Visiting a Relic

Hey me- !



How's workin' out for ya? I see you're pretty fond of this particular post. Might as well just go back to using Bellsouth since you obviously don't understand how to use an anonymous proxy. You're not very anonymous.






............

As many of you know, I am pretty burned out on the whole color thing and am really wanting to just have black and white dogs and blend into the background. That way, I don't have to deal with the "color freaks" wanting to breed to my dog(s) or asking me to let them know when I have a litter, and hearing all the stories about how they want to breed their red dog to a blue merle that carries red so they can have a crayola litter -- never caring or ever even mentioning working livestock or anything else.

Then I take a look at what's out there in the way of color. Nothing. Many many puppymills pumping out 16 different "rare" colors, and if they "work" stock, it's 3 sheep in a round pen, or a circus run at getting them around an AKC course. On a rare occasion, you can run into a nicely bred red dog, but merles are damn near impossible.

And I am back to the thought, "Well, no wonder working people don't take colored dogs seriously."



Then it comes back to, "What role, if any, do I want to play in this?" I happen to like the look of the colored dogs, but hate the stigma that goes along with it. Yes, I understand why the colored dogs have the reputation they do ... I get it. But can I help to change it? Do I want to? Why am I even thinking about this now? Well because Skar should be coming into season pretty soon, and she will be bred to Rock, and a couple of those pups will be coming back here.

For those of you that don't remember Skar, here she is:

And here's Rock:







And since we've been planning this breeding, all I've kept saying is, "Lots of black puppies to choose from, please." (Zip threw lots of merles and lots of color in both litters.) Someone recently said to me, "Why only black pups? Isn't that choosing color?" I really had nothing to say. Yes, it is choosing a pup on color. Or excluding on color. I chose the litter. Is the color going to matter? It shouldn't. But ... having had Skar's father for the last 7 years, and trialing him, and going to clinics and such, I've gotten the comments, I've seen the pointing and the giggling, and I've seen people nod and shrug their shoulders when we sucked as bad as the day is long, and saw people eat their words when we lit the course on fire. Now owning Echo and trialing her, I see the difference in response from people ... how we just blend into the background ... and there's no weirdness. There's no, "Are you sure that's a Border Collie?" No one says, "Do you think Helsley mixed Aussies in there a few generations ago?"



And why am I even thinking about this stuff now? I guess because I am going to pick a couple of pups out of the litter when it happens. I can pick a couple of solid colored pups and stop the merles in my kennel immediately. Just like that. Or I can take a couple of merles and try to maintain and/or improve a very nice line of merles as much as I possibly can. People want nice working merles. I have a nice line, and it's one of the very few merle lines that doesn't go back to any of the major millers whose kennels were investigated for falsifying paperwork or any other unethical thing. I've researched this line back to the eary 1900's, spoken to many owners and breeders in these lines, and can verify where these dogs all come from. But choose a couple of merle pups, and we're back to being accused of choosing for color. I guess I need to decide how much I care what other people think, figure out who am I doing it for or why, and whether or not it's worth it. I guess I've got a while to chew on it.



Happy tails,

Jodi