Owner: Border Wars: A Border Collie Blog URL:http://borderwars.blogspot.com Join Date: Sun, 30 Sep 2007 06:04:57 -0500 Rating:0 Site Description: Analysis of hot topics in the dog world, especially border collies. Critique of movies, books, politics, religion, language, music from a libertarian perspective. Agility, Frisbee, Obedience, Conformation, Sheep Herding, Flyball, and more. Site statistics:Click here
A Dying Breed 2007-09-30 08:49:00 It's easy for a young man like myself to surmise that sheep trialers are on whole an aged, if not aging breed. Their ranks are filled with people my parent's age and older, the best of the best collect more Social Security checks than they do oversized prize money checks at trials (not that such photo-op prizes are all that common, most big trials have very nice prizes of polished silver trophy cups, plaques, and belt buckles), and the Nursery division is for young dogs, not young handlers.Sheepdog trialing does not attract many young people, but handlers in their seventies are unexceptional.- Donald McCaig, The Dog Wars p23This isn't too surprising given what it takes to be competitive in this endeavor. You need abundant time to train yourself and your dog. You need sheep and lots of land. You need trucks and trailers and barns and pens and troughs and water and feed. What you don't own, you have to rent, be it in land or training skill, or sheep. All of these things require a lot Read more:Dying
, Breed
Dog Sports - A Cultural Divide 2007-09-30 01:20:00 David and Kate Marshall are do-it-yourself kind of people. They've written several books that allow readers to tell their own autobiography, document their love for their significant other, or even memorialize their pet dogs.Like training guides on the weave polls, the Marshalls' books encourage readers to navigate the obstacle of self-journalism by staying on point, and making it from start to finish without going too far afield while not missing any of the important bits.It's no wonder then that the Marshalls are dog sport people (a very do-it-yourself crowd): Kate and her dog Misty run Agility and are keen observers of dog-people culture. In her recent blog post titled "Dog Sports
: A Truly CulturalDivide
," Kate makes some keen observations about the different priorities of the Second and Third Estates of the Border Collie:The difference between Obedience and Agility cultures pales in comparison to the divide between Conformation and Herding worlds, especially with border collie
Sheep, Wolves, and Sheepdogs 2007-09-29 03:27:00 In a day and age where the ROTC and the Minutemen are invited to speak by a student group at Columbia, then banned by a callow and effete administration kowtowing to another student group of fascist pinkos, it's little surprise that a dictator and terrorist like Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is welcomed with open arms even after severe backlash from the Country. Idiot college students (like the girl they interviewed on TV) who think we need "greater dialog" with monsters like Mahmoud should be allowed their wish and given first class tickets to Tehran via Baghdad. Let them "dialog" all they want from the front lines.The terrorist Ahmadinejad was given a pulpit to preach hatred, rebuffed only by the tepid insult of "you must be either brazenly provocative or astonishingly uneducated." PROVOCATIVE or UNEDUCATED!! Oh please! God forbid we call the World's #1 sponsor of terror "uneducated" and "provocative!"I really need to teach a class on vicious personal attacks and deeply cutting insults and g Read more:Sheep
, Wolves
Beauty in Taking It Slow 2007-09-25 16:28:00 The amazing thing about photography is its ability to capture a single infinitesimal moment and allow us to analyze and appreciate that moment for an infinite amount of time. In our daily lives, we rarely experience stimuli that are magnitudes different than normal. We live within a small temperature and pressure ban, our perception of time is virtually constant (even when we're having fun), and our five senses are rarely bombarded with true extremes.One of the few stimuli ranges that biology still surpasses technology on is amplitude of light. The human eye and brain have an ability to distinguish detail and contrast in situations where even the most expensive cameras can't hope to compete. Silhouette is a beautiful effect, but it's also evidence of the camera's inability to capture detail in light and dark areas at the same time. Shallow depth of field is a beautiful effect to blur out the background and bring notice to specific areas like the eyes of a portrait, but it too is ev Read more:Beauty
, Taking
Sheep Agility 2007-09-24 20:46:00 This video opens up the possibility for the ultimate dog sport, surpassing sheep trials, agility, obedience, herding, tracking, flyball, frisbee, you-name-it.Sheep
agility. Wherein a human trainer instructs a Border Collie to guide sheep through an agility course. It combines the best of both worlds, it has herding instinct, athletic prowess, independent thinking on the part of the dog, unpredictability on the part of the sheep, can be played in the city and suburbs with ease, can be done indoors and outdoors, and makes for a great spectator sport.Mark my words, within three years, the versatility breeders will be pushing to AKC to adopt a championship and competition schedule for agilitrialing. It will need to get a better name, but this sport has massive potential!:cP
To Die Like A Dog 2007-09-24 05:39:00 Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy. Mercy is the perfection of love, the most dear of my attributes.- JesusI was raised Catholic, but I have never believed in the divinity of Jesus, making my name (meaning bearer of Christ) ironic at best, hypocrisy at worst. But that doesn't bother me, since hypocrisy is a vital element of organized religions, governments, and bureaucracies. They adopt hypocrisy by choice, not by chance.The elements of religion and government that I can tolerate are those which overlap and are vital to civilized society (read: the ten commandments). Both institutions are a means of controlling the masses, and the masses do need to be controlled. Sheep and sheeple alike need to be told what to do by Border Collies (institutions) who are themselves controlled by the shepherd (authority figures). Just like the shepherd-sheep relationship, authority and institutions are not benevolent, they are all too often exploitive, making the sheep breed and grow
Engine, Brake, Mufflers Required 2007-09-22 17:14:00 I always laugh when I'm driving around Colorado and see the signs that say, "Truckers Engine
Brake Mufflers Required." The sign is clearly another example of the Illuminati's proviso against any sort of punctuation on road signs. I can forgive the missing comma or colon after "Truckers," as the sign does separate that word with a bar and a yellow background, but I always wondered whether the sign was saying that engines, brakes, and mufflers were required (duh), or whether there could be something as bizarre sounding as an "engine brake muffler." Brakes are for wheels, not engines, of course, and mufflers are for exhaust not brakes, so the three make no sense together.Now, perhaps one of the out-of-work hyphens I mentioned in my last post could be put to work here and clarify that there is such a thing as an engine-brake. Because there is. I had no idea.I engine brake (verb) every day, it's one of those things you learn to do when you drive stick and prefer to avoid the brake at all
A Moment of Silence for Dead Hyphens 2007-09-22 17:06:00 I quite admire the hyphen, it's one of my favorite forms of punctuation. It allows me to jockey-together my own grammar and re-spelling, aids in tmesis (that's a-whole-nother post), and prevents confusion when dealing with ambiguous phrases.The humble hyphen even has its own mascot: Hyphen-Boy. Here is Hyphen-Boy standing up for the rights of smart children to play in the streets while not offending the developmentally challenged by emphasizing the lack of hyphen between slow and children. Sure, a comma would have sufficed, but the presence of a comma doesn't say nearly as much as the absence of a hyphen. And in case you didn't know, the Illuminati have declared a global moratorium on using any obvious punctuation on road signs, especially commas and hyphens. So Hyphen boy gets the job done under the nose of the punctuation-hating Illuminati.The whole point of grammar is to avoid confusion by clarifying language. Without the hyphen, readers might not know if you're discussing an a Read more:Moment
, Hyphens
Jailhouse Confessions of a Border Collie 2007-09-20 01:16:00 Sally Hull writes a poignant piece where she interviews condemned pets at the pound. One of them is a BorderCollie
named Popper and this is her interview:The kennel next to Pete's held a very young looking dog. Pure Border Collie by my guess. He stood on his hind legs, looking at me through the gate."Hello. My name's Popper. He tilted his head. "Are you here to take me home?""No, I'm sorry," I replied. "But I would like to talk with you." "Sure. What would you like to talk about?""Popper, how did you come to be in this place?" I asked.Popper dropped down from the gate, with a perplexed look on his face. He walked to the back of the kennel, then back to the front. I noticed he had one blue eye, and one brown. He was quite beautiful. His black and white coat was shiny and thick."I am not certain WHY I am here. I think maybe my family will come back for me. They bought me when I was only 6 weeks old. I remember they said how intelligent Border Collies are, and how it would be so easy
Border Collie Soliloquy 2007-09-19 17:24:00 BORDER COLLIE SOLILOQUYby Baxter BlackJust a word about one of the greatest genetic creations on the face of thisearth . . . the border collie.Faster than a speeding bullet. More powerful than a locomotive. Ableto leap tall fences in a single bound.The dog that all sheep talk about but never want to meet. The fur thatlegends are made of. Makes coyotes cringe, sheep trip the light fantasticand eagles soar somewhere else.Invested with the energy of a litter of puppies, the work ethic of a boatperson and the loyalty of Lassie, they ply their trade on sagebrush flats,grassy fields and precipitous peaks from sea to shining sea.“Away to me!” I command. They streak and sail, zipping like pucks onthe ice. Black and white hummingbirds, in out, up down, come by.Sheep. With head up, one eye cocked over their shoulder asking directions.To the gate through the race. Mighty dog moves behind the bunchlike a towboat pushing barges around a bend.And heart. Do they try? “Just let me at’em, Dad! Read more:Border
, Collie
R U Smarter than an 8th Grader? 2007-09-18 16:38:00 Taking online quizzes is a fun diversion and a way to dust off brain cells that you haven't used in a few years. My only problem with this one is imprecise language on a couple of questions, especially the one dealing with a falling object. When an object falls from a height and hits a surface, the final velocity is zero. SPLAT. That's not the answer they're looking for.You can bet that I've run into this issue more than once in my academic career, over-thinking questions and getting trapped in language traps that might be tricks or might be careless wording. The only thing harder than taking a test is writing one. Read more:Grader
Can Breeders Learn from Breed Rescue? 2007-09-18 02:19:00 Over on Terrierman's Daily Dose, Patrick poses a challenge to all breeders: include a prominent link to breed rescue on the websites where breeders sell their puppies. Good idea, but I don't know if recommending local breed rescues are always an appropriate litmus test of how much you care about the breed. For that matter, I don't think responsible breeders and rescue groups run in the same circles, certainly not to the point where either one would be (or could be) giving recommendations about the other.Try calling up a local rescue group and asking about a responsible breeder. Try finding a rescue group that has a link to one. Rescue
groups build their philosophy around the ethic of waste not, want not. They recycle dogs and prevent (almost) perfectly good lives from being lost.It is, however, also ethical and beneficial to breed quality animals, give them quality socialization, and find them quality homes. That last one is often more difficult than the first two, despite the the f Read more:Breed
The AKC is Listening 2007-09-17 15:21:00 Border Wars has been graced by a visit from the AKC. And you won't believe me when I tell you that what brought them here is not my critique on them and the ABCA, not my atheism toward conformation standards, and not even my discussion of AKC supported agility, obedience, or herding events.The AKC searched google for "USBCHA sheep herding finals" and since my "Barbie Collies Can Herd?" post is second on google (right after the venerable Meeker Trial page), I've lured them into my domain. Click on the image for proof:I find it curious and interesting that someone in the AKC is looking into USBCHA trials. I also wonder if they learned a thing or two from my post (we'll see if they start advertising Harley's wins as 'their' wins, or proof that conformation isn't ruining the breed) and I'll keep an eye out on my traffic logs to see if they return. I'd love it if they'd leave a comment or two (same with you all, comments are like "good dog" to bloggers).Although the AKC will NEVER Read more:Listening
The Third Estate of the Border Collie 2007-09-16 18:07:00 The First Estate
of the BorderCollie
is as a working stock dog.The Second Estate of the Border Collie is as a conformation show dog.The Third Estate of the Border Collie is as a dog sport athlete.The Fourth Estate of the Border Collie is as a house pet.Purists in the first estate will be pleased with their ranking, but this list is not judgmental, nor preferential. It does not extend from most important to least important, but rather from monolithic to democratic, from specific and narrow to diverse and broad. Fundamentally, the list documents the history of formal organization. You might argue that conformation showing is the most monolithic and the most specific, and you'd be right, but it is far behind trialing in history and in moral ownership of the breed.I firmly believe that the Third Estate of the Border Collie is a significant player in the future of the Border Collie, unadorned with romantic history and unbound by a rigid and arbitrary "breed standard." The Third Estate is
Barbie Collies Can Herd? 2007-09-14 12:06:00 ** Some Names and Images Changed to Protect the Innocent **Dear Readers,The heroes of this story have been placed in the Witness Protection Program and wish to remain anonymous until such time as they feel comfortable in testifying about their experience.I feel that it is a sad state of affairs when people are made to feel inferior or compromised in any way based upon non-objective and non-merit factors or are denied equal access to the spoils of their victory. But that is the world we find ourselves in.This is an important story and it needs to be told, but not at the expense of burning the bridge before you cross it.I'll leave you with a quote from Donald McCaig (who was dully beaten at the Nationals by a border collie with a conformation championship):Most of our novice handlers are coming from the dog fancy. Though we welcome those immigrants, residues of dog fancy culture -- the rule bound mentality, the kowtowing to authority (and concomitant resentment), the ugly language and, Read more:Barbie
Border Collie War: AKC vs. ABCA 2007-09-10 02:23:00 The most personal border war for me, and the reason this blog is so cleverly named border wars is the battle over the future of the pure bred BorderCollie
. Although Border Collies have been in my family for decades and there have been Border Collies at my side for most of my twenty-six years, it has only been in the last two years that I have been on the front lines of the Border Collie war, drawn into the conflict when I began my search for a new Border Collie puppy.I found two wonderful dogs, but I also found a bitter and nasty war of ideals and philosophy, rank with dogma, poor logic, and even worse breeding practices. As with most wars, both sides have blood on their hands and both reek of hypocrisy and the shit they've been slinging at the other side. Despite my fondness for vicious personal attacks and heated debate, I didn't expect to find them while looking intently for a cute bundle of fur that would be my next faithful friend.You'll hear a lot about the two dogs I found i
Read This Blog: Terrierman 2007-09-09 17:23:00 The blogoshpere is filled with self indulgent poor writers who are crying out for attention. I might be one of them, and the only salvo I have against such a claim is that I don't think I'm a poor writer. But there are writers out there whom I do aspire to be like. I hope that I can one day write as well as they do, think as clearly, and put the selfish concerns of recognition grubbing and ego induced myopia behind me. Time will tell.One writer that is worthy of both adoration and emulation is Patrick Burns, the "Terrierman." Most of the criticisms you can find of other writers and bloggers do not apply to this man and his oeuvre. He is not self indulgent in the slightest; you won't find his name plastered all over his blog, in fact it's rather hard to find it at all. You won't find post after post detailing what he ate today, how he feels about some troubled relationship, or a thoughtless and trite cliche that panders to his audience. And on those rare occasions when he posts som
In Search of the Great American Hero 2007-09-02 02:51:00 Almost a decade on, I still find this one of my favorite pieces. It was written for my college application essays and worked for Stanford and Yale. Harvard and Princeton didn't find it nearly as charming and put me on their wait lists. I declined. As I look back across my seventeen years on this planet, I can see that I am a soul in search of a hero. My first recollection of needing a hero was in my third year. Grandma came every Wednesday night to take me to her regular Bingo game where I dazzled and delighted the other grandmas with my witty nursery rhymes and clever songs. On the ride to the big game, Grandma coached me to answer, "President of the United States," whenever one of the old ladies asked what I wanted to be when I grew up. In 1998, being the President has lost its appeal. I don’t want to be fifty-two, fighting both a Viagra addiction and a dysfunctional Congress that wants to impeach me. Being the most powe Read more:Great
, American
, Search
Techies vs. Fuzzies 2007-08-29 18:42:00 The techie vs. fuzzy border war is one that I learned quite a lot about in college. As far as I can tell, the terms techie and fuzzy were coined or popularized at Stanford, where a "techie" is an engineering or natural (hard) sciences major and"fuzzies" are those majoring in the social (soft) sciences and the humanities. Although some of us whom took a significant number of classes in both might be called "fuchies," there isn't a stable or vast middle ground; you're either more techie or more fuzzy.While this seems like a minor affiliation, the divide is real at Stanford and I don't think it becomes any less vast in the real world either. The Stanford campus is simply a microcosm of the off-campus post graduate job market. Techies are pasty nerds with poor hygiene and psychotic work ethics who mutter constantly about problem sets and deadlines. Fuzzies are overly tanned slackers who don't see the inside of a classroom before 1pm or after 4pm and never on Fridays, Saturdays, Sundays
Everywhere a Confederacy of Dunces 2007-08-28 18:38:00 When a true genius appears in the world,you may know him by this sign,that the dunces are all in confederacy against him. - Jonathan Swift, Thoughts on Various Subjects, Moral and DivertingAs a general observation, when the hatred and ranting against an idea is wholly disproportionate to the weight of the idea, the idea is probably right or at least dangerous to the mob. Ideas that are patently false or baseless garner little vitriol from the mob because they are not a threat and are unlikely to sway opinion. But when an idea emerges that threatens to dethrone the self anointed elite and their bureaucracy of yes-men, the fangs and claws come out and suspiciously the rules often change to favor the incumbents.In examining new situations and schools of thought where I am mostly inexperienced and largely ignorant of the local culture, I gravitate toward the touchy subjects and see who is talking a lot and saying little. These people tend to be the dunces and they are usually the "old
Narcissism and My First F 2007-08-26 20:20:00 The Narcissism of Minor DifferencesPart 1. Wherein the author describes independently theorizing NoMD in 9th grade and getting an F for it.Part 2. Wherein the author applies the NoMD theory to recent group experiences and gets censored for it.Part 1:A decade ago during the first weeks of 9th grade I got my first and only F on a paper. Of course I was livid when I got the paper back, especially because the only comment on the paper was "I don't agree." Ms. Montgomery was a novice history teacher and a pinko socialist, and I had already embarrassed her during the first week when she compensated for her own ineptitude and lack of preparation (no lesson plan) by making us watch irrelevant movies and color in maps with crayons and colored pencils.Her running a high school class like a kindergarten was degrading and especially insulting to a precocious freshmen who was eager for a more mature classroom experience than he had in Middle School. It was her first time teaching, but it was hard Read more:First
Border Collie Flies High, Lands Hard 2007-10-01 12:11:00 Border Collie
s are known for their gravity defying leaps and spins on the frisbee field, and on occasion a spectacular crash and roll. But New Mexico Border Collie Jade and his owner Jim Grainger bring a whole new meaning to crash landing:A Taos man and his dog walked away from his fiery aircraft Sunday morning (Sept. 30) after he “controlled-crashed” about a mile short of the Taos Municipal Airport runway. Jim Grainger told The Taos News that he got up to about 8,000 feet altitude just over the Rio Grande Gorge, when finger-sized flames started coming out of the console in front of him. “Fuel ignited in the turbo, burned up the engine, then the plane,” he said after arriving back at the airport tarmac. “The engine ran out of fuel.” Grainger and his Border Collie Jade scrambled clear of the aircraft as it slid to a stop on the sage south of the runway, and they managed to get luggage out of the front and save his passport. “I lost my billfold, glasses and cell phone,” h Read more:Border
, Flies
Siding with the AKC 2007-10-08 15:51:00 Faced with the undeniable history of ruining numerous other purebred dog breeds by facilitating and encouraging countless breeders to breed stupidly, why would any circumspect Border Collie owner or breeder side with the AKC over a registry that is 100% Border Collie focused, that owns 90% of the gene pool, and speaks passionately about owning the moral high ground of Border Collie breeding by sticking to a purely herding based standard?Well, because words, be they in pedigrees or mottoes or breed standards, are cheap. The lofty (Platonic) goals of the AKC and ABCA are well and good, but they have little to do with what the registries offer the WIDE middle ground of owners who are interested enough to care about registered dogs and who are active in at least one dog activity, but who are not frequent fliers or VIPs like show breeders or trialers."Merit" is a term that is not universal to any of the four Estates of the Border Collie. The Third and Fourth Estates (Dog Sport and Pet) woul
Versatility "Dangerous" to the ABCA? 2007-10-08 04:34:00 I'd like to bring your attention to the report presented to ABCA members in 2002 when a committee was formed to assess the AKC/ABCA Dual Registration "problem" and advise options for the membership to vote on. In the report, the authors (Denise Wall, Candy Kennedy, Donald McCaig, Eileen Stein, Penny Tose, and Jeanne Weavermake) plead their case for why the members of the Third Estate of the Border Collie are not only casualties of the war, lost and abandoned to the evil AKC, but themselves a "Clear and Present Danger" to the ABCA: A Clear and Present Danger With the AKC’s increased presence in the explosively growing sport of agility, its reputation with uninformed pet buyers who see “AKC reg” as a guarantee of quality, its enormous budget and sophisticated PR staff, and its intent to increase registration of Border Collies, the AKC is a formidable rival. If it keeps its st
Capturing the Spoils 2007-10-07 21:26:00 Although the Border Wars are appropriately framed as a fight between the ABCA and the AKC, the Wars are wrongly categorized as a fight over Border Collies or "the future of the breed." The true spoils of war aren't dogs, but people. The numerous people who buy Border Collie puppies and who are mostly unaware or disinterested in BC politik, ethos, and theory but who still buy "purebred" dogs with papers. Papers that cost money.The elite in the ABCA and the AKC fight for those people because the lifeblood of both registries is the money they make from puppies who are registered and sold to pet homes. The AKC could not survive off of Conformation puppies alone, nor could the ABCA off of trialing puppies alone. Both groups must milk the massive Fourth Estate pet buyers for their sustenance. Conformation dogs and Trialing dogs are loss leaders for the two registries, the registries spend and lose money facilitating shows and trials, even with sizable volunteerism and sponsorships.The Fourt
The Spoils of the Dog War 2007-10-07 21:18:00 The small elite group of conformation breeders are Platonists; they believe that the substantive reality of Border Collies is only a reflection of a higher truth, and their activity is the key to divining that perfect essence. The small elite group of trial breeders also believes that there is a higher truth to the Border Collie, that their activity is the key to approaching that truth, and that their philosophy stands above and to the exclusion of all others. But they are not Platonists, as their search is accomplished on a field, not in the mind. The ideal Border Collie is discerned by function, not by a proposed ideal form.This new Plato seemed familiar to common-sensical Victorians. What do we mean when we use the word "table" if not a real object which resembles more or less well the ideal "table"? Aren't our real-world tables imperfect examples ("Platonic shadows") of the ideal?And living, breathing dog -- are they not slightly imperfect versions of the ideal foxhoud or greyhoun
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