Welcoming October

[summer_jackel]

What could be finer than the NorCal coast on a clear October morning?



There was apparently considerable excitement back in camp while I was at work yesterday. My neighbor, who is reroofing my house, witnessed Tiger make the swift, efficient and impressive kill of an extremely large rat, which was walking on the road behind the house. He proceeded to dash it past all the dogs and (sigh) into the house. I am now inclined to believe that the one Coba brought in a little while ago was actually Tiger's. Neighbor, who is not to my knowledge a cat person, is all appreciative of Tiger now. Good kitty; I am so grateful!

On the other hand, with no less than eight fuzzy carnivores sharing this space with me, we had BETTER not have any rodent issues!



My pack. See how dignified they are? If only I'd brought the DSLR and not the point and shoot. When am I going to remember this?


In flight


OK, so there's this amazing thing that happens. You obtain this awkward, excessively snouted and rumpled little pup thing, and nurture the beast for a bit. There is this quasi-miraculous process whereby the creature becomes a collie. I'm still looking for the sleight-of-hand involved.

Isn't he handsome?


In an extremely silly way.




Lovely Jezzie




I love this shot


I like to pose these group shots, and sometimes they come out well. Colliething trio!


Pack hears something


Housefoxen


Young collie


The ones that aren't posed are the best, though.

Comments

[raveness-d.livejournal.com]

Beautiful. :)

Do collies come in the non-tri blue-merle colouration?

[summer-jackel.livejournal.com]

Thank you!

bi-blue Collies---well, they aren't supposed to. Merle is a dilution gene, so a blue merle like Chaos is a tricolor dog with the dilution gene, and a bicolor-blue like Coba is a black and white (called 'bi-black' in Shelties) with the same gene. Bi-black and bi-blue Collies are not recognized or shown; according to this website, http://www.snovali.com/other/colors.htm, "this color is only possible in Shelties and not in Collies. The breed that contributed the bicolor gene to the Sheltie is not in the Collie ancestry."

I find this an interesting bit of information given that many of the original 'toonies,' as the Shetland crofter's dogs were called before Shelties were created by crossing them with Collies, were black or bi-black. Since tricolor is dominant and most of the sables are carrying it as well, bicolor is somewhat rarer than tri even in Shelties.

All this aside, though, the occasional modern bicolor Collie would not surprise me. The original Collies, pre-Victorian fashion, were mostly tricolors and merles; sable came in through a stunningly lovely dog with what was then a rare color who won all the shows in 1880-something and got bred to everyone. At that point, they were closer to what we now call a Border Collie and the Victorians called a farm collie. Those are predominantly bicolor with some tris, some merles and even the rare sable.

Here's a bi-blue Border Collie. :) http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/be/Blue_merle_Border_Collie.jpg