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

[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.