The show BCs are almost all over-coated, or at least blown out extensively. It’s very hard to distinguish what the dog would look like if its coat wasn’t maintained and primped for show, but hairdressing can only do so much. Show BCs are also on the small side. The UK is actually well behind the Australians when it comes to show Border Collies. Almost all of the US show BCs and many of the UK show lines are actually Australian in origin. The US show breeders are lazy and unoriginal, there has been virtually no effort to create “show BC” out of American stock, they have simply imported already Barbie-fied Border Collies from overseas.

This has lead to a rather shallow gene pool among the serious show folks. All the dogs are related. Very sad.

I’m not sure what you mean by they look like Rough Collies. Show Rough Collies are hideous beasts and highly distorted and their Smooth cousins are likewise ridiculous looking, they are not an attractive breed at all. Show BCs certainly have more coat, but this is a trend you can find in hundreds of show dogs versus their more natural forms. The BC coat is very unlike the Collie coat in texture and color, so I doubt very much that there is any significant “Collie blood…brought back into the BC breed” … if you have evidence of this I’d be interested in looking at it.

I just don’t see this being the case. BCs are bred for trials and Collies are useless trial dogs. There’s also no evidence of a recent cross given that there are really no BCs that look like Rough Collies. The BC breed has maintained a great degree of diversity that the Collie breed has not, but that diversity rarely shows a similarity to what has become the show collie.

Albert was into Dachshunds and greyhounds, and never was really appreciated by the people in the way she was.

But her first language was German.