Jump to content
BC Boards

Border Collie structure evaluation


Recommended Posts

It's here now: http://www.facebook.com/groups/bordercolliestructure/

Sad, I never got to read some of the posts. I wonder what they'd say about my red boy with his back end slightly longer than his front. I'm sure they wouldn't think about the extra power it gives him in his rear. And his eyes don't match, horrors! I do wonder what the show ring looks for, I read the standard and came away confused. I try to understand everyone's views even if I don't agree but they seem to live in an imaginary world with their own language.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Replies 197
  • Created
  • Last Reply

Obviously, there's a difference in the value of working vs. the value of being pretty. But, I think we need to be careful about judging psychological traits based on people's interests in different hobbies - lest they judge our psychology based on our interests.

 

Nicely put.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

My gut is to agree with this BUT, to be fair...

 

This judgment could apply to a whole host of human activities, from art shows to battles of the bands to almost every sport known to man. (How is it a positive reflection on me if my home team wins the world series? But, heck, they shut down whole cities for celebretory parties!)

 

For me the difference is if your home ball team wins, no one hands you a rosette and pats you on the back for producing such a great team. You may feel good about it, but unless you a completely deluded it doesn't make you feel like a better person.

 

So, say, if you have a dog who's a great worker, then what real need is there to go to a trial and show the world that your dog can work well? In the wrong light, that can be seen as exactly the same thing as an AKC show: a human's need to bask in the glory of the dog - for which the human likely paid great sums of money, and who was likely trained by someone other than the handler. It's some variation of the same thing: greatness by association.

Operative words here for me are "seen in the wrong light." I'm sure there are people who trial who do it mainly for ego gratification. Maybe there are more of them than we'd like to acknowledge, but conformation shows were originally developed as a pastime for the rich, not as a test of working ability between the people who needed good working dogs. The artificiality of the conformation show has become even more exaggerated as time has passed. But for many, the sheepdog trial retains it's functional attributes.

The difference is that one of the purposes of a sheepdog trial is to showcase ability, and watch to select potential breeding stock. And while Breed shows claim the latter as a reason, there it's more about the winning dogs being selected for breeding not because people like what the dog has/ can do, but because he won.

 

Obviously, there's a difference in the value of working vs. the value of being pretty. But, I think we need to be careful about judging psychological traits based on people's interests in different hobbies - lest they judge our psychology based on our interests.

In my case I feel entitled to draw these conclusions because I've been there, done that and (lamentably) saw that they applied to myself and my peers. It's also true that a large number of people who show in conformation really believe they are doing it for the good of their chosen breed. But they, so sadly, are wrong.

 

People like to compete in things they're interested in, and it seems to be a general human trait. ::Shrug::

 

Mary

 

Yup, they do. And that's OK, as long as what they are doing doesn't ruin what they are doing it with. Dogs are living things. Border Collies are dogs with a purpose. If one destroys their ability to carry out their work, whether by failing to select breeding dogs for that ability, or simply rendering vast numbers of them crippled or disease-ridden, one needs to get one's hands off them.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

That got me thinkin' ... can a show dog be three-legged?

 

From the standard:

Forequarters

Forelegs should be parallel when viewed from front, pasterns slightly sloping when viewed from side. 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.

 

From that, I would guess they could not.

 

But they can be dysplastic and still get their championship.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Kate's great three-legged (and one-eyed) dog was Decks. He lost the leg and eye to a donkey, so it's possible he was born structurally correct.

 

BTW, what is the croup? I thought it was a kind of cough, but the now-defunct structure group referenced it several times, so I'm thinking it's a conformation term?

 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Kate's great three-legged (and one-eyed) dog was Decks. He lost the leg and eye to a donkey, so it's possible he was born structurally correct.

 

BTW, what is the croup? I thought it was a kind of cough, but the now-defunct structure group referenced it several times, so I'm thinking it's a conformation term?

 

Certain "blemishes" are allowed in the show ring in certain breeds. They are called "honorable scars." For instance if a bird-dog has scars from blasting through a barbed-wire fence in pursuit of a bird, that could be considered an honorable scar. On the other hand, dogs are generally "excused" if they are limping - for whatever reason - except dysplasia or luxating patellas. Go figure...

 

Viewed from the side it's the space between the point of the hip and the root of the tail. Draft horses usually have a sloping croup, Arabian horses (usually) have a level croup. It is determined by the angle of the pelvis & to some extent, tail-set.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

And at least in the horse world, the slope of the croup can be an indicator of how much forward reach a horse has with its hind legs (along with other things, like the ability to round the back and shift weight off the forequarters). I guess the extreme sloping back of the GSD would be a bastardization of this idea--breeders trying to get maximum forward reach of the hind limbs for that flying trot (hips be damned).

 

Jodi,

I think I read in the distant past that show dogs were allowed to have scars, etc., that might typically be associated with a working life, but whether such a dog would be put up at a show as a matter of practice I couldn't say. And I don't know that "scars" (or whatever the word was) would be interpreted to include missing body parts (hey, if they allowed missing limbs and your dog had a particularly poorly shaped or crooked one, you could just lop it off!).

 

ETA: I see that Geonni was posting just such an explanation of scars at the same time I was.

 

J.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

If function follows form, and if form is based on function, then how come all the show champions (of all sorts, halter horses, bird dogs, "herding breeds", etc.) aren't burning up the trial fields winning everything, doing all the work on farms and ranches, and so on. After all, if they are "structurally correct" they must be perfectly built to do the job!

 

It's kind of like saying a "beauty queen" will be the best homemaker, mother, wife, daughter, employee or employer, etc., just because she looks so "perfect". right.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The structure thing is taking something that has a grain of truth and going overboard with it. There are things dogs can't do without the right structure. Take my recently deceased bot Ross who was square as square can be. Laybacks? Didn't have them. Angles on his front end? Didn't have them. Therefore Ross did have a finite max speed when running agility. Could he still run agility? Yes. But was he going to beat the faster dogs? Never. So, on some level, I can appreciate people wanting to have their dogs structure looked at, especially if they are competing/training in some dog sport because knowing that my dog simple could not corner quick changed how I trained and how I ran him. I quit trying to "speed him up" because I now knew he was as fast as he was going to be. We shaved a few seconds off of course time by me learning how to rearrange his path resulting in fewer sharp turns. It was useful.

 

I feel like Tea's concise "Seabiscuit" comment addressed this so much better and more succinctly than I could, but oh well. And HI BC Boards, I have missed you and your "patting each other on the back" or whatever PattiG accused us of! :)

 

My issue with the whole structure thing is that it seems to me the grain of truth is, except in the MOST extreme circumstances, neither obvious or quantitative. I am only picking on you Rushdoggie because you provided the above example, not because I think you are really trying to promote the structure--->function viewpoint. But my question would be, how do you KNOW that the dog's squareness is the only or even major reason why the dog is slow? What if it is something entirely different? Or, what if in this particular dog the squarness does physically limit him, but only because his joints are also atypically inflexible? What if you met a dog built even more square than this dog but that was faster, what would that do to your understanding of how squareness affects speed on the course in general (e.g., the Seabiscuit example?)

 

I guess it bothers me because the way a body's overall structure comes together, including things you CAN see like the frame and outer musculature, is complex enough, and faults in a given area may well be made up by specific quirks in other areas. SO it is not just the sum of the structural parts, but some emergent properties that come through, even on the stuff you CAN easily see and even measure with rulers and protractors, or whatever. But then add in all the purely physical stuff you CAN'T see that ALSO affects a given animal's functional abilities (or even assess outside of function-based tests), such as joint strength/flexibility related to that animal's connective tissue, specific quirks in the ennervation and neurology of that animal, circulatory efficiency, and about a million other things. So while I DO get what you are saying, I think that people are typically making up "just-so" stories when describing these type of structure virtues/faults and how these will conclusively DETERMINE anything about the animal's functional skill set. I get that if you see a bunch of square dogs and on average they are slower than non-square dogs it could lead you to think that if your dog is square and slow that it is slow BECAUSE it is square. But that is not necessarily true. There could be a lot of dogs out there who are both faster AND more square than others, so even if there is a general correlation, it doesn't tell you anything really about the causation of slowness in YOUR dog. It would be one thing if everyone who talked about this stuff were ortho vets or paleo-types who looked at structural models of animals on computers all day for their work, but obviously most are not!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I don't mind you picking on my post to make your point, and for the most part I agree with you. I was more or less replying to JDarlings question of "why do people want to look at this stuff." Like I said, I haven't joined the group so I can't say whats being posted there now.

 

I feel like Tea's concise "Seabiscuit" comment addressed this so much better and more succinctly than I could, but oh well.

 

And thats a valid example of how what is belived to be needed for a certain trait can often be dead wrong.

 

But my question would be, how do you KNOW that the dog's squareness is the only or even major reason why the dog is slow? What if it is something entirely different? Or, what if in this particular dog the squarness does physically limit him, but only because his joints are also atypically inflexible?

 

In my case I was told by someone that he shouldn't play agility or even frisbee for fun because of the way he was built. So I had him seen by an ortho vet who gave him a total once over and looked at videos of him running along with his hands on and she is the one who suggested that his max speed was his max speed in agility (as opposed to running in straight lines) because of how his legs were put together. He couldn't turn quick so he couldn't keep the sustained speed. The vet also said so long as I didn't encourage wild catches and allowed him to pick his speed he should be fine.

 

So for me, personally, having him evaluated by someone made the difference in what we were doing as I could now stop worrying that he was hurting, or not enjoying the game, etc and go with what we have. Thats why people are interested and have regularly posted there.

 

I posted much earlier in this thread too about how on the initial (now defunct) FB page there were a lot of comments about how one dog was too square or too low or whatever, then after the comments were made we found out said dog was 13 and had a very succesful agility/flyball career, etc. I have a very dear friend who gets VERY wrapped up in teh whole "structure" thing as far as what a dog needs for performance, and who has a hard time seeing its the whole package. Its something we (pleasantly) argue about. I think its somewhat useful, but shouldn't be the be all-end all. And, as everyone here knows, if you breed for the skills set you want the dogs with the right physical attributes will be there. Form following function, not vice-versa.

 

What if you met a dog built even more square than this dog but that was faster, what would that do to your understanding of how squareness affects speed on the course in general (e.g., the Seabiscuit example?)

 

I personally would think "oh how interesting, I wonder what else makes them different.

 

I guess it bothers me because the way a body's overall structure comes together, including things you CAN see like the frame and outer musculature, is complex enough, and faults in a given area may well be made up by specific quirks in other areas. SO it is not just the sum of the structural parts, but some emergent properties that come through, even on the stuff you CAN easily see and even measure with rulers and protractors, or whatever. But then add in all the purely physical stuff you CAN'T see that ALSO affects a given animal's functional abilities (or even assess outside of function-based tests), such as joint strength/flexibility related to that animal's connective tissue, specific quirks in the ennervation and neurology of that animal, circulatory efficiency, and about a million other things. So while I DO get what you are saying, I think that people are typically making up "just-so" stories when describing these type of structure virtues/faults and how these will conclusively DETERMINE anything about the animal's functional skill set.

 

I agree, which is why breeding for the skills set as a whole is so much more important than breeding for what we think the structure should be. Add to that made up crap that ends up in the written "standard" and breed folklore that stotal made up BS, and yeah, its a problem.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Can someone please tell me what the obsession is with this? Why are people just dying to post photos of their dogs to have other people critique how their dog looks? Seriously. WTF??? "We are all here to learn." Learn what?????

 

 

Some people never learn. You have to be capable of understanding in order to learn.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

What Karen said!!!!

 

We need an update, Ooky. With photos!

 

*waves* Alright, I will work on it tonight ;)

 

I am very sad I didn't get to read the structure comments before they removed the FB page. But have really been enjoying reading this thread.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I am very sad I didn't get to read the structure comments before they removed the FB page. But have really been enjoying reading this thread.

Welcome back!

 

I copied and pasted a couple of the most touching ones in this topic, and I hope you enjoyed them. They were so bad I couldn't resist sharing.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

FWIW...

 

Back in the days when I was into conformation showing I was taught that there were two main body types for working/herding dogs when viewed from the side – the square & the rectangular. Square body type dogs were “galloping dogs” or whose preferred mode of travel was a 3-beat gait. They allegedly included Dobermans, Boxers and among others, Australian Shepherds and Old English Sheepdogs. The rectangular dogs were considered “trotting dogs.” Trotting dogs included Collies, Border Collies, GSDs, Australian Cattle Dogs and others. The rational was that their work involved moving at a fast or slow trot for long periods of time, whereas the “square dogs” needed a short-burst gallop to perform their work.

 

This, believe it or not, seemed reasonable to me at the time. I really knew nothing about what a stock dog needed to do from minute to minute or day to day. It did seem logical that a Collie (or a Border Collie) when pursuing the sheep all day long would do well to work at a ground-eating wolf-trot. It would seem to be less tiring both from the standpoint of how hard his feet were hitting the ground and the amount of energy required to gallop a few hundred yards vs the amount of energy used to trot the same distance. Why an Australian Shepherd would not be better served using the same gait as the Collie or Border Collie never occurred to me.

 

But since I have become better acquainted with the Australian Shepherd and the Border Collie I note that they both show quite a range of body types, from very square to very rectangular. It is only in the show ring that I see a fairly uniform square silhouette in the Australian Shepherd. I fell out of love with the AKC paradigm before I really started looking at Border Collies, so I only know by hearsay that the show Border Collie is “supposed to” show a rectangular silhouette.

 

The rectangular dogs were also supposed to have quite a bit of angulation front and rear to supply them with the requisite extension or “reach and drive” required of an efficient trotting dog. A long stride, with the rear foot overreaching the fore-footprint was highly prized. I took this as gospel.

Since then I have had the experience of owning a Doberman bitch with the regulation “square” body profile. Who, despite a tendency to prefer to travel at a lope or gallop, and some fairly straight shoulders, had a long, smooth and efficient trot. I was told that she should never be jumped because of her straight shoulders. But she was an avid Frisbee dog all of her life, would retrieve tirelessly over obstacles and never had a lame or noticeably sore day in her life.

 

I did know a Doberman with a very short back which struck her forelegs with her back paws when she attempted a straight trot. Most dogs I have seen with this problem either pace or sidewind. But this dog did neither. Rather, she trotted with her rear legs spraddled out to fall on the outside of her front legs. This made her resemble an egg-beater when viewed from the rear, but when she galloped the rear legs converged and she had no trouble.

 

Since joining the Boards, I have come to believe that while a sound dog is always a good thing, different body plans and different degrees of angulation may or may not be better for different terrains and different kinds of work, (working widely scattered stock or working close in pens), but it seems to me that each dog develops its own working style to suit terrain, stock, and their own temperament and working styles. So as Eileen pointed out, changing a physical standard is not the way to go. Rather one should breed for ability, keenness, stamina and stock-sense and pick the dog that has the most suitable body and brain for the job you need done. In order to do this there is an absolute need for diversity of type within the breed. So a physical standard will never be a good idea.

 

I apologize for my long-winded posts, but like most converts, I’m pretty excited about all this and want “to share.” ;)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

"Sharing" is the point of the boards, isn't it?

 

Very interesting to read your comments. I remember watching a bit of Westminster and wondering the justification for judging a Greyhound (or any other coursing dog) at a trot. Or judging a sled dog at a trot. That would be like judging a Thoroughbred racehorse at a trot (like they do judge hunters in halter). Makes not much sense at all to "make or break" a galloping animal by viewing how it trots.

 

It just seems sensible to judge an animal by how well it *does* what it's supposed to *do*, not by what it looks like standing still or trotting in a small circle (unless, I guess, it's a carousel pony :lol: ).

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Can someone please tell me what the obsession is with this? Why are people just dying to post photos of their dogs to have other people critique how their dog looks? Seriously. WTF??? "We are all here to learn." Learn what?????

 

 

Some people never learn. You have to be capable of understanding in order to learn.

 

 

^^^So true.

 

Jovi

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Dear Doggers,

 

Ms Airbear corrects me:

Kate's great three-legged (and one-eyed) dog was Decks. He lost the leg and eye to a donkey, so it's possible he was born structurally correct.

 

Thanks for correcting the name - senior slip. Decks (Dex? Named from euchre) lost his leg by jumping a wire fence and hanging upside down until rescued. When announcing at Kingston and Decks was running, I'd tell about his and Kate's shepherding work during his outrun when his three leggedness smoothed out and seemed normal. When he slowed on the fetch and his broken gait was apparent: "Decks, as you can see has only three legs". Always got a gasp from the crowd.

 

Donald McCaig

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

×
×
  • Create New...