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There was a Bearded Collie at the USBCHA trial this weekend.


JaderBug
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The working Bearded Collie that I saw at the demo in Scotland, while colored with a typical "Border Collie" coloration (black with Irish markings) was certainly not a Border Collie with a wiry coat. You could tell by the way he/she (can't remember the gender) worked - more upright, used a bark, working closer in, etc.

 

So, as has been pointed out several times, you can have Border Collies that look like Beardies but which are Border Collies with a particular gene that produces the wiry coat; dogs that are mainly Border Collie or Beardie but have been crossed with the other breed; and true Beardies who probably share some common genetics "way back when" with the Border Collie but which have been breed as Beardies with a different working style for generations.

 

And then there is the show "Beardie" which looks more like a small offshoot of the show Old English Sheepdog than any form of Bearded Collie or Border Collie...that's what selecting for an arbitrary appearance will do for a breed, which is to not preserve any useful ability and to distort appearance to an extreme from the original source breed.

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This is hearsay: A friend of mine in Yorkshire has a beardie that comes from working lines, she kept admiring a dog when out on walks got chatting to the owner who told her only to get a beardie from working lines, which is what she did (using the same argument we use for border collies). The dog comes from Northumberland and came from a farm that worked both border collies and beardies. He does not look a border collie and I have only ever seen him clipped so I don't know what his coat would grow out to. He is a pet, but what I have observed is that he has the same neurotic tendencies that border collies have, reactive, doesn't handle children well etc.

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I was at a clinic yesterday. One of the regulars has real working beardies but yesterday she was working a beardie x collie sired by my own dog's sire and from a beardie bitch that is ROM. Works more like his dad but looks like a beardie.

 

There were two beardie pups there too and another working beardie that hadn't actually been worked but was bred for it.

 

No, you can't always tell by looking if they are crosses - you have to ask.

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