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THE DOMESDAY BOOK OF DOGS

Bearded Collie

Hairy Mountain Collie, Highland Collie, Beardie

Leighton 1911.  P102

Lord Arthur Cecil's Bearded Collie. Leighton 1911.

Mason 1915.  P33

Hubbard 1947.  P72

Photo: Wikimedia.  2006.

  Originally a Scottish drovers' dog this breed has also been used for sheep and cattle herding.  At one time the beardie was freely crossed with the border collie and the type could still crop up in litters of border collies after many generations.  Despite this interbreeding the beardie herds differently to the border collie and lacks the collie 'eye'.

  Local variations of goat-haired pastoral breeds once occurred all over Britain and, indeed, Europe.  The breed appears to have remained relatively unchanged until the middle of the twentieth century when the 'show' beardie was introduced.  A dichotomy of type has developed between the show type and the working dog, this may be because the 'show' type has been bred from a very small gene pool.

  "The Cumbrian sheep farmer Malcolm Ewart of Barkbeth farm near Bassenthwaite Lake works beardies on grazing stints on Skiddaw of around 3,000 feet ... but his dogs do not feature the length of coat seen on show ring specimens in the breed.  Show breeders may not want their dogs to work on Skiddaw but if they are true bearded collies they should be physically able to do so." 

Col. Hancock.  1990.

  There are suggestions that at the end of the nineteenth century deerhounds were sometimes outcrossed to the beardie in an attempt to produce a more tractable, intelligent dog for red deer stalking.  Whether any deerhound blood may have entered strains of working beardie is debatable.  Longer legs might help on the cattle droves but it's unlikely that deerhound temperament would be suitable for herding sheep or poultry.  Brian Plummer believed the working bearded Collie was the ideal breed for hybridising with greyhounds to produce a lurcher that was suspicious of strangers; an absolutely necessary trait if one is taking game on someone else's land.

--- Explore further ---

Working Dogs Of The World, Clifford L. B. Hubbard
SIDGWICK AND JACKSON LIMITED, LONDON, 1947

The Heritage of the Dog.  Colonel David Hancock.
Nimrod Press Limited.  1990.

Our Dogs 17th August 1978
James G. Logan

The Complete Lurcher, D. Brian Plummer.
The Boydell Press, 1979

The New Book of the Dog. 1911.  p102.
Robert Leighton.  Cassell: London; New York.

Coch-y-bonddu books

Dogs of All Nations

W.E. Mason, 1915

Bearding The Sheepdog

Raggengill Working Beardie

Shepherds with Beardies

See Cur Dog

See Lurcher

See Old Welsh Grey

See Smithfield Collie

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