Can you ever tell if a dog is a border collie, based on appearance?

[maggiesmommy]

We've talked a lot in the forums about the tremendous amount of variation in color, size, coat, ears, etc. in border collies. The more research I've done and the more I've found out about the diversity of the breed, the more I'm left wondering: how can you tell what is, and isn't, really a border collie?

I know that the AKC standard is BS and that breeding for conformation is a huge no-no. But I'm also wondering... If you completely dismiss the AKC Barbie-collie standards, is there any actual guideline by which you could say, "No, that's not a border collie?" Within non-AKC groups, do they have any appearance-based standards for defining border collies?


As a completely hypothetical, hyperbolic example... Suppose I saw a dog that looked just like a red chow, but it was an amazing herder and its owners said it was a border collie. Could that be taken at face value?

 

And on the other side of it... suppose I saw a dog that looked like a classic border collie by AKC standards, but was dumb as a rock and hadn't had a herder in its bloodline for a dozen generations. Is that dog a border collie?

I don't understand border collie definitions, breeding and history as well as most of you guys do, so excuse me if these are really stupid questions.

[Gideon's girl]

A Border Collies ancestors come from the border region between England and Scotland. And a Border Collie shouldn't just herd well, lots of dogs do that, it should herd like a Border Collie. In my book, since Border Collies should be bred for stockwork, if it wasn't, then it isn't. But we don't live in the black and white world, we live in this one. Registration shouldn't matter, work should, so your red Chow Chow could have been bred into the Border Collie lines up until recently, when registration started to matter. And among the shepherds that still live there and do real work there, they might still add that Chow to their bloodlines, if it actually existed, and was truly good enough.

[maggiesmommy]

A Border Collies ancestors come from the border region between England and Scotland. And a Border Collie shouldn't just herd well, lots of dogs do that, it should herd like a Border Collie. In my book, since Border Collies should be bred for stockwork, if it wasn't, then it isn't. But we don't live in the black and white world, we live in this one. Registration shouldn't matter, work should, so your red Chow Chow could have been bred into the Border Collie lines up until recently, when registration started to matter. And among the shepherds that still live there and do real work there, they might still add that Chow to their bloodlines, if it actually existed, and was truly good enough.

 

Excellent answer. Got it. Thank you.