You got it on the collie! Since I love sighthounds so much, they came close.
It's worth mentioning that show collies as we know them (and shelties, by extension) became what they are when aristocratic 19th century breeders crossed working Scottish collies that probably looked a lot like border collies with Borzoi. That gave the collie its height, remote expression and huge snout of wow. Such crosses were nothing new; collie/greyhound crosses called lurchers were commonplace then and are still around. In the earlier era, the lower classes weren't allowed to own hunting hounds that they could use to poach game, so people would breed the farm collie clandestinely to the lord's greyhound for a litter of Sighthounds In Disguise. How many peasants got off the hook back then by saying, "oh no, officer, I wasn't poaching the King's deer, I was just out looking for some stray ewes with my collie here. You seen them anywhere?"
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2009-06-28 07:54 pm (UTC)It's worth mentioning that show collies as we know them (and shelties, by extension) became what they are when aristocratic 19th century breeders crossed working Scottish collies that probably looked a lot like border collies with Borzoi. That gave the collie its height, remote expression and huge snout of wow. Such crosses were nothing new; collie/greyhound crosses called lurchers were commonplace then and are still around. In the earlier era, the lower classes weren't allowed to own hunting hounds that they could use to poach game, so people would breed the farm collie clandestinely to the lord's greyhound for a litter of Sighthounds In Disguise. How many peasants got off the hook back then by saying, "oh no, officer, I wasn't poaching the King's deer, I was just out looking for some stray ewes with my collie here. You seen them anywhere?"
I can definitely see the Borzoi in Chaos.