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Ravnokar berem odgovor na zanimivo vprašanje na internacionalnem smooth collie forumu...torej vprašanje...
In standards of breeds are difference in the part of common impression. Smoothies are active, rough are more quiet. What do you think: Why historically smooth collies are more active than rough collie?o tem vprašanju je že sigurno veliko ljubiteljem škotov razmišljalo...ena je podala ta odgovor...
Well, I know the Collie breed (rough) since 1975 when my aunt and uncle bought their first (and last) dog and from the very first instant I saw the 3 days old puppies of the litter I fell in love with them. "Loch Ness" was not a show dog, he was just a "half-pedigreed" dog carrying the Cabrenysset line by his father, but, although living in full city, was extremely intelligent, active and reactive. He never herded any cattles, sheeps or poultries but I knew he owned the herding instinct because each time he was walking within a humans "herd" he always acted like if we were "his herd", going around, trying to clust us together and running after the one who tried to leave the group, pushing him/her to go back.
I bought my first (but not last) rough collie bitch in 1977 "Nadja". "Full-pedigreed" she carried Cabrenysset and Rokeby lines by her mother, she also was extremely intelligent, active and reactive. She never herded cattles either but acted similarly like Loch Ness. She also learnt and understood very quickly everything I teached her and we practiced "agility" many years before I discovered this sport at Cruft's in 1984. She also save our old friend-neighbor's life one evening by barking strangely then we could not hear her calling for help because of the TV.
Reading articles published in old French Collie Club bulletins (much before the 80's), it seems there were many rough collies who truly worked on cattles and were beautiful enough to be shown and won awards.
"Lassie" was a quite typical working collie and always will remain THE Collie in many, many people's mind.
Personally, I don't think that the "ancient" rough collie was more "lazy" compared to the smooth. As working dogs, they needed to own a "living brain" at birth otherwise they were given as pets (in the best of cases, I imagine...).
Even if the 70's (in France) saw few rough collies bred only for shows, the most crucial turning came in the early 80's giving this totally transformed dogs, with big bones, overhaired, large heads and ears, very small eyes, short in every part of the body including the tail, displaying a rather stupid expression..... and mostly quite unable even to move across the showring. The producers' main argument was "the original rough collie was short so we want shortening those too long dogs", forgetting to see and to say that the Original Rough Collies, even shorter and a bit smaller than those I knew, were NEVER ridiculous for the unique reason that they still were bred in the respect of the breed characteristics.
There also is another "detail" in the Rough and Smooth Collie History : the queen Victoria !!! She fell in love with the breed when she was in Balmoral and decided to bring some of them into her own kennels. Although she found Collies beautiful, she wanted more elegant ones so she bred her Roughs with Borzois and her Smooths with Greyhounds. Results were immediately catastrophic but the fashion was launched..... Later, it took decades to breeders for eradicating the borzoi and greyhound genes from the Collie, trying to retrieve the best characteristics of the Original but keeping this elegance, giving us the most wonderful Collies we knew until the end of the 70's.
Not surprising that the today Smooth Collie looks like a "Ferrari" compared to the rough looking rather like the late "2CV Citroën" !!!!
Best regards,
Françoise
http://www.glenmorangie-collies.info/...
http://smoothcollie.forum24.ru/?1-2-0-00000003-000-0-1-1232566937