Australain Shepherd colors;bi-colored merles?

[Kansaseq]

Pardy,
Pictures are fun, post away!

And cute sheltie/collie ChickenfanaticAB, thanks for fostering him! Maybe I should change the title to something like, "fun colored dogs" or something? This is fun

 

[Riocotesei]

Could he have Catahoula Leopard Dog in him? He's very cute

 

[Kansaseq]

Rio, I don't think so. He doesn't have the right build for it.

 

[pardygwyn]

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All right then! I went ahead and compiled a short slideshow on Flickr to put everyone together and not bog down breeders' site bandwidth by direct-linking. I included kennel names on the dogs whose breeders are still active, but in several cases, their owners have long since dropped off the internet and I have not added their information to the photos. If, by any chance someone should see their dog in here and want the photo removed or their name tied to him or her, please drop me a line. Have fun!

 

[Kansaseq]

Wow, such cool,unusual colors! Thanks for making that slideshow for us

 

[EweSheep]

WOW! Such neat colors!

As for the Harlequin colors, I am guessing that the white collie factor has alot to do with it, even with a blue merle white collie can produce that color with another tricolor with blue merle genes.

We did have one puppy that was sable blue merle, lovely as she was but the judges said NO and the new owners did not show her at all. She was one special, and best daughter out of Witch. (Forum's Witch Hazel, blue merle..daddy was Plutonium Platunium (sp wrong). We did have a tri that was bleached in the sun but in the winter he was goreous, his father was a sable and mother was Witch....it is a cross you didnt want to make but the breeder took a gamble, it wasn't so bad but the colors would not be as "rich" as the appropriate crosses would have been.

If I remember right of the bi color collie, I think Trifoil or Trefoil was a bi colored Collie....he could have been a crossed Border Collie. Then Trefoil crossed with some B*****s that was less than desirable, made some wonderful dogs later down the line. Charlemagne was something else, he was beautiful! I love reading the stories of Bellhaven and Parader as it was mentioned somewhere in the yearbooks and CCA's magazines...sorry I sold them all on Ebay to a lady out in CA. I have a few books I kept about the white collies since I LOVE white collies with sable heads. Glynne Heinbuch had Forum's White Ghost ( I think that was his name), he was a champion and he was beautiful in the pictures. Alas, she did not keep any of his offsprings because white collies back then were kind of on the sidelines.

Bless her heart, Glynne really taught all of us the value of her collies and what they SHOULD be, not by whim and fads of today's breeders. The heads on the collies nowadays seems to be weaker and smaller, too refined and alot of skin problems popping up. UGH! What have we done to them! Twenty to thirty years went by, looking at our collies we had and today, such a big difference!

 

[pardygwyn]

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*Edit* Never mind! I thought you might have something there, but then Storms owner sent me this photo of a non-white factored harlequin puppy. This isn't her splotchiest side, but she's definitely harlequin. It must be a modifier for the merle gene, not the white factor gene! I do still wonder about the collies who aren't merle and have small, jagged white patches inside their colored patches, though. Maybe they also have the harlequin gene and would produce flashy merles like Storm when bred to a normal merle. Only way to find out would be to breed some, and coat color geekery aside, I'm not into breeding for only color. ;D

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I think blue to sable breedings are becoming more common in the States these days, but I understand what you're saying. There's a lot of work put into eliminating "summer reds" in tris and blues.

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Breeds were a much more fluid concept >100 years ago, since people were still working with the root population from which the different collie breeds sprang. Many of the early collies were black and white. That's also one theory as to where the name came from - "coalies" because they were black. I'm not even sure if border collies were more than a vague concept during Trefoil's time, any more than show collies were more than a pipe dream of the Queen's admirers. There was just a pool of dogs called "collies" who were known for their brains, working instincts and faithfulness. And they varied so much in appearance! It's a lot of fun to look at old photos. There were Scotch import collies in the late 1800s who looked like English Shepherds with Collie eyes, I've never seen the like in current populations.

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I'm glad you had such a wonderful mentor, they're the ultimate needle in the haystack.

Some of the current-day problem isn't even show-related. Colliedom is possessed of one of the most streamlined puppy mills I've ever heard of, with squeaky-clean PR selling Collie Eye Anomaly (CEA) free collies while sweeping the skin or hip conditions under the rug. They're eliminating a simple recessive gene (or three - that MDR1 drug sensitivity gene's becoming a buzzword now, too; so is PRA now that there's a test) and trading it in for complex genetic problems that don't show up until after the puppy buyer's had the dog long enough to blame it on their care somehow. Just makes the bottom of your stomach drop out once you see the pattern. I'm really thankful I started out with a nobody collie from an old farm in Michigan.