Coba being incredibly dignified.

[summer_jackel]

Parfait dog demonstrating that he is a serious, dignified, carefully bred creature of great elegance. Like 'Lassie' in miniature. Yep, that's Coba.







Check out the mane, though. Young furball has floof genes. Have I linked to his sire and grandsire?


Such exquisite posture.



In dignified repose. (Yeah, he sleeps like this).

Comments

[raveness-d.livejournal.com]

Oh my, but Coba is getting BIG! He's so beautiful... he makes me consider a merle Sheltie or Rough Collie in the future. :x

[summer-jackel.livejournal.com]

Coba is totally getting enormous!

Shelties are really cool. I've actually been considering getting a blue rough collie at some point, too. Did you see the dog that won collie and award of merit in herding at Westminster this year? Amazingly beautiful blue.

[raveness-d.livejournal.com]

No, I missed the show this year. :(

I've always loved Collies. Smooths, Roughs, and Shelties. There really is something dignified about the breed. I've always been so wrapped up in Shepherd-esque dogs, mastiffs and sighthounds that for some reason Collies kind of sat in the back of my dog-psyche. I've been thinking alot about life after Bowen lately, and while it makes me incredibly sad it's something that I will likely have to deal with in the next few years. I've considered not getting another dog for myself at all after he passes away, as A will always have a dog. But then I rethink it... Coba helps that side of the debate. ;)

[summer-jackel.livejournal.com]

Most of the good bits are still up on the Westminster website; that's how I see it, anyway. (not TV). I've been most focused on wolfdogs, but I love the sighthounds and collies, too.

I know what you mean about Bowen. Pryde's really not young, either.

[hakeber.livejournal.com]

*dies from the cute*

Collies are love...

[summer-jackel.livejournal.com]

They really are!

[hakeber.livejournal.com]

I need to take more pics of my guys.

[nesting.livejournal.com]

AWWWWW
how big is he gonna get??
he's gorgeous :D

[summer-jackel.livejournal.com]

Thank you!
From the standard: "The Shetland Sheepdog should stand between 13 and 16 inches at the shoulder. Note: Height is determined by a line perpendicular to the ground from the top of the shoulder blades, the dog standing naturally, with forelegs parallel to line of measurement." So far, the breeder thinks he should stay in size, which is a problem with the breed---because of the collie crosses at the turn of the century, they tend to run big.

They're small dogs.

[kynekh-amagire.livejournal.com]

He's an awfully cute little poof ball. I think he's cuter even than he was in the fuzzy-teddy-bear stage of shepdog growth, which is hard to fathom.

Nice sleeping pose, too. When that happens at my house, it's called a "dog crash" or a "dog wreck". As in "uh-oh, there's a smoldering collie wreck at the base of the stairs. Watch your step."



Also, randomly, you're the only sheltie owner I've ever met that doesn't start twitching and foaming at the phrase "miniature collie". It's true!

[summer-jackel.livejournal.com]

hilarious puddle of collie you have there!!!

[summer-jackel.livejournal.com]

It's a weird little breed. The history, as I know it: the Shetlands are these cold, isolated little islands sitting almost between Northern Scotland and Norway that get rained on 200 days a year and are so exposed and difficult to live on that all the animals are tiny. The resident sheepdogs were about half of Scottish decent, half Norwegian like everything else, and the woodcuts of them look varyingly like bitty border collies or schipperke type things. Then technology improved, and Shetland imported a lot of collies and big sheep from Scotland. In the mid-1900s, somebody realized that Scottish (and I'm assuming border) collies had pretty much supplanted the original dog's role, and it was going extinct. Of course, being working dogs, there was a lot of physical variation, and the first non-native breeders had debate over writing the standard.

So what do they do? They breed them heavily with _collies_ to standardize type. Yeah, this was the solution to losing this little native dog to collies. That's some interesting logic there. It was originally called the 'Shetland Collie' but they changed it because the collie people didn't like it.

So yeah...they are definitely a breed in their own right, with a lot of distinctions...I like the head a lot better, for one thing, and collies don't come in bicolor for another...but let's just gently say that it is definitely in the collie family of dogs...

[kynekh-amagire.livejournal.com]

I understand why sheltie owners hate "miniature collie": it IS a distinct breed with its own history, but the overreaction always seems to deny that the modern Sheltie is in any way bred down from a collie, which is, as you've mentioned, not so. So the objection to "miniature collie" is less justifiable than a miniature pinscher owner's ire at "miniature Dobe", even if it's the same form of breed ID fail.

I've met a few bicolor (rough) collies. It's not a coat type permitted in the confo ring, AFAIK, but they do happen occasionally in tricolor lines. I agree with you about collie head type, at least in the show ring. I like borzois, but that doesn't mean I think all breeds should look like them, y'know? What's lean and graceful on a sighthound tends to register as "skeezy and inbred" on a herding dog, and I vastly prefer the more broad-skulled, pointy-muzzled classic look of rough collies. Sort of like the one on this 1927 postcard.

The collies are one of the big reasons I don't go to dog shows any more, but I'll refrain from telling my bitter collie story here. It's depressing.

[summer-jackel.livejournal.com]

hm, I'd like to hear your depressing collie story some time, if you're willing.

I've met some gorgeous rough collies (I'm sorry, the smooth ones just look naked to me), and I find myself more and more frequently entertaining the idea of maybe, someday, not soon, having a lovely blue collieish fellow. The OMG splendid bitch who took collies at Westminster this year (http://www.westminsterkennelclub.org/2009/results/group/herding.html) isn't helping me resist them, either.

That said, many collie heads I see ring the 'skeezy and inbred' bells on me, too. :P There are some nice ones out there, but most of them, meh. I definitely prefer the look in tat neat postcard. Apparently the collie head actually was developed through crossbreding with borzoi; check out: http://www.jenalabs.com/pages/ddcollies-p2.html

So, it's a Victorian fashion thing. How should I feel about my taste for Victorian fashion apparently extending to dogs...?

At any rate, the more I read about the kind of weird and sideways-logic history of this family of dog breeds, the more I come to the conclusion that Shelties actually are closer to a miniature collie (though yes, with lots of differences) than we're often led to believe.

[dhlawrence.livejournal.com]

(first pic) *sniffs* Heymommywhatchagotwhatchagot?

[summer-jackel.livejournal.com]

heeeee. Yep, that's the attitude!

[troubleagain.livejournal.com]

Sheltie love. We had a sheltie named Sugar when I was a teen. She was the most adorable animal in the world. Someone stole her and the whole family was heart-broken. She looked kind of like your Not-Coba sheltie (sorry, spacing the pup's name at the moment.)

[summer-jackel.livejournal.com]

Shelties are delightful little dogs. I'm so sorry to hear that Sugar was stolen, though. :(

Sables are the most common color in the breed. My little girl is Rogue.

[zrath.livejournal.com]

Puppehcam! (sniff-sniff!)
Lil' Coba is getting laaaaaarger!

[fuzzytoedcollie.livejournal.com]

Somebody...had their head tooooo close to the artist's desk when she shook out her black ink pen...
*grin*

My, Coba is growing up quickly! What a handsome pup!

[summer-jackel.livejournal.com]

Thank you! he _does_ look rather inkstained, doesn't he...