BillieNZ

Awesome, congratulations! What a great achievement

What treats? That depends on you & your dog. What food? Again, dependent on you & your dog. Rigorous work? Define 'rigorous' Collar vs. harness? Up to you, I know a few people prefer their dogs to wear harnesses to avoid hurting their necks, but most people use collars. Swimming? This is an individual dog thing. Some do, some don't. Praise/treats/play? Again, an individual dog thing. Agility? I think that would be good for any dog! I don't know about any breeders, but if you give us a rough idea of what you're looking for, someone may be able to help.

http://breedingbetterdogs.com/pdfFiles/articles/early_neurological_stimulation_en.pdf

Cool - look forward to buying this!!

Lots of nice, smallish border collie mixes around in shelters I bet My girl is a jack russell x border collie, she weighs 26lbs, but most of the terrier/BC mixes I know are a lot smaller than her. As someone else said, you can find nice small border collies too. A friend of mine has a working bred BC girl that is the same size as my terrier/BC! I find that BCs tend to get annoyed with Elsie though, they don't seem to enjoy her play style that much. If you're looking for actual breeds, I find miniature poodles tend to get on well with BCs, they are SUPER snuggly, will keep up well on walks and playing chase with BCs and are very clever too.

It's an interesting question, especially if you're interested in a breed that may not be able to have its original function tested. I imagine that there must be someone out there herding with pembrokes, but I could also imagine that it might just be at AKC level? There are so many herding breeds, but if you're an actual farmer with lots of stock to move (especially over a lot of terrain) I would think that you would be looking at a breed with a little more leg like an ACD? Hmmm interesting....

The particular dog I am talking about is a very typical looking border collie bitch, black & white, rough coat, typical markings... Gorgeous girl - just tiny! Mine is a mix though, a JRT x BC, funnily enough she is a good 2 inches taller than the purebred BC bitch I mentioned!

Not sure on weights, but there is a border collie running agility here that is under 16 inches in height! Pretty tiny!

Funny, Elsie (BC cross) has no trouble finding which car we're supposed to go in, and as I don't drive we catch rides with a lot of different people to everywhere we go, so we're getting into different cars every time! She always picks the right one!

I always enjoy seeing courses from other countries, if you do too, here are some New Zealand agility courses > http://www.dogagility.org.nz/courses.html Our levels go starters > novice > intermediate > senior, and from jumpers C > A.

Love Fable as a name

She is GORGEOUS! I just love those pricked ears!!

There's someone that does agility with her pugs here, they're really fast, drivey little dogs surprisingly! Dobermans are another breeds that don't always swim very well... I know of quite a few that sink!

My bitch started cocking her leg at 6 months LOL.

If you had aspirations to compete internationally, would you *have* to trial in AKC to earn a place on an international team? Quite glad we just have one venue here, and very, very glad our shows are so much cheaper to enter!