difference between Old Farm Collie and AKC Collie?

 stupid? why would they say that about collies?

I know why my sister said the same thing about her collie (papered pure bred she spent some money on) the dog wasnt even five months old and she was saying her dog wasnt very smart. we both got our collies around the same time, she got hers first so she was a month or two older than mine) i was visiting my sisters and stepmom for the weekend and brought my collie puppy we were letting them both play in the backyard together.. but her dog was doing typical attention getting stuff... picking up objects, running away just out of reach, play bowing, just being a goofy puppy when my sister made her comment. then she turned around and said the same thing about MY puppy - she was trying to follow us back inside but wouldnt use the steps to the porch.. my house didnt have a porch with steps.. no experience for her! she was only 9 weeks old! - so then she called MY dog dumb! Maggie may not have been the brightest dog in the world(she was no Lassie), but she learned everything i taught her.. which i think is the bottom line..... a dumb dog is the result of a dumb owner.

I dont understand the eye thing..... i have heard of Collie Eye but not sure what it is supposed to do. it seems sad that this breed might be going down the toilet! 

DumDog

 stupid? why would they say that about collies?

I dont understand the eye thing..... i have heard of Collie Eye but not sure what it is supposed to do. it seems sad that this breed might be going down the toilet! 

 These are show collie breeders who say that, sadly enough.

 Collie eye doesn't have anything to do with the eye size and it seems like it is fairly well controlled in the breed by breeders who screen for it.

 not very good advocates for their own breed! i guess then its obvious why they are doing it....

i mean i had only heard of collie eye as the only eye problem with collies. i didnt know they were being born with undersized eyes. that seems rather extreme! 

e No, PRA and CEA are NOT the same thing.

 And CEA is actually NOT linked to eye size- you can have affected dogs with larger, rounder eyes, and non-affected dogs with smaller eyes. However, the breeders who put type first tend to select for head type and fashion first, and CEA status only comes later. Collies should have medium sized, distinctly almond eyes- not big rounder eyes, which are more dominant, genetically. Because of that, the folks who bred for eye status above type tend to have eyes that are not as pretty- and vice versa.

 I don't see a TON of really spooky collies- but the vast majority ARE sound sensitive. Valient (remember the Montana collies a efw years ago) was known for being incredibly sound sensitive, and those are the lines that nearly all modern CEA-clear stuff are based on (down through Van-M, and a great many of them are linebred on Dark Sultan, who was a known spook.) And this tendency seems to be VERY prounounced in the lines coming down from that. 

This is more evidence to suggest the multi-gene traits idea.(I have trouble remembering the spelling for "polynomic";).  When you work to get some aspect of a dog closer to "your" idea of the standard or to address medical issue, there is a high likelihood that unintended changes will occur as well.  Loosing fronts is changing belgians.... where will it all end.

mrv

 When you work to get some aspect of a dog closer to "your" idea of the standard or to address medical issue, there is a high likelihood that unintended changes will occur as well. 

 This is very true. Certain temperament traits are tied with how the dog looks. Some herding breeds are bred to have puppy-ish looks for the show ring now - heavy coats, heavy bone, lots of white and domed heads. I suspect that this will affect the dog's working ability and general temperament, since such traits are very often tied with juvenile behavior characteristics.

 At our UKC National several years ago I ended up sitting with some friends at the judges table. One thing I found interesting was that they mentioned when they do herding instinct testing on the Belgians in one of the judge's countries, they can guess pretty well that dogs with a certain head type won't pass due to being too aggressive with the sheep.

 And of course, there is the domestic fox. While they were selected only for temperament (docile, more easy to handle, friendly), they ended up with Foxes with floppy ears, white markings and fluffy coats.

 yeah i still havent figured out that fox thing lol

DumDog

 yeah i still havent figured out that fox thing lol

 As far as the appearance change? It happened because the genes for a docile, friendly "puppy-like" fox are tied in with the genes which control coloration, ear and head type. Many genes are inherited in clusters, even for seemingly unrelated things. The reason many breeds bred for the same sort of work have similar looks to them (ie: lots of herding dogs are "pointy" and have a tendency toward *** or semi-*** ears) is not because the people who selected them for work cared about their looks but because those happened to be the physical traits tied to the behavioral ones they were selecting for. Which really makes the whole idea of using the conformation ring to select for breeding stock kinda silly and a bit backwards. I recently had a judge tell me about a breed that can be docked or natural, that they don't care for docked dogs in general but when they got their puppy they opted for docked because the natural ones often have a very high tail set. The judge felt that it was because for thousands of years they were traditionally docked so no one selected for "correct" tail set. The truth is, that the breed is a rugged little working dog and the working breeders over thousands of years wouldn't have been selecting for tailset anyway, as it wouldn't effect their working ability - they were likely traditionally docked/cropped to prevent frostbite.

 thats interesting, i guess i never thought about the cluster of genes. it makes sense in a weird sort of way. but foxes of all things. didnt this discovery come about when they were breeding foxes in captivity for the fur trade?

i mean has this same thing happened in the domesticated wolf trade(i use that loosely.. but people who breed wolves, not hybrids, whether its wolf research or the odd person who thinks wolves make great pets.. i've met a few of those..) or is that a whole other situation?

DumDog

 thats interesting, i guess i never thought about the cluster of genes. it makes sense in a weird sort of way. but foxes of all things. didnt this discovery come about when they were breeding foxes in captivity for the fur trade?

 They actually puposely selecting for foxes with more docile, easy to handle temperaments which led to domestication. This is a great site about the domestic fox: http://cbsu.tc.cornell.edu/ccgr/behaviour/Index.htm

DumDog

i mean has this same thing happened in the domesticated wolf trade(i use that loosely.. but people who breed wolves, not hybrids, whether its wolf research or the odd person who thinks wolves make great pets.. i've met a few of those..) or is that a whole other situation?

 Being kept or bred in capitivity does not equate to selecting for a docile, easy to handle, "friendly" animal. Unfortunately most people breeding wild animals for the pet trade are doing so soley as a business. These individuals likely don't put a lot of thought or effort into selecting for certain traits over others and often don't have a large number of animals to work with even if they wanted to select for certain behavioral traits. Places such as Wolf Park are not selecting towards a domestic animal either, as that would prevent research efforts on wolf behavior. Unless a research team develops an interest in breeding and maintaining a line of a tame wolves, as was the case with the foxes I doubt we will see the same thing with them or any other wild animal in the pet trade.

 the only thing that comes close to what i was thinking was a breed like the Saarloos. BUT i'm unfamiliar with that breed as far as personality and purpose goes. and i think its outcrossed with GSD. its got unique markings but nothing at all like the domestic fox as far as colours are concerned.

thanks for the link btw :)