PennyT

Please, someone pm me an address for his widow. Dan was a person whose kindness attracted everyone. I wish to write the family. Penny

He owned at least two sheepdogs. He never managed to train one, that's a fact. At a clinic, I heard him lie about not ever owning one before the second. He was called on the lie because he didn't realize that the person who owned the dog after him in 1987 was there and spoke up. He may have been a wonderful pet dog trainer.

Andrew, in a recent issue of Sheepdog News,has a piece that includes a picture of a young woman in the late 19th century or maybe very early 20th, who may have entered a trial or two. She was the daughter of someone never noted for his skill but the color lithograph of her with dog is terrific. I have a few records of women trialing from the early 1900s in Great Britain, not much, and one from the 1800s. Andrew is the person to ask.

My word. Thanks, Journey and thanks, Mark. That was what I wanted to know. The piece on both bloggers is a gem. About 2 years ago, I took a brief look at the know nothing's take on Border collie history and noted the assertions were so far off plumb as not to be worth reading through. He seemed to think he had proven that all old photos and portraits of Scotch collies, for example one of Queen Victoria's (I forget which one, maybe a dog called Sharp), showed conclusively that all were Border collies on the basis of looks. He was naive yet wrote with such foolish conviction that I couldn't stomach further reading.

I resurrected this thread for two reasons. First, in the PDE/Crufts thread Ooky mentioned cognitive dissonance. Second, I googled the Crufts vet checks. To my amazement, a nameless know nothing now has a modestly successful blog in which he lambastes, for example, the lying Clumber spaniel breeder while continuing to maintain that breeding Border collies for sport is dandy and simply something on the order of parallel evolution. Then I looked up cognitive dissonance to make sure I remembered what it was with reasonable accuracy. I did. The blogger is, indeed, like the fox in the fable who couldn't reach the grapes. This led me to a question: Has the person become respectable? Is it possible? Checking his links, I noted a reference to retrieverman but none (I think none, I could have missed it) to terrierman. This makes me wonder about retrieverman's reputation. I'm pretty sure there are a number of dog blog readers on these Boards. Will someone voice an opinion on the two blogs in question. I'm avoiding the name of the first one as best I can. If you don't know it, private message me through the Boards system.

Someone in Georgia should know. Trig was a good dog as I recall.

"Penny, are you claiming there are health issues with Mm?" I don't need to make so extravagant a claim for the argument to hold. Let's take the case of CEA go-normals bred with carriers or clears or even affected to affected. The ultimate aim is to breed through CEA without losing other genetic components and narrowing the gene pool. Ethical breeders will do this; however, even from ethical hands dogs will slip through to the mills and people who can't help but breed everything and so on. The number of affected dogs this happens to will decrease gradually and eventually reduce numbers. With merle, that can never happen because merle is the valued quality. That dominant gene has to be there waiting to pounce. Mark, I never for a moment thought were doing anything other than being devil's advocate. That's why I responded in the first place. My position is not based on which goal is preferable although I am comfortable with the value argument as the best. I didn't answer that way because I thought you wanted to avoid that line of reasoning. Concerning merle to merle, I have never heard anyone with working border collies regarding CEA say anything as simultaneously specious and pompous as this: "Doing a merle-to-merle breeding should only be done by experienced and knowledgeable breeders, and only when a suitable non-merle with the desired quality is not available." Of course, I doubt anyone would dare.

Don't know yet. Gimme a few minutes.

"Is there any difference between breeding a deaf MM Collie because it has superior breed attributes that you wish to increase in the breed vs. breeding a CEA "go normal" (i.e. CEA affected) working Border Collie because of its superior working ability?" I am under the impression that the goals are different in that breeding a CEA affected dog with normal vision to a clear dog allows the good qualities of the affected dog to remain in the gene pool with the ultimate goal of reducing the incidence of CEA by slowly breeding away from it without narrowing the gene pool. I don't see how that can be the aim of breeding Mm to either Mm or MM since the merle color which itself is directly linked to various health problems is the very quality valued. Unlike CEA, it is not possible to breed past merle related problems because merle is the desired outcome.

Another sad note: I recognize the name Laura Rizzo. If this is the same person, then this is a case of going over to the dark side.

I don't know about sheep on the Mayflower. It wouldn't surprise me. The Spanish certainly seeded them along with cattle. The earliest dog lawsuit in this country that I've run across was filed either by or against Miles Standish for sheep destroyed by a dog and thereby starts centuries of reasons why U.S. sheep raisers either abhorred dogs or quit the sheep business.

She is often given to sweeping and utterly baseless assertions. For example, she stated that herding dogs came over on the Mayflower which is piffle. Penny

I just followed the first link to a horse breeder then on that page found a dog link to what is probably another dubious operation. Anyone ever heard of it? I am making an effort not to use the name.

(the sheepdog may need to be in "pack" and "prey" drive simultaneously.) I've noticed that my top dogs taught themselves nurturing behaviors at younger ages or did not need to teach themselves but knew about kindness to lambs earlier than my good dogs that either matured later or were born to regard baby lambs as either invisible or too visibly unaware of the meaning of an open gate. The latter dogs require coaching on either leaving the lambs alone or nudging them homeward. This is among the many reasons that I don't think in terms of prey drive when describing most behavior associated with Border collies on sheep. Never once have I thought of this as pack drive. Do you? Penny

How long will that be?