brookcove
Posted : 6/14/2008 8:06:58 AM
Ticking is incompletely dominant. Here's a Border Collie female with heavy ticking (similar to an ACD):
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And her pups, one ticked, two not:
One of the ticked puppies:
One of the clear:
Also, ticking only expresses in white. The white is controlled by a different set of alleles. Another pup from the above female was mostly black, with heavy ticking in his minimal white areas. Another was very classically marked, with clear white.
If she's mixed with chow, she could also very well be a Border Collie mix. No reason why not.
To answer the original question, I go very much by personalities. There is no "look" that we can go by with Border Collies (obviously) - so identifying a dog with Border Collie heritage almost entirely rests on behavior. It's almost a free for all with mixed breeds, since the purebred gene pool is so diverse anyway. In rescue the game becomes one of identifying purebreds.
I had a dog last year that had papers, even, but clearly was a mix that probably had no Border Collie at all - based on his approach to sheep and interactions with my livestock guardian dogs, he was a Pyrenees for sure, and possibly collie or English Shepherd with his very upright herding stance and task-oriented, individual attentive behavior.
Being able to put a dog on sheep gives me a leg up on many rescuers as only Kelpies in the whole wide world, come close to working like a BC. I've also had experience working many other breeds for comparision so I can not only say, "That's not a BC," but also in a positive sense, "He works like an Aussie" or a Catahoula, or an ACD, or a Rottweiller.
Edited to add: I do believe that there is some importance in understanding the makeup of your dog - but you really have to unravel their personality before you can get to the point of relating their behavior to a particular breed anyway. And you have to have a very thorough understanding of the breed to which you are making reference. In the case of the above dog, training was quite frustrating until I discovered the key - he required a "working" relationship through twice daily patrols of the property. Before we started doing that together, I couldn't even get him to come when called. He was a great one for doing the huge zoomie act. Even that now I know is a Pyrenees thing - their way of playing - they love to play "keep away." After a week or so of the walks, it was like throwing a switch on his personality and willingness to be trained.