BCR Holiday Party

[furtech]

Today was the Border Collie Rescue Christmas party. Border collies galore! Every age, size, color and personality was represented there: B&W's, browns, merles, smooth and rough (and semi-rough), split-faces and mixes. Old fatties and young turks, hard-eyed and couch potato. I had been looking forward to this for a long time: an excellent opportunity for Rondo to socialize with other border collies.

Rondo and I had more fun than I ever imagined we would! Dogs and people everywhere! I was worried how Rondo would react to so many high-strung bc's and the crowds of people, but he was a very happy pup! Unless I had food, he was out romping with the mega-pack. He dealt well with the few bossy dogs and found a lot of dogs he felt comfortable playing with.

The event was well attended: close to a hundred people and almost as many dogs showed up. A ton of food and many soulful, begging eyes. The atmosphere was relaxed-- more like a large family event, with dogs welcome everywhere (at the tables, in the kitchen, yard and field). There was a raffle and a gift exchange (Rondo got lucky and received a stuffy squirrel). I got lucky and won a tennis ball wrist rocket.

Every time someone threw a tennis ball, a small explosion of dogs would leap after it.
The field was filled with all manner of border collie (You can see Rondo in the center of the pic, with his dapper yellow collar.)

Here's a sampling of a group of black&whites

It was very easy to ID who had food or treats...

Here's Rondo doing an excellent imitation of a Puffkin!

Comments

[okojosan.livejournal.com]

Heehee, the corgi folk have get-togethers like this every so often.

My kind of party- dogs dogs dogs!!

[was1.livejournal.com]

Oh that looks like a lot of fun. That's good that all the dogs got along together.

[dustmeat.livejournal.com]

Why do some have prick ears and others floppy?

[iisaw.livejournal.com]

Excuse me for jumping in here...

Border Collies have been primarily bred for how well they work stock animals, not for their looks. (Uniform-looking breeds are actually fairly inbred.) To make matters worse, when Border Collies began to be used in warm climates, they were cross-bred with a short furred dog to produce "smooth coats". After all the mixing with only an eye for performance, the breed has a whole lot of variation in looks.

Tay's mother was a smooth coat red-and-white, and his father was a rough-coat black-and-white. His litter looked like it came from eight different breeds!

[furtech.livejournal.com]

Eric's the expert-- I'll just add that WRT the AKC, certain characteristics are not uniform/a standard-- like eye color with huskies. I don't believe that there is an AKC border collie standard for ear set and coat color or patternation. However, this is a contentious issue, as the AKC likes things in neat, uniform packages and several organizations have split from them over this issue (the AKC would like bc's to all look like "Babe" type border collies).

More on ears: they can have pricked ears, tipped (like a collie), down (like a lab) and semi-tipped (kind of like Yoda). Or even two different sets.

[diadexxus.livejournal.com]

Oh Ace wishes he could have run around with the BCs!!!

-J

[yarwick.livejournal.com]

That's a lot of border collies! :)

[iisaw.livejournal.com]

Wow, that looked like fun. I'd love to take Tay to an event like that sometime.

[furtech.livejournal.com]

Apparently they have get-togethers four times a year...the next will be around march and will be a herding-thing. Those dogs with some experience/classes will get to chase real sheep; nubes (like Rondo and I) will get introduced to the herding instinct and the basic mechanics. I'm not sure what this will entail (maybe a guy running around in a sheep costume for all I know). I think the real-sheep chasing will be charged about $25. Let me know if you're interested and I'll keep you posted!

[iisaw.livejournal.com]

Please do!

[cooner.livejournal.com]

Awww. WIth the description "many soulful, begging eyes" I was HOPING it would link to a picture of a field of dozens or hundreds of border collies, all sitting in rapt attention, looking right at the camera. I guess that would have been difficult to actually pull off. :)

I'm mostly recovered now, and Casey has an appointment tomorrow afternoon to get her health certificate. If you want to get together one day this week to transfer the travel crate and stuff, I'd appreciate it. :)

[furtech.livejournal.com]

I tried, but it was too crowded in the eating area...and if you had food outside, you got the dog-magnet effect and their eyes were more predatory/focused than soulful...

I'm mostly flexible this week-- I'll give you a call.

[millencolinf0x.livejournal.com]

That looks like fun! Great pictures!