Pearse

Strictly out of curiosity, what is "video competition"? I don't do agility or freestyle so I honestly have no idea and am curious.

In the main, I agree with you Mark and I don't see a big problem with that unless it's taken to extremes mostly because, as you say, the dogs don't care as long as they get to work. However, I don't think it's true in all cases. I know a good number of people who don't trial to satisfy their ego. They trial because it affords them a rare opportunity to get their dogs on new sheep in a new place. They have no expectation stepping to the post that they are going to do brilliantly and beat the "big hats" and they don't care. They get to run their dogs on a big course, on challenging sheep (as opposed to the half dozen dog broke ones they have at home), and they get a social weekend with likeminded people. If they get a good score, they're thrilled. If they don't, no biggie. For those of us who are competitive by nature, yes it's all about our ego. Dogs don't give a crap. They'll give the same 100% at the Bluegrass with 100's watching as at home with no one watching. Until we start giving out prizes that dogs care about at trials, they'll continue not to care. Different (ego) strokes, I guess. Pearse

A puppy mill is any breeding operation that keeps female dogs for the sole purpose of producing puppies. I don't really care how clean they are, whether they are licensed or not. If they are keeping dozens of bitches for no other reason than to breed them and produce puppies, they are a Puppy Mill. If they keep fewer than "dozens" of bitches for the sole purpose of breeding them and producing more puppies, they're a Backyard Breeder. Dogs need a purpose, socialization, and companionship. Dogs in Puppy Mills and Backyard Breeder operations get none of those. Pearse

I still say Donald's painting a rather bleak portrait, tongue in cheek somewhat I'd guess. The journey to the trial field is it's own reward. For better or worse, many of the more brilliant things a dog will do, he/she will do in a work situation or on the training field when no one but you is around to see it. Trials are hard on the old ego as Donald points out. Sometimes there are no prizes and no one remembers any dog but the winner. Usually, prizes are to the top 10% - 20% but no one really remembers much about the even the winners at all but the biggest trials (think >60 - 70 Open dogs). That's how it's supposed to be and the reason why most stockdog people don't have much respect for "titles" which can be earned by not winning but by putting in multiple mediocre results on an already absurdly simple course. Contrast that with the recent National Finals where the course was set to be difficult enough that barely 50% of the top 17 dogs could get around it in the final round. I think that's what Donald means when he says that the trial field is a harsh mistress (or more colorful words to that effect).

I'm with Pam on this one. Over the past few years, I've seen at least a couple of dozen people around here start out in AKC herding and come over to dip their toes in the water at USBCHA style trials, usually in Novice. They weren't criticised for doing AKC herding, and they were welcomed at the USBCHA style trials. Some have stayed and gone on to be good handlers who no longer trial AKC. Some do both AKC and USBCHA style trials, and some realized that USBCHA trials were not for them and went back to doing AKC. Much as I hate to see money going to AKC for entry fees, and people getting titles on dogs who can't get around a novice style USBCHA course, if people want to come over and try a USBCHA style trial, we need to be welcoming and encouraging, let them see what a challenge it is and what dogs with any talent can do on a trial course, and encourage them to train their dogs to that level. It will benefit the dogs in the long run if the best dogs come over and get better running on bigger courses.

You would be one of the few who would pay for it then. Five O'Clock Films did a good job. They did a better job the second or third time they did the broadcast than they did the first time. I expect that this crew would do a better job next year too. Five O'Clock films is also expensive. They used a satellite uplink to get that high definition video in real time. That doesn't come cheap. They had a fair sized crew whose travel costs to the west coast, along with all of their gear (they're an east coast outfit) would have been prohibitively expensive. The first year they did the broadcast, it was "free" in the sense that the ABCA and the USBCHA, a private sponsor, and a couple of advertisers paid for it. That was a pilot to gauge interest, with the expectation that future years would pay for themselves. The year they went to a paid subscription, viewership dropped more than threefold, and had it not been from DVD sales, the USBCHA would have lost a great deal of money. The proposal they came back with this year was just not financially viable for the USBCHA, who is not in the business of financing TV productions for the benefit of people, the majority of whom are not USBCHA members. The Board of Directors decided not to fund the broadcast this year. Herbert and Geri Byrne thought it was important enough, and of sufficient interest to members who could not attend, that they scrambled and found a production company who could do a more limited broadcast that we could afford. This production would still not have been possible without underwriting from the USBCHA and expected sales from DVD's for which the majority of the work will be done by many of the people who worked damned hard to put on the Finals. The fact that the broadcast is barely over and you are dumping on their efforts makes it less likely that they, or anyone else, will be motivated to provide the service in future years. So, if you want better quality broadcasts for future Finals, I have two suggestions. First have the guts to sign your name to your "observations". That way, we can put you in charge of raising the necessary funds to enable a broadcast for next year that meets your exacting standards. Second, if you want to offer constructive criticism, you might want to think about prefacing your comments with "Thank you to all of those who put so much hard work into putting on the Finals, and to those who made it possible for those of us who could not attend to watch" Pearse

The Star of the North Stockdog Trial will be held this year at Gale Woods, Minnestrista Oct 5th to Oct 7th 2012. The judge this year will be Julie Hill from Scotland. This is a USBCHA sanctioned trial with three Open, two Nursery, two ProNovice and 2 Novice trials Entry forms are available at http://comebye.net/s..._Entry_Form.pdf Opening day for entries is Aug 6th and all entries postmarked by Aug 13th will be accepted as received on the opening day for entries. For any further information, contact pearse@me.com. Pearse

It's not really new. It's just been spreading slower than Lyme disease. http://veterinarynews.dvm360.com/dvm/article/articleDetail.jsp?id=60100

The 27th Annual Wisconsin Working Stockdog Association trials will be held Aug 31 - Sep 3 at Badlands Sno-Park in Hudson WI. Entries are now open and will be accepted until August 17th. Any entry postmarked on or before July 16th will be treated as if it were received on opening day for entries. This is a USBCHA sanctioned trial with 2 Open and 2 Nursery trials as well as 2 ProNovice, Ranch, and Novice trials. Ranch will be a shortened course with an outrun of around 150 yards and a short drive. This is open to novice handlers (never competed in Open). Novice will be a similar length outrun with a short wear. There is a Youth class for handlers under 17 years old. ProNovice and Nursery will be an outrun of approx 250 yards and full drive. The sheep are from a commercial flock in WI and will not have been worked in small groups prior to the trial. This is a new site for this trial after more than 10 years at the beautiful McLeish farm in Portage WI. Our new hosts are they Kinney family and we are confident that the new site will prove challenging for handlers and exciting for spectators. Entry forms are available We look forward to seeing you all there. Pearse Photo of the trial field:

Since I have worked at both institutions where the research on BCC is being done (those being the WCVM at Univ of Saskatchewan, and the Univ. of Minnesota), and have submitted and reviewed grant submissions to both institutions which involved animal research, I know a little of the composition of their Insitutuional Animal Care and Use Committees, and the regulations under which animal research is conducted. The IUCAC at both institutions included, veterinarians, scientists, ethicists, members of the community, animal care technicians, and members of the university community who are not engaged in animal research. The rules regarding the use of animals in research projects are designed to minimize animal suffering and ensure humane treatment. This is particularly the case, as one might expect, when dealing with animals in a clinical setting where the animals are companion animals or livestock belonging to clients. Dog owners participating is research are required to be informed of the nature of the research and all of the risks which may be involved. Such informed consent is a prerequisite for obtaining approval from the IUCAC to proceed with the research. Some of the YouTube videos posted were posted by individual owners and were not part of any research project. Therefore, they probably did not observe proper research protocol. That does not make their contributions any less valuable or any less ethical. These dog owners most likely have seen this condition in their dogs often enough to be certain that the dog was in no danger. TEC claims that some sort of disclaimer is required along with the BCC videos because he believes that inducing suffering in animals is unethical. I doubt anyone here would disagree with that. However, what evidence does he have that BCC causes suffering in the affected animals, or in any way endangers their long-term health or well-being? The clinical data do not support such a conclusion. These dogs show no abnormalities physiologically, biochemically, or anatomically that would suggest long term problems. They recover quickly when exercise is terminated, and show few, if any, signs of distress. Those are the clinical findings from Dr. Taylor's examination of these animals. Clearly there is some problem somewhere, but none of the affected dogs have been reported suffering life-threatening or in any way debilitating short-term or long-term effects, so the presumption that inducing an affective episode is somehow cruel and unethical is not supported by the evidence. I think TEC is correct in that it would be useful to have some cautionary language added to the U of MN website at the very least differentiating BCC from heat stroke and cautioning owners not to try inducing symptoms outside the care of a veterinarian in case someone does not know the difference and induces heat stroke because they incorrectly assume their dog has BCC. I will pass along those concerns to Dr. Mickelson's group. For the record, there would be no research effort into BCC were it not for the work of Mark Billadeau who as chair of the ABCA Health and Genetics Committee shepherded the grant proposals on this through the approval process and got the seed money approved for Dr. Taylor to do the first clinical studies on this condition. Several other people posting here have also been supportive of this effort by submitting videos of affected dogs, submitting DNA samples, or organizing the collection of DNA samples at trials and clinics. So, perhaps rather than being pedantic about the proper use of quote tags, ellipses, parenthetical editorial comments and the like, or getting hung up on the correct way to cite material in the public domain on websites, you could express your appreciation for them taking the time to address this issue, and additionally to invest a considerable amount of their time in civilly addressing your concerns. Pearse

It's one of the reasons I would encourage trial hosts to get novice handlers helping in the pens at set out. It often seems like it's more work than either doing it yourself or hiring some skilled hands to do it but the more time some of the novice (hobby herders) spend around sheep, they more they come to appreciate them as living beings and the more considerate of their welfare they become. You need someone up there to coach and make sure that things keep moving along but the extra effort pays off in keeping people in the game and teaching some stockman ship. That has been my own experience from city boy --> trialler --> sheep owner. Pearse

I disagree with you Donald based no the same argument you make for including the shed on hard to shed sheep (or the pen on impossible to pen sheep); someone's going to do it. If I was judging a trial where the sheep stuck together like they were velcroed and 99% of the handlers had to get in there an pry them apart with a crowbar, I'd still take some points for the handler doing too much of the work. Maybe not as many as I'd take on sheep that acted like sheep, but still one or two. The reason is that there will be that one dog who will come in between the back legs of the third sheep and the front legs of the fourth, even if the gap is only a few inches, make the gap, and hold the shed. That dog needs to be rewarded with a higher score. The rules are there to reward the exceptional dog, and superior work. Even when the circumstances are exceptionally difficult, one needs to leave room to recognize the team that rises to the challenge. There are a few handlers out there who would rather lose the trial than take a shortcut. There need to be points there to reward that when they succeed. Like I said before, seeing the dog who can do it well when none other is succeeding is an awesome thing. Most of us have been at trials where it has happened and it's; silence - collective gasp - pause - wild applause, from the other handlers. If handlers know they won't get away with substandard work just because they are running on tough sheep, there's a strong incentive to do it right and get better at working "impossible" sheep.

I'm pretty sure he does, and I'm pretty sure that the point he was making is the same one you are. Any failure to communicate that is mine, not his, because I was pretty clear on what he was saying when he told me. The point he was making is covered under 5.2.6 ( b ) in the ISDS rules (and specific to the case in the last paragraph where the sheep weren't responsive to the presence of the handler at all - not uncommon with farm flocks): "Shedding necessitates negotiation of the sheep within the ring by the handler anddog to the best position for effecting the deliberate shed by the dog of twospecified sheep." Many handlers don't trust their dog in the shedding ring or at the pen. The dog is too tight on its flanks or comes forward at the wrong time, so they lay the dog down and try to do all the work. Shedding and penning is supposed to be a team effort and in the shedding ring the dog should be used, not just to hold the side but to move the sheep into position to effect the shed. It's a rare dog where the handler can just point to the fourth sheep in a line of five and the dog will come in between the third and fourth where no gap exists and shed off the back two. It's not that uncommon a move in a yard or pen, but it's an even rarer handler who'll try it in a 40 yard shedding ring at a trial where they have a shot at being in the prizes, except in desperation when time is running out. When you do see it, it's awesome! More common is for the handler and dog to work the sheep so that they line up and the fourth and fifth hold up just long enough to make a gap and give the dog clear indication that you want the last two (or one). It's most fun on sheep who respond to handler pressure almost as much as to sheep pressure (so that the handler and dog can work together) and it's toughest on dog broke sheep who'll let the handler stand there and scratch their ears in the shedding ring without moving (the handler can't hold his/her side, and will resort to interesting forms of modern dance to keep the sheep from folding around him/her).

I had the good fortune to scribe for Aled Owen. I heard him say the same thing over and over again; 'why doesn't he/she use the stick'. So, after the trial, I asked him what he meant. He explained that the goal in shedding was to let the sheep you didn't want go, and have the dog come in and hold the sheep you wanted to keep. The way to do that was to hold up the first of the sheep you wanted to hold and call the dog in on that sheep. He saw handlers trying to use their hands or bodies to do that which caused two problems. First, they were putting themselves in front of the sheep which made it unclear to the judge whether it was the dog or the handler holding the shed sheep. He suggested that where you created that doubt, you were inviting the judge to deduct points whereas if the handler stayed out of the way it was clearer that the dog was holding the sheep and the judge had no choice but to give full points for the shed (assuming the dog got the job done) Second, on sheep (like these) that were not too concerned about humans, the sheep would fold around the handler's back, if the handler leaned in to the gap to use his/her hand or body to cause the sheep to pause. Using the crook to hold up the first sheep to be held (by putting it at eye level) allowed the handler to use his/her body and other arm to discourage the sheep from folding around his/her back. Both of these assume that the dog will come in and shed. Often when you see the handler doing all the work in the shedding ring or at the pen, it's because they don't trust their dog to do it. Pearse

Yes. It's a scam to separate the gullible from their money. You can't tell anything from a dog's first couple of times on sheep. Some are super keen and turn out to have no talent. Some are super shy and turn out OK once they turn on.. It's highly variable, age-dependent etc etc etc. What a dog looks like at a year and a half or two after some decent training and sufficient work experience is all that matters.

I agree with Kristi and the same is true of many sheepdogs. They love working stock but if they never saw another sheep or cow/steer they could live perfectly happy lives. It's why I think the people who are doing stockwork to make their dog happy, more complete, less neurotic are barking up the wrong tree. A Border Collie who doesn't work stock every day can be a perfectly healthy happy Border Collie. A Border Collie who works stock every day, can be happy as a clam or completely miserable depending upon who he/she is working with (not that different than the rest of us come to think of it).

Here's a link the commercial version of this machine made by a company called Peak Hill Industries in New Zealand with video of sheep being sheared

Not surprising to me at all. There's usually common ground in the middle.

No. The main objection is to making a statement that ETS is a genetic condition and advising people to stop breeding based on that when there is no evidence from any real study indicating that this is even a real condition and not a behavioral anomaly in some high performance Agility dogs. Again, if it were just up to me, I'd tell Agility people that breeding Border Collies for any Agility trait would produce defective dogs that will be no good for agility. But, that would be wrong of me because I have no empirical evidence that it is true. There is NO empirical evidence that removing dogs with "ETS" (quotes are deliberate) will prevent future dogs from developing ETS. Study it all you want. Set up the ETS Foundation to fund it. Don't tell people to spay and neuter their affected dogs until actual studies are done showing it's a heritable condition.

Actually not pot stirring at all and some of this research has already been done. Several cross-breeding studies (breeding Border Collies with another breed) have shown that elements of herding behavior can disappear in a single generation. Those studies also showed that the set of behaviors which we group together as "herding behavior" are each controlled by one or more genes. The researchers categorized those as things like "eye", "crouch", "stalking". We would probably add "cast", endurance, "power" and "presence". To anyone who has bred working dogs, those findings are somewhat obvious as we can see "plain working" vs "strong eyed" dogs, dogs with imense presence vs dogs who can work close to sheep etc. The key thing to note is that what makes a Border Collie is a significant number of genes, spread around the genome. To keep a Border Collie as a dog capable of controlling stock, you need to move those genes as a package to the next generation. The minute you start selecting primarily for other traits (coat color, ear set, coat length, forehead stock, non-ETS), you are going to lose that. Why all the interest in Border Collies? It's an interest in dogs in General as a genetic platform to explore biology. Dogs have unique aspects that no other model system has. Huge phenotypic variation. We call a Chihuahua and a Great Dane the same species, but were one to categorize them on morphology, or on the ability to interbreed naturally, they are so different that most would declare them separate species. Second, inbreeding, and more particularly the type of inbreeding using limited sires that pervades Kennel Club breeding has produced dog breeds with high incidences of genetic diseases that can be used as models for human conditions in a population with a high degree of genetic homogeneity. Third, breed specific behavior. No one knows how much of behavior is inate but it's clear from dog breeds that some behaviors are heritable. So, the general answer is that the interest in non-life threatening conditions to scientists is because scientists just want to know how things come to be, and dogs offer some unique advantages in answering those questions. One thing that I think is going to hinder their efforts in the area of behavioral research is that the AKC is the gold standard for a lot of those scientists and a lot of the AKC breeds have been bred away from their defining behaviors by selection for a physical phenotype rather than a behavioral one. Anyone interested in studying behavioral genetics had better steer clear of Kennel Club dogs and seek out working dog populations. Two good articles on the current state of genetic research in dogs. 1) Dog Star Rising: The Canine Genetic System by Drs. Sutter and Ostrander (a pioneer in this field) 2) "Genetics and the Shape of Dogs" American Scientist by Elaine Ostrander which is accessible for a lay audience.

There's a big difference between having done work and research and having done work and research that is published in a peer reviewed journal. I can't judge the work Linda Mecklenburg has done on this phenomenon other than by her published writings on the subject. So far, the published writings I have been able to find, don't include the results of any scientific research on the subject matter. There are no reports of controlled experiments. No data on how many dogs were dogs were enrolled in which different training regiments and what the degree of improvement was over a similar group of dogs that were not subject to different training regimes. Granted, those writings are all in magazines intended for a lay audience but there's nothing I can find in the scientific literature either, so far. Maybe those research papers exist. If so, if someone sends me the reference, I will read them. In short, it has nothing to do with what I "think" or "believe". It comes down to what has been demonstrated with scientific rigor, reviewed by peers in the fields of animal behavior and veterinary medicine, and published for the rest of the veterinary, scientific, and agility communities to evaluate. I'm not criticizing Linda Meckenburg. I'd never heard of the lady until a few days ago. She may indeed have done extensive and excellent research on this phenomenon that none of us is aware of and this entire thread may be completely superfluous. However, based on what I have been able to find to read on the subject, my own personal conclusion is that the jury is still out, and the underlying basis for this phenomenon is far from determined. Edited to add: from Dr. Mecklenburg's article on her website . So, at this point, everything about this phenomenon is hypothesis and speculation and yet, based on nothing but speculation, she's recommending that any dog showing this phenomenon be removed from the gene pool. Now, since I'm of the opinion that no Border Collie should be bred for Agility anyway, that doesn't bother me personally. The fewer Sport Collies in the gene pool, the better. But, I think it's a dangerous philosophy. We have no real evidence that this is a genetic disease, no definitive evidence that it's heritable other than some anecdotal reports that it may exhibit in dogs from the same lineage, but on the basis of that almost complete lack of evidence, we're going to recommend not breeding any of these dogs. Makes little sense to me. That $20 is still sitting on the table.

I actually did this pretty early on in the process. I read her articles on the subject. Everything she says is anectodal. There is nothing resembling scientific research referenced in any of that material. That doesn't mean she's wrong, but at this stage the jury is still out as the syndrome has not even been properly characterized as far as I can see. The thing from her article that I found most puzzling is that this condition manifests only after a certain amount of time in training. Dogs that were originally good jumpers begin to exhibit this behavior, and these dogs appear to belong to the group of dogs with high drive. If this were a genetic condition, one would expect to see either that the condition was apparent right from the beginning of training, or that it appeared at a certain age. The former has not been ruled out in my opinion. These dogs may have the problem early in their training but it doesn't become apparent until they start competing at higher levels. The second hasn't been ruled out either as there are no data on age of onset. The third possibility is that ETS by itself is not a genetic condition, but that aspects of the dogs' personalities and overall genetic backgrounds predispose them to ETS. The statements in Meckenlburg's article that suggests this, at least to me, are that the dogs who develop this behavior are highly driven competitors, that removing visual distractions from in front of the jumps helps, and most notably that having the handler work the dog from out of direct line of sight helps. It could well be that dogs on the far right end of the "driven" scale simply start to lose focus or over tax their brains when they get to the highest levels of competition and start running at really high speeds. Dogs of similar breeding would be similarly predisposed so it would appear like a genetic "defect". It's like cancer in humans. If you try to convince a die hard smoker to quit, you'll hear about "Uncle Bob" who smoked two packs a day of unfiltered cigarettes and lived to be 95. Our genetic background is not deterministic. Only in rare cases does it determine what will happen. Mostly it just alters the odds. I may be at high risk of heart disease but low risk for prostate cancer. That doesn't mean I have a genetic disease. It just means I need to watch my diet more than the next guy. ETS could well turn out to be just like that. Some dogs will be predisposed to it. Some will not. If anyone wants to cover my bet, I have a crisp $20 bill here that says no genetic test for ETS in the next five years. Pearse

It certainly could. Genes don't exist in isolation. They exist on chromosomes with thousands of other genes. So, when you breed away from one "gene", you may be actually breeding away from a collection of genes. There may be exceptions in really inbred populations, but in general that holds. Genes often do more than one job. A gene expressed in the brain in a specific time at a specific place may lead to noise sensitivity. Expressed somewhere else in the brain, or in a different tissue, or at a different time in development, and it might produce a beneficial trait. For complex (quantitative) traits there is variability of expression. The gene, or set of genes, that produce(s) noise sensitivity in some dogs, may be responsible for hearing acuity in the rest. Breed away from it, and you may get lines of dogs that aren't noise sensitive, but can no longer hear a whistle at a mile or more. Likewise with BCC or epilepsy. It may turn out that these are extremes of the same phenotypes that give us dogs with high drive. If that's the case, it's going to be hard to completely eliminate the conditions while retaining the traits that define the Border Collie. At the very least, it would take a long time, and very skillful breeders to do it.

The lab doing the research is well funded to perform research on human disease. If they think they can use ETS or any other canine disease as a model system for human disease, they will apply for funding from NIH, NCI, other human research foundations, or animal research foundations I would imagine. The amounts available from anyone other than AKC Health Trust or Wellcome Animal Trust in the UK are piddling by comparison. That's why it takes so long to get research on animal diseases done. They will be delighted if the results of their research benefits the health of dogs too but their primary focus is on human disease because that's where the funding is.

I disagree. Remedial training, or to put it another way, approaching training from another direction may enable these dogs to compete normally regardless of the cause. Someone with Asperger's Syndrome may not learn the same way as someone without. That doesn't mean they can't learn. They just need an approach to education that fits their needs. These dogs may respond to being trained or handled very differently from other agility dogs. That is the danger of too much emphasis on genetic testing. Variation comes to be interpreted as "defect" or "disease". The problem isn't with testing individual dogs although that will get out of hand. What happens when you have a genetic test for speed, biddability, height, response times etc., etc., etc.? No, the problem is that then people start BREEDING on the basis of the genetic test without having any clue as to why the dogs are like this in the first place (remember, it is being claimed that many of these dogs are top perfomers before this condition manifests). For all we know, these neurological syndromes may be the right hand end of the bell curve of what makes Border Collies, Border Collies. Just as it is suspected that the right hand of the human bell curve produces the most creative human minds, some of whom suffer from schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, Asperger's syndrome, so too some of these syndromes may be the consequence of having dogs with genius level brains. Would we be willing to give up having future Van Gogh, Mozart, Beethoven, John Nash if we could eliminate those conditions from the human population? Would we be willing to do the same in the Border Collie population? Not every dog will be affected, but it may be the case that the cost to having Border Collies be Border Collies is having a small number of Border Collies with some of these neurological syndromes. The argument against this in this case, is that this "syndrome" is showing up in a variety of dog breeds, some of which have been bred for traits other than mental acuity. Label this a "defect", develop a test for the "defect" and people will breed away from it. You are already seeing people talking about spaying and neutering affected dogs with no clue what causes this or what positive traits are associated with it.