NRhodes

Then why not just call them a substandard breeder?

Oh I agree with what you're saying about Diane. Was just picking someone because out of the references in the last two pages of this topic that breeders shouldn't make money or that breeders who do are just greedy selfish sorts, Diane was actually a breeder. I've been seeing it everywhere, said by breeders of all sorts of dogs, where when they're explaining how or why they are a good breeder they throw that part about "I don't make money!" in there. There are lots of people, like the group I started this thread because of, who will insist breeders make oodles of money selling dogs. So if "good breeders" don't make money then anyone who does make money raising dogs is a "bad breeder" automatically? I'm not just talking about breeders of herding dogs but of all dogs. Is this actually a fact or a notion that's been introduced to our society by the growing influence of the animal rights movement? Personally, I think this is something like the term "puppy mill," which was created by animal rights to describe "bad breeders" and eventually all breeders. Have an article: http://thecavalrygroup.blogspot.com/2012/08/that-which-we-call-puppy-mill-by-any.html The Calvary Group is a pretty neat thing by the way, some people here might be interested in reading up on them. http://thecavalrygroup.com/

The whole line of thought Julie is talking about here, and people like mum24dog has expressed as their opinion, is rather confounding to me. Basically what I'm reading is dogs shouldn't be bred because even good breeders will have dogs that aren't up to snuff but breeders shouldn't put those dogs down but rescues don't want to mop up the excess? Maybe I'm not wording that well but hope you get what I'm saying. And apparently one of the main criteria for being a good breeder is that you make no money and go in the hole doing it? Even Diane seems to qualify herself with the no money thing.

That's what I thought also.

There are actually several of these 'hate breeders' groups on Facebook. The one that I posted on is just the one with the most members, having over one thousand.

That was actually the question of my first post on their group, where would working dogs come from if there were no breeders and I listed various types of working dogs. Their response was a chorus of "rescue." So I asked again if there are no breeders, you advocate all dogs should be spayed and neutered, where do we get working dogs from, where do we get any dogs from? They told me I didn't understand them and that I should go visit a shelter and see all the dogs die. So I asked about the "no-kill" shelter movement and snagged a few links from sites talking about shelters that have successfully switched to no-kill and various programs for reducing the numbers of dogs euthanized. They told me the no-kill shelter design allowed for 10% of dogs to be euthanized and was no good because dogs still died and the only way to stop it was get rid of breeders. So that's when I brought up numbers to show that things have been improving by quite a lot and aren't so doom and gloom as they say and that obviously things are working to curb the numbers of dogs being euthanized. I already told you how that went over hahaha. From the responses I got they really didn't seem to care about finding a solution to there being stray and unwanted dogs, their plan seemed to be that there should be no dogs at all.

Yeah, I'm just wondering how widespread and accepted this hate thing is.

So I encountered something on the internet this evening that quite set me aback. Wanted to ask some questions about it and I know the BC boards has a healthy population of both rescuers and breeders and owners. What I was linked to was a hate group on Facebook created by rescuers to proclaim the utter evils of dog breeders. Among other things their posts say over and over that breeders are animal abusers, that all dogs should be spayed or neutered, and that shelters are overflowing with dogs being euthanized in endless numbers. When I asked questions, no they did not want to discuss ideas on educating owners, owners were not the problem, only breeders were the problem. I used the numbers that HSUS uses on their website to claim that we have a pet over population problem (so I'd guess possibly exaggerated?) to show them that actually despite the rise in the number of dogs and cats in the US the numbers of animals euthanized in shelters has actually dropped steadily to an all time low. Quoting myself: They told me I was a liar and that my numbers were all wrong' date=' they were too low. I asked them what the actual numbers were. They told me they didn't have to prove themselves and banned me from posting on the page. I can still read it however. The group moderator repeatedly posted a picture stating the numbers of dogs killed in shelters yearly, guess what, they were the same exact numbers I had used to figure the percentages above....... Some quotes from the page: These here were in response to someone saying that their father went and bought a dog from a responsible breeder: Then there are countless posts on there of dogs in shelters and all the people cooing over them and about how much they love these dogs. But then they go on to say all dogs should be spayed and neutered. Do they not realize that if all dogs are spayed and neutered there will be no more dogs at all? Is this a common thing or is this some kind of crazy cult I ran into? I don't really have any experience of rescue groups outside of the people's whose posts I've read here on the BC Boards.

Thought this was a great response from Amanda, just wanted to bump it haha. Never let a young pup fail, helping him will also help his trust in you, eventually that pup will have to face challenges, but not until after you've given him some tools and experience for him to use to succeed.

Thanks Julie, I'll email them after work. The one dog is maybe an aussie cross, The dog looks like a border collie but he has a half tail. So either someone did a terrible job of docking it, it got hurt, or the dog has the natural bob tail gene in there somewhere lol. The dog was found wandering on the ranch last year, none of the neighbors would claim him so it's assumed he was dumped off by someone. He seems pretty young. Second dog is probably about five years old, he's been at the ranch two years, a lady at the vet clinic in town owned him. She thought he nipped her daughter (the way the story was relayed to me it didn't sound like the lady was really sure he nipped the kid or not and the rancher seems to think the lady just wanted rid of the dog) so asked the rancher if he'd take him until she had a better way to keep him kenneled at her house. lol and like I said, that's been two years ago. Third dog is a little female, might be around two years old, that came here last year after the owner passed away and the family didn't want to keep the dog.

What people or groups would be good contacts for rescuers in central OK? I have a friend who's had a couple dogs pawned off on him because people knew he had herding dogs (he has some dogs he uses to work his cattle and sheep with). One dog was just dumped off here. And while he doesn't mind feeding them, it's kind of a shame for these guys to just spend the rest of their lives sitting in kennels. There are three dogs, all three very sweet and friendly.

Yes the registry is closed. I would suppose the main reason being the man who started the HTC is up into his 80s and no longer raising and training dogs, his son who helped him with the project has passed away, and he is not able to control what would be used as foundation dogs. So with the idea of protecting his vision of what he thought the dogs should be he is preventing everyone and his brother from crossing up some dogs and calling them HTC. Probably a good idea. Tho I still run across breeder ads on various sites or craigslist of people advertising crossbred dogs and calling them HTC because they have some of the base breeds in there used to start the HTC... altho they have no actual HTC blood in them. So unless a dog or pup comes with a set of papers from the HTC Association you can't always go by what people tell you.

No you can't, you can only get appendix papers on pups out of parents who are both registered with the Hangin' Tree Cowdog Association. On one hand when you look at the majority of dog's close up pedigrees a lot of them appear very close, when you go back farther (three generations or more of pedigrees of dogs still living. I can't think offhand of any dog still living with a foundation ancestor closer) you find dogs of different breeds (and different lines within those breeds) which makes the genetics much more diverse than they originally appear. So it's really hard to say whether we will eventually get "too inbred" or whether we can continue to call it line breeding (if you've heard that saying) LOL.

There is no discrimination against solid color dogs vs. merled dogs. But the gene pool is extremely small compared to that of the border collie. Pretty much every good dog I can breed to is related in some way to each other or to the bitches I own. So when you take into consideration I can drive 3.5 hours to breed to an extremely nice (merle) dog, or 9 hours to breed to a pretty nice black dog (did this once, pups produced were very inconsistent workers), or 12 hours to an extremely nice (old) black and white dog that hasn't managed to sire a litter in years (tried this once while I was out there for a trial anyway, dog didn't get the bitch bred), or 18 hours to a really nice b&w son of the aforementioned dog (I am going to do this breeding next year...I'm moving 12 hours closer in a few months). And I can keep naming dogs at these distances and farther away. I suppose you could say I should invest in having semen shipped but I haven't had much luck on that so far. Spent a lot of money on that all down the drain. A merle to merle cross will still produce solid colored pups as well so you're not necessarily breeding yourself into a bottle neck of only having merles. I almost always choose a solid colored pup to keep as my own (and I always keep one more pups from every litter) simply because of the color deal and not having to mess with merle in as much as it limits breeding possibilities down the line (I wouldn't ever want to keep a MM dog or bitch as a breeding prospect unless they were extremely nice) but I'll not cross it off as a possibility. Like I described in a previous post it's possible to take a MM dog, breed to solid color, you get all Mm puppies out of that (100%), you take that and breed to mm or Mm and you'll wind up with solid color pups again. I'm planning on getting a pup, and would already have it if the breeding had took, out of Katy which is a female I raised and is owned by a friend. Katy is MM, the planned sire is mm, so all pups will be merle but Mm. The last litter I raised out of Queen (the red mm sister to Katy) I wound up with a merle pup that I kept because all she had was two and both merle. So sometimes your choices are limited.

I'll gamble on it for a cross that produces good working dogs.

If I read it that way then likely others did too.

I don't see "only" anywhere in there. I have seen cryptic merles. I've also seen a blk/tan dog with a patch of merle on her head. I wouldn't call her a cryptic merle. The merle pattern was clearly visible, if only on one relatively small area. I was using red as an example I've seen myself. You don't mention black dogs anywhere in that quoted post which implies it's only possible in red dogs. You do not mention that it was a dog you had personally seen or otherwise clarify it until this latest post... implying it's only possible in red dogs. Anyway ;D In this photo (taken from the article I linked about Catahoulas) this black and tan looking pup was DNA tested and is a merle despite having no visible blue coloration:

I agree with this completely and I don't see that merle to merle crosses are ever going to be popular (or be a problem) among the working border collie population. There are not that many merle dogs in the working population to begin with. How many merle dogs do you see at trials being sucessful? I can only think of two. Or well, one for sure, maaaybe two. I don't think you really even see that many red dogs at trials. Or at least trials that I've been to. Maybe if the Alistair McRaes of the world start running merle dogs you might see others running out an buying them but how likely is that to happen?

(warning, novel ahead!) Well the thread seems to have gone from color to testicles but I thought I'd toss in some information about the former. I've studied this quite a bit since my breed of choice (hangin' tree cowdog) has a lot of merles in it but the dogs are bred for working ability and there is no conformation judging of any sort on the dogs. (there is a working requirement for permanent registration which is needed to be able to produce pups eligible for registration themselves) but anyway. I see a lot of confusion here about the merle coloration/dilution and I think people should be a little more educated about the genetics behind the 'color' before you throw the baby out with the bathwater. I've read in here that merle x merle produces all merles, or that merle is a dilution of tri color, or that only red dogs may be cryptic among other things, none of which are true. ______________________________ The merle gene causes a dilution of a dog's base color and is not really a color itself. Base color being red (red merle) or black (blue merle). Red and black can also be diluted by other genes that affect color (i.e. the genes that cause lilac or slate I think it's called?). Merle is a dominate gene, in other words if a dog carries the merle gene they will ALWAYS be merle colored with one tiny tiny exception. The exception being in what is termed a 'cryptic merle' or a dog in which the merle coloring isn't so obvious, (but it will still be there somewhere) the dilution might be just a very tiny patch on what appears to be an otherwise solid colored dog. Click this link to see examples of cryptic merles. Tri-color is a gene totally unrelated to the merle gene. Tri-color causes the tan markings you might see on a dog's muzzle, eyebrows, legs, and often base of the tail on dogs who carry that gene. Black dogs can carry the gene and so can red dogs. Dogs with the merle dilution can also be tri-colored. A dog that is merle and who has one solid colored parent would be classified as M(dilute)m(solid) so that merle dog can produce either merle puppies or solid puppies because they carry both genes. If you cross a Mm dog to a Mm female (both dogs are merle but both carry the solid gene also) you can get some solid (these don't carry the merle gene at all) puppies, some merle (Mm) puppies, and some double merle (MM) puppies. (I say "can" in the previous sentence because there's no guarantee of any percentage of pup colors in a given litter, they might all be solids, or maybe solids and MM, or all merles, or whatever combination). Because a MM puppy inherited the dilution from both parents the pup will generally wind up with a lot of white on it (sometimes being all white), sometimes these excessively white pups have hearing or vision defects but not always. What causes deafness is these pups is that the hair cells in the inner ear don't have any pigment and when they don't have pigment the nerve cells die for some reason resulting in deafness. This is why you see deafness in dogs who are not merles but who have a lot of white or who are white headed, it's not the merle gene itself that means deafness but the lack of pigmentation which can be caused by a variety of genes that cause white and not just the merle gene. You can't tell whether a pup with white on the outside of it's ears will have pigment in the inner ear just by looking at them, the pups ears on the outside may be white but they may still have pigment inside and be able to hear just fine. I don't have a very good understanding of what exactly it is that causes the eye defects in some MM puppies, just taking a guess I'd say that it's the same nerve damage that happens in the ear also causes the pupils not to form correctly or the eyes not to grow to normal size as some of these pups are born with abnormally small eyes. But! Based on my experience I'm not sure that the eye issues necessarily correlate with lack of pigment, more on this later. When you breed an MM dog to a mm(solid color) you will get all merles but all of them will be Mm. In other words, they will all carry and be able to produce solid colors when bred to a mm or Mm. In summary: MM does not mean a puppy will always have eye or ear problems, it's just a higher chance of them because of the higher chance a pup will have more white on them. You take these same chances of deafness breeding white factored dogs together. ______________________________ That's it for merle facts, the rest of this post is just me rambling about my experiences with merle crosses and opinions whatever. I really don't have a problem with people who choose to make a merle to merle cross with working ability in mind. There are a number of working breeds of dogs who have a high percentage of merle dogs within their populations: Catahoulas, Leopard Curs, Aussies(well, some still work), Hangin' Tree Cowdogs to name a few. I do have a problem with people who make that cross but don't take responsibility for pups born with hearing/eye problems and instead pawn them off on people for money or dump them to rescue, those pups should be put down not foisted on someone else. I've raised two merle to merle cross litters. Sire was merle with traditional border collie markings, white blaze down the face, big ring around the neck, white feet. The dam was merle with minimal white, just toes and chest. The first litter was two solid pups (One of which is my Queen) and five merle pups some of which were MM. Only one of those pups had any problems and that was obvious at 4.5-5 weeks old when I put the pup down. The rest are over five years old now and no hearing or vision problems and most turned out to be great working dogs. This is Katy, MM female, from that first litter and the only one of those I have a current photo for besides the one I own. The second litter (same sire and dam as first) was about half and half for number of merle and solid pups. Had one blind merle pup in that litter which I didn't realize till they were six or so weeks old and I'm not sure he was completely blind but he definitely had impaired vision. He seemed to hear fine, and could keep up good with the other pups when I took them for walks which is why I didn't realize he couldn't see well at first, just thought he was rather clumsy. He was put down also. Rest of the litter had normal hearing/vision. I had a friend who made a merle/merle cross, both parents were merle but had only a bit of white on chest and toes, all pups were normal looking merles with no white other than chest and toes also. Most were fairly dark colored merles also. None of these pups appeared to have hearing issues before they were sold and I only know the owner of one of them at that dog is fine at four year old, don't know who owns the rest. One pup I remember seemed to have smallish eyes and not much brow (his head somewhat resembled more of a lassie collie type head rather than normal but it didn't stand out as terribly abnormal looking). I don't know whether that pup's vision was affected or not, it didn't seem like it was when I messed with him. Hence why I said earlier that I'm not sure the eye issues are entirely related to lack of pigment or are only partially related. Maybe Mark would know more about this if he managed to read this far. In the deafness/blindness issues with merle I kinda think some of the issues are also tied with white factor genes as well. In other words, I don't think it's so much the merle to merle that causes deafness but the way white marking genes (irish and piebald spotting like what most border collies, aussies, lassie collies, shelties have) interplay with the merle dilution causing white. Lots of catahoula people make merle to merle crosses but these dogs mostly have no white or very little (toes and or chest) but you don't see so much of the merle pups from those litters having excessive amounts of white even in pups who are genetically tested to be MM and very little hearing/vision issues in these dogs. Here's a very interesting article about merle in Catahoulas and how it's thought to affect deafness. The person in that article says the thought is there are modifiers of the merle gene in catahoulas that cause less deafness but I think what it actually is is there's not so much of the true irish spotting/piebald found in the breed to have the effect with white caused from merle. Anyway, carry on then.

Well I watched the video. Apparently the link was changed because he re uploaded the video with a clip added to the end showing the now dog broke cattle being brought into the pen by the dog that the man who owned the cattle bought. Now, I guess I'm going to be the odd person out and say that I don't see where this video is being so terrible as some are making it out to be. Mr. Knight specifically says he picked out clips more showing the cattle fighting the dogs, but no where in any of the clips do I see the dogs biting the cattle when the cattle are not attacking the dogs. When the cattle turn Mr. Knight lays the dogs down and lets the cattle drift away (he even explains this in the video), the same thing that Sue is praising Mr. Dalton for doing in the second clip that Jodi posted. According to Mr. Knight in the video he sold a young dog to the man who owned those cattle, he drove to that man's farm to deliver the dog and to dog break the cows and calves, he had two days in which to get it done. Those cows had all ages of calves on them, from new born to near weaning, to some dry cows. He even says that a pen like that is not the most ideal place but it was the best option that he had as the pastures were extremely hilly and full of trees and brush. They split the cows from the calves and sorted them into smaller groups that would be able to move around that pen and be able to have enough distance to get away from the dogs. I don't know about you, but I've experienced moving non dog broke cows and calves out of brush and it is no fun whatsoever and much much harder to convince the cattle to move out of. After seeing the end clip that shows the gentleman's pastures I will agree that the pen was probably better. No where did I see the cattle ever being run, the cows are not breathing hard, they're not all frothed up. The dogs are biting when the cattle try to fight them, when the cattle are moving the dogs are laying on the ground. This second clip is from Len Dalton in LA and does NOT show him dog breaking cattle. The cattle in that clip are his dog broke training calves, the clip is one that he made for the rancher who bought that dog (a really nice young dog I might add, I got to see him in person as a puppy just getting started). He is explaining to the rancher, a person who has never used dogs and has no clue how to handle a dog, the easiest way to get started with his new dog that will allow him to stay in control and move his undogged cattle around- hence the rope. Here is a video clip of Mr. Dalton dog breaking some momma cows and calves. http://youtu.be/uDM_ngKW6dw This video clip is a short snippet of a DVD that he sells. I own the DVD, in it he shows those cows and calves being brought into pens and then separated into smaller groups and dog broke. It looks extremely similar to Mr. Knight's video Yes Mr. Dalton uses electric collars. He's a man in his 80s who can't move around very quickly, I have never seen him move out of a slow walk. He starts all his dogs on ropes in that small pen he shows in the video posted, he makes every dog move at his pace (very slow). Lots of downs, take three steps, down, take three steps, etc. He introduces the electric collar after the dog is well started on cattle and knows it's basic commands, he just uses it to reinforce things at a distance. It's an extremely methodical/mechanical training method and is definitely not for everyone. If you browse through his videos he shows you everything from started dogs, to training the outrun, driving, etc. If you look back you can find Nick's (the dog in the clip posted) early videos also, from start to finish. About the young dogs tied to the pen- Mr. Dalton specifically does that to get those pups hyped up. Now for a normal border collie this generally isn't a good thing, but his dogs aren't normal border collies. They have 1/4 to 1/8th bulldog in them and are generally very laid back creatures. He explains in various videos and on his website daltonscowdogs.com why he likes and breeds crossbreds. The dogs are really quite nice as a whole. Sorry for the novel.

Well, I didn't get to see the first video so I can't comment on it. The Mac MacGregor vid is nice and is pretty typical. Yes most people use multiple dogs to break cattle, especially older cattle and or/cows and calves. Multiple dogs can handle and stop charging cattle much easier than a single dog. If you watch some vids of dogs working cows and calves a lot of times it's not the cow a dog is faced up with that is gonna get him, he's watching here, it's her buddy that's gonna come out beside her and blindside the dog that'll get a dog hurt.

Polly Matzinger has some bearded border collies. I got to see one work at Edgeworth, he was a very nice dog.

Thanks y'all, I'm pretty happy with my little dog. I'd like to run her in the Cattle Finals. I think I got points from my placing at Edgeworth. I've been working on cleaning up her flanks and teaching her to drive. She had no idea how to drive/cross drive at Edgeworth with me standing way back at the post. It's not something I'd ever asked her to do before XD Anna, that is the absolute truth! A lot of people mistake bite for power despite the dog is biting all the wrong way and/or for the wrong reason. This has come up in conversation twice the last two days. I'm working on putting together an article for the magazine about it, what should a correct flank (and correct attitude!) as the dog moves around stock look like, power as it relates to the way a dog moves around stock, symptoms of lack of power, the training you can do to decide which you've got. Some dogs are so natural they just move around stock the right way, others are great dogs but need to be shown a little where they need to be to feel comfortable and gain confidence. I'm hoping I can have photos in the article to try and illustrate what I'm talking about and videos for people to go watch online.

Thanks y'all <3 Here's another one of Queen:

Thanks you two! PMs are sent.