I have so many mixed feelings on this subject. Half of me thinks that the border collie should remain a working dog. Full stop. The KC should never have been allowed to become involved and all working bred pups should be sold to working homes wherever possible. However, life is far from ideal most of the time. People want collies for sports activities, active pets, and to show. Not to work sheep. In fact, most of these other category would be happy for their dog to show no interest in sheep whatsoever. I do find that very sad for the future of the breed. Having said that, perhaps it would be a wise thing for the working collie and show collie to become two separate breeds. That would be if working dogs remained working dogs, and the show dogs could be bred to look like a collie but with an easier to live with temperament I really don't know! I am just trying to think of the welfare of the dogs at the end of the day. Let's face facts though, working people will never be interested in using a KC reg dog or buying a pup from show lines. Show line people are unlikely to want to use a working bred dog. So - how do you bring the two closer together?

I sometimes think people who get collies would love to have the chance of working them - like me...But if you are a pet home, where the hell do you start?

The ones you could be seeing in the Lakes are what is classed as a Lakeland cur. There are many farmers in the Lakes that don't have collies at all. They use these cur type dogs (which are basically noisy mongrel types (probably with a wee bit of collie in them)) who yap and scare the sheep out from the rocky fells but don't herd and work like a collie at all I was pretty surprised the first time or two I saw the local farmers bringing their flocks down off the fell. These curs will have been bred like that for generations on different family farms.

You are forgetting pets, many many people have collies not to work or compete but as pets. The farmer breeds a litter to keep a pup to work and sells the rest to pet homes.

We had one ourselves for 17 years but he did work after a fashion as he went to work with my OH in an outdoor education center before he got too old.

Farmers and shepherds have been breeding border collies for centuries. Their dogs still look like collies yet have the ability to work sheep ... the whole purpose of the border collie. Shepherds don't breed to any "standard" as such, and that is the difference. The trend in show collies at the moment is for very heavily coated, black/white almost clone types. The working ability or instinct doesn't come into the picture at all That is what is sad.

You only have to see the winners of last year's Breeders Award at Crufts to see it -the five (or was it six?) Tonkory BCs were like peas in a pod. I don't know if there's a video of that on the Cruft's site?

Ahh now I see where the "other" discussion has come from

No, I can categorically state that lots of collies I have seen with a wall eye, are not more predominantly white. Look at Tip here, as an example.

Another interesting point is that all the dogs in the back of this pick-up are related, all look quite distinctive and different, yet all are clearly border collies (this isn't directed at you Hali ... just the discussion in general )

Me too - Merlin's working sheepdog mother had one blue eye, and she had less white than most.

I think it is the other way around - the more white you get on the dog, the more you are likely to get blue eyes, but less white doesn't mean you can't at all (if that makes sense).

What? The working lines need to be injected with ... what? Other breeds? Not in my experience tbh.

Unfortunately the US show collies are another different story altogether ...