. E cannot compliment a single one of our forerunners in their contributions to the history of sheep dogs in England. Yet there is not in the whole category of dogs of the British Isles a simpler record to unfold. The stumbling block to all has been the nomenclature erroneously attached to the varieties of sheep dogs. If by the word collie is meant a distinct breed of dog, then there is but one of that name, the Scotch rough-coated dog. On the other hand, if by collie we are to understand that it is merely a sheep dog, then there is the rough, the smooth and the bob-tail. Our vote is that the
. E cannot compliment a single one of our forerunners in their contributions to the history of sheep dogs in England. Yet there is not in the whole category of dogs of the British Isles a simpler record to unfold. The stumbling block to all has been the nomenclature erroneously attached to the varieties of sheep dogs. If by the word collie is meant a distinct breed of dog, then there is but one of that name, the Scotch rough-coated dog. On the other hand, if by collie we are to understand that it is merely a sheep dog, then there is the rough, the smooth and the bob-tail. Our vote is that the name is for a breed, hence we give the name of collie to the rough dog only, and call the other two sheep dogs, they being entirely distinct in ancestry from the Scotch dog. We must, in order to disentangle the muddle into which the breeds have got, touch upon the writings of recent dog-book editors in the chapters they have written upon the bob-tailed dog. The mistake all have made is in taking it for granted that because some enthusiasts who formed a club in 1888 for the bob-tailed dog gave it the name of the "Old English Sheep Dog," that it was the original sheep dog, whereas it is a comparatively modern variety. Had the supporters of the smooth sheep dog organised their club at that time and given that name to their variety, then all would have been plain sailing. Taking it for granted that the bob-tail was really the original sheep dog of England, writers on that variety copied from the oldest books that had references to sheep dogs and then complained that the descriptions must be wrong, so we must first unravel the lines. The bob-tail we "lay on the table" until the next chapter, and take up the history of the dog that is the old English sheep dog, commonly known as the smooth collie, but which we shall call the smooth sheep dog, as he has no traceable descent from the Scotch rough dog, universally known as the collie. The smooth sheep dog was a membe
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Keywords: ., bo, bookcentury1900, bookdecade1900, booksubjectdogs, bookyear1906
