-
Recent Battles
Queen Victoria
-
Juicing The Sheep
09 April 2009 11:11 AM | No CommentsThe Journal of Queen Victoria Thursday, October 21, 1868 “Juicing the Sheep“ At a quarter to twelve I drove off with Louise and Leopold in the waggonette up to near the “Bush” (the residence of William Brown, the farmer) to see them “juice the sheep.”...
Read More -
Queen Victoria’s Border Collies
26 January 2009 4:40 AM | 18 CommentsFor well over a century the “Collie” name has been co-opted by show breeders who have created a monster whose face looks like a door stop with beady eyes set in triangular slits. These same people have co-opted the notion that Queen Victoria was deeply...
Read More -
Show Me the Collie
22 January 2009 3:38 AM | 1 CommentHaving established that Queen Victoria’s direct influence on the proliferation of the show Collie is insubstantial at best, let’s explore what impact the Monarchy may have, in fact, had on the culture of dogs during her reign. Five. If the show Collie owes more to...
Read More -
The Queen and the Collie
20 January 2009 2:57 AM | 2 CommentsThe old wisdom on the rise of the show Collie is that Queen Victoria met them on a trip to Scotland in the 1860s, became infatuated, acquired them, sponsored them in shows, bred them, and her abundant trend-setting prowess lead to their bountiful rise to...
Read More -
The Victorian Collie Myth
19 January 2009 8:03 PM | 5 CommentsThe prevailing creation myth among show Collie enthusiasts is that Queen Victoria’s infatuation with the breed set the ball in motion, elevating the humble farm dog to aristocratic splendor. Queen Victoria saw her first Collies in the 1860′s, and she enthusiastically began to sponsor them,...
Read More
-
Juicing The Sheep
ABCA Archive
-
Spoils of the Dog War
Posted on December 30, 2008 | 8 Commentsreprint from 10/7/07 The small elite group of conformation breeders are Platonists; they believe that the substantive reality of Border Collies is only a reflection of a higher truth, and their activity is the key to divining that perfect essence. The small elite group of... -
The Third Estate of the Border Collie
Posted on December 23, 2008 | 2 Commentsreprint from 9/16/07 The First Estate of the Border Collie is as a working stock dog. The Second Estate of the Border Collie is as a conformation show dog. The Third Estate of the Border Collie is as a dog sport athlete. The Fourth Estate... -
The Border Collie War: ABCA vs. AKC
Posted on December 5, 2008 | 19 CommentsThe most personal border war for me, and the reason this blog is so cleverly named border wars is the battle over the future of the pure bred Border Collie. Although Border Collies have been in my family for decades and there have been Border... -
A Breed Apart II
Posted on September 18, 2008 | 5 CommentsThe culmination of the previous post is this statement: Our phylogenetic, clustering, and principal components analyses all suggest a genetic split within the breed between working and show Border Collies that is probably as large as the genetic distances between some breeds. Is this true?... -
A Breed Apart I
Posted on September 18, 2008 | 2 CommentsThose of us in Border Collies have long known that they’re in a class by themselves in the arenas of intelligence, agility, drive, and trainability. They’re different than other dogs and that difference is often wide. And we know that the difference is in their... -
Barbie Collies Can Herd, Really
Posted on January 4, 2008 | 9 Commentsreprinted, slightly revised (anonymized) from orignal post 9/14/07 ** Some Names and Images Changed to Protect the Innocent ** The end is nigh. The apocalypse is upon is. Pigs are flying and they are playing hockey in hell. A “barbie” collie won a USBCHA Open... -
Third Estate of the Border Collie
Posted on November 20, 2007 | 2 Commentsreprint from 9/16/07 The First Estate of the Border Collie is as a working stock dog. The Second Estate of the Border Collie is as a conformation show dog. The Third Estate of the Border Collie is as a dog sport athlete. The Fourth Estate... -
Where Are They Now? Pt.1
Posted on November 5, 2007 | 1 CommentUsing the great uber-brain of google (and it can be oh so wrong some times), I managed to track down many of the people (or their google doppelgangers) who signed the AKC: Hands Off the Border Collie! petition that is featured in Donald McCaig’s book,... -
Siding with the AKC
Posted on October 8, 2007 | 3 CommentsFaced with the undeniable history of ruining numerous other purebred dog breeds by facilitating and encouraging countless breeders to breed stupidly, why would any circumspect Border Collie owner or breeder side with the AKC over a registry that is 100% Border Collie focused, that owns... -
Versatility "Dangerous" to the ABCA?
Posted on October 8, 2007 | 2 CommentsI’d like to bring your attention to the report presented to ABCA members in 2002 when a committee was formed to assess the AKC/ABCA Dual Registration “problem” and advise options for the membership to vote on. In the report, the authors (Denise Wall, Candy Kennedy,...
Queen Victoria's Border Collies