Canis lupus hominis

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged swamp collie, working golden retrievers | 11 Comments

11 Responses

1. on March 22, 2009 at 7:32 pm flattie-n-Labbie

   “The purpose of this site is to keep family and friends updated on how our little family of Swamp Collies, past and present, is doing.”

   I like that. That’s a nice way of having a functional web site without advertising dogs or bragging overly much or having to make regular blog entries. Nice angle on it.

   
   
   • on March 22, 2009 at 7:44 pm retrieverman

     I love that name “swamp collie.”

     That’s what I sometimes call a working-type golden.

     
     
2. on March 22, 2009 at 10:16 pm Xan

   Funny, I have a working bred border collie who is pretty birdy, swims and hunts with the retrievers, and retrieves ducks. I call her my identity-crisis BC (though she’s not lacking in BC instincts, either).

   
   
   • on March 23, 2009 at 12:56 am retrieverman

     Well, in the old days, when retrievers were in their development, collie-type dogs were often used in breeding programs.

     I’ve always believed that the collie-type dog and the ancient water dogs have some common ancestry. http://retrieverman.wordpress.com/2009/02/20/the-black-and-tan-color-in-the-way-coated-retriever-landrace/

     Maybe BC’s would be a good outcross or an English shepherd. But you’ve got to watch out for collie-eye and PRA even more in these type of dogs. It is well-known that collies were an important ancestor of the NSDTR. And NSDTR’s get collie-eye.

     
     
3. on March 23, 2009 at 3:04 am Xan

   Do you have a post on the history of English Shepherds? I always hear their heritage debated and have never gotten a straight answer on them.

   Watching tollers, I definitely see a herding dog influence. I dig ’em a lot.

   
   
   • on March 23, 2009 at 3:25 am retrieverman

     I actually don’t.

     However, multi-purpose collie types (and maybe some landrace German herding dogs) were actually quite common in America from the beginning.

     The old type collies that Queen Victoria had, though, were of this type. They were a bit in between BC’s and English shepherds. http://www.englishshepherd.org/breedinfo.htm Loose-eyed herders were more practical for small crofters, while the clapping BC became more popular as the Enclosure and Clearances drove the small farmers into cities. It wasn’t long before the crofters had vast territory to use for grazing, and they needed the clapping dogs. In America, the land of the small yeoman farmer, the loose-eyed dogs were preferred.

     http://www.gis.net/~shepdog/BC_Museum/Changing/QueenVictoria.html

     There is another loose-eyed working collie breed called a http://www.welsh-sheepdogs.co.uk/

     An ES is basically the original collie dog that has evolved on the American frontier.

     I think these dogs were an ancestral breed for the St. John’s water dog, but they were also crossed into wavy-coated retrievers. So retrievers have this dog coming at them from two different directions.

     Australian shepherds, which are American, have an ancestry with these dogs, but also a dog that is also the ancestor of the German shepherd dog and the Koolie (“German collie”): http://retrieverman.wordpress.com/2009/02/23/a-connection-between-australian-shepherds-german-shepherds-and-the-koolie/

     These German herding landrace dogs may have played a role in the development of several of our native herding breeds, simply because German settlers were among some of the earliest settlers beyond the Appalachians.

     
     
4. on March 23, 2009 at 3:56 am Jean

   Well, my ES loves water and will lie down in streams during thirty degree weather. He comes out with his fur frozen. It’s nice to know he may just have gotten an interesting combination of genes. I’ve been jokingly telling people that he thinks he’s a Labrador.

   
   
5. on March 23, 2009 at 6:27 pm Audie's Gramma

   The ES breed does not have the eye disease of some of the other collie breeds.

   At least, I’ve never heard a report of a dog having a problem, and those few of us who CERF have never had a dog come up with a defect.

   Xan, what would constitute a “straight answer” for you?

   You could ask, you know, someone who owns English shepherds and has studied their history.

   Just sayi’.

   
   
   • on March 23, 2009 at 6:30 pm retrieverman

     That would explain why those some of those eye disorders don’t appear in retrievers, except the NSDTR.

     
     
6. on March 25, 2009 at 5:39 pm Shirley

   I was pondering collie-eye anomaly as I plotted the outcrossing scheme yesterday. (Really, all we need is a rich canine geneticist with a lot of land who hunts!) The more I learn about them, the more the English Shepherd seems like a fantastic dog. Of course, then you would have to deal with permission to breed and all those important things. But remember, I did vote for Moe….

   
   
7. on March 29, 2009 at 6:50 am Shirley

   It appears that these dogs are in northeast Florida. I have seen quite a few red field-type Goldens in Florida, both on the West Coast & in central Florida. I believe you mentioned that field-type Goldens are also found commonly in the Midwest.

   I expect this type of Golden will become rarer in Florida as the state continues to become more metropolitan.

   
   

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