send me that red Kelpie please. Thank you.

[mjk05]

[zenotri]

Andrea, your paraphrasing certainly had me laughing. I thought long and hard about deleting or modifying my post...a little confrontational on BC board. I decided to leave it, while the ideas are not my own, every now & then I catch a glimpse of why they have been formed.

 

Melanie, Can you get over here next week? That red kelpie should be trialling next week but her owner has a broken foot.

[mjk05]

[Eileen Stein]

>

 

There was a time when I'd have listened with interest, but ever since they were recognized by the AKC they've lost all credibility IMO.

 

But seriously, Andrea -- getting back to your quote:

 

The Border Collie, although clearly developed from Old Country dogs, was not produced from exactly the same type of collies as was the Kelpie.

 

Do you know what the factual basis is for that statement? Your account of how the Kelpie breed developed is in line with what I've always understood, but what reason is there for thinking that those "working collies brought over from Scotland" were not the same type of collies as the ones that went on to be given the name "Border Collie" by the ISDS?

[mjk05]

[blackacre]

<snort> Good one Eileen. I love a bad pun.

I haven't read the book, so I don't know what if any evidence Tony Parsons gave for this statement.

Vickie, I laughed too. Glad it didn't hurt any national feelings. Canadians are painfully polite, you know, and we wouldn't want to do that.

Samantha, that is a laugh out loud marvellous story.

A

[Pipedream Farm]

Originally posted by Eileen Stein:

Do you know what the factual basis is for that statement? Your account of how the Kelpie breed developed is in line with what I've always understood, but what reason is there for thinking that those "working collies brought over from Scotland" were not the same type of collies as the ones that went on to be given the name "Border Collie" by the ISDS?

There is a family tree in Breed distribution and history of canine mdr1-1delta, a pharmacogenetic mutation that marks the emergence of breeds from the collie lineage PNAS, August 10, 2004, vol. 101, no. 32, 11725?11730

 

Fig. 1. The Collie Family Tree, a composite of anecdotal breed histories (adapted with permission from L. Rorem). The diagram depicts reported historical relationships among contemporary herding breeds that share the collie lineage out of Great Britain. The breeds shown were selectively surveyed for the presence of mdr1-1delta. Breeds that segregated the mutation are shown with an asterisk.

(follow link to view the figure)

 

This "family tree" shows the kelpie being developed lower down from where the border collie branched off. The MDR1 researchers used this in their DNA study. I'd have to review their discussion of the DNA results, more specifically their thoughts on the lineage of the breeds based upon their DNA results. Since they didn't offer any suggested changes to this "tree" they must have felt theire DNA results did not refute the "tree".

 

Mark

[Pipedream Farm]

I found on the web where Linda Rorem has the figure posted.

 

Collie Family Tree

 

Mark

[mjk05]

[Eileen Stein]

I doubt the DNA results could bear much on this particular question -- it would be interesting to know them all the same.

 

The problem I see in using the tree to answer this question is that "continued selection for farm/ranch work" is more a modifier of the dogs appearing below it than a stage of development. Bear in mind that the famous Kelpie who gave her name to the breed was already in Australia by the 1870s, and the first recorded sheepdog trial was in Bala, Wales in 1873 (the ISDS came along in 1906). So it seems that the Kelpie must have split from the "old working collie of Great Britain and Ireland" around the same time (or even before) trialing could have begun to have any impact in modifying the dogs that later became "Border Collies."

[Pipedream Farm]

Originally posted by Eileen Stein:

I doubt the DNA results could bear much on this particular question -- it would be interesting to know them all the same.

I believe you are correct in that in this case neither breed has this mutation and therefore there is no data to compare and contrast the genetics.

 

Several lines of evidence suggest that the mdr1-1delta mutation event predated the formal establishment of British herding breeds, beginning in 1873. The high frequency of mdr1-1delta in both subpopulations of Collies, the broad distribution of haplotypes I and II among multiple breeds, and the distinct haplotypes of the Old English Sheepdog together suggest that mdr1-1delta was widely dispersed by the time breeds were being registered. Although based on several assumptions, the allele age estimates suggested that mdr1-1delta was not an ancient allele (e.g., one introduced into the British Isles by Roman or Viking dogs; Fig. 1). Thus, the allele may not be broadly distributed beyond the collie lineage, except as a consequence of focused introgression.

The lack of the mutation in Border Collies and Kelpies (among several other herding breeds Table 5. Summary of surveyed breed populations with undetected mdr1-1delta) and the frequency and variation in the mutation present in collies strongly suggest that the dogs used to develop collies were not used to devlop border collies and kelpies.

 

Mark

[blackacre]

I agree Eileen. Old Hemp was born in 1893. King's Kelpie, already at least a second generation proto Kelpie, won the 1879 Forbes Trial. So, I think we have to take the tree as more of a broad brush representation of the development of the various collie breeds.

A

[SoloRiver]

There's nothing scientific about Linda Rorem's tree. As far as I can tell, it's based on "breed histories" and just-so stories, but hey, that's all she had to work with, so...

 

As far as the detailed phylogeny of the herding breeds, that's something I'm interested in. So, everyone needs to help out by sending me their dogs' DNA. (See link in .sig.) Then I will get back to you in a couple of years with your answer.

[Eileen Stein]

>

 

Well, but we know that's not true. We know that collies and border collies were both developed from the old British working collie, because it happened recently enough to be observed and recorded. The authors seem to think that the allele could be present in border collies, but in such a low frequency that it happened not to be present in the BCs they sampled. The occasional reports of drug sensitivity in BCs seem to support this. Certainly, once the breeds diverged, the frequency could have greatly increased in one breed and dwindled in the other due simply to drift.

[zenotri]

A quote from a book I have here...first published 1942...

 

"The contention of Mr Morrice, that kelpies were derived from imported stock, received strong support from a statement which appeared in "Country Life", 18 Jan 1946. Mr Jack King...wrote as follows with regard to the origin of kelpies:

 

My grandfather, John King of Hanging Rock Station, Wagga, was the first to import these dogs into Australia in 1825. The pair came from Scotland. Mr McGregor of Harwick sent them out. Their names were Rufus, a red dog, and Kelp, the bitch from which the name Kelpie originated.

 

I was in Scotland in 1925, and met one of McGregors grandsons...They were called "fox collie" in the north of Scotland and were different, in every way, from the Border Collie. We kept this breed of dog pure until 1900..."

 

another quote from the same book...

 

"Mr McHaffie is strongly of the opinion that,"The dingo may have been crossed with various dogs in Australia but the true kelpie is still of pure, smooth haired, Border Collie blood."

 

There seem to be so many theories as to origin, at least 5 or 6, just in this one book I have here, and all have documented historical anecdotes/letters/articles to back them up.

[mjk05]

[Pipedream Farm]

Originally posted by Eileen Stein:

The occasional reports of drug sensitivity in BCs seem to support this.

Eileen, I'm not inclined to believe these reports. It wasn't too long ago (about a year) that many if not most on this board and many vets were saying that border collies can be sensitive to ivermectin just like collies. Now, until proven otherwise by the DNA test, I am much more inclined to believe border collies do not have this mutation, especially since zero border collies have been positive to the mutation to date (as of about 2 months ago). If the mutation was present in one or more lines in our breed there is a high probablity that at least one of the hundreds of dogs tested would have been positive.

 

Originally posted by Eileen Stein:

We know that collies and border collies were both developed from the old British working collie

What we know is that border collies and collies were developed from dogs of that type, but not neccessarily from the exact same dogs (or lines); meaning by chance the mutation was not carried into the border collies lines.

 

Mark

[Rebecca, Irena Farm]

Its interesting that almost all the early dogs are reported as being black, red, or black+tan, no reports of white markings (?overlooked), and mostly short haired (although some of Gleeson's Kelpie's pups were rough coated).

Most old records did not mention the white on a dog. A "black and tan" may or may not have had white trim - the term tri-colored is a new one borrowed from New World kennel club terminology. A dog that was marked with less tan might have been mentioned as having tan "spots" or being tan trimmed.

 

Additionally, I've noticed that pictures of the early strong producers in the Border collie breed show a majority of dogs that were minimally white trimmed. If you linebred these minimally white dogs it wouldn't be long before the white disappeared almost entirely, though it will still pop up here and there.

 

There was a great deal of isolation of lines in pretrial days. Lines could be considered pure almost from farm to farm and they were highly specialized and inconsistent in their abilities. But the introduction of a general standard of work, both through commercial need (large hill flock based rather than small farm flocks) and the trials, raised expectations that sheepdogs should display a minimal set of abilities. The trials provided an incentive to travel around more and bloodlines started mixing, a bit at first, then a lot more as the trials become more popular.