Rough-Coated Collie 345 



deal of an enigma. It is all very well to point to the similarity of the smooth 

 sheep dog and the rough collies of the present, and decide off-hand that 

 it is only a question of coat. With that we do not agree at all. As we 

 shall show when it comes to discussing the smooth dog, the latter was 

 developed from the common English dog of the farm, the small mastiff 

 that went by the name of bandog because he was the dog that was kept 

 on a band or collar and chain a watch dog, in fact. Why we hold that 

 need not be gone into here, for it is the rough collie that is now in the ring. 



No other dog exactly resembles the rough dog, the product of the 

 Highlands; still he must have come from somewhere, for he was not a 

 locally developed animal confined to one or two glens, but was as wide- 

 spread as the flocks he had to guard, and of commanding blood when bred 

 to outside breeds. We might surmise that he was akin to some of the dogs 

 of northern Europe, but there are only the Pomeranian, the elk hound of 

 Norway, and the Eskimo that bear even the faintest resemblance. All of 

 these have some likeness, but the collie has always been different in ear and 

 tail carriage. There is much less difference between the rough collie and 

 the dingo than anything else of dog-like resemblance, but relationship 

 between them is of course out of the question. There is one thing with 

 regard to the Highland collie that we might better mention here, and that 

 is as to the coat. In looking through some Landseer portfolios and repro- 

 ductions we were not a little surprised to note the number of collies with 

 decidedly medium-length coats, very closely approaching to that of the 

 smooth sheep dog. Landseer undoubtedly copied every dog most faith- 

 fully in his drawings; that is, he made likenesses and did not make them 

 all "Landseer collies" of equal beauty and differing only in colour. If 

 he painted a short-coated collie that dog was so in the flesh. Hence, seeing 

 several of these dogs, it led us to question whether the generally accepted 

 supposition that the collies from the Highlands were all heavily coated is 

 correct. We must recognise the fact that these were working dogs, not 

 bred for coat but for work, and the best worker was used for breeding, not 

 only by his owner but by his friends, and they probably varied in coat as in 

 other properties, and, of course, were not always in their full winter coat. 



There is one characteristic we find in all the old-time drawings of 



o 



collies that must then have been part and parcel of the breed, but is now 

 seldom seen. It has been bred out, as a disfigurement or as a fault of 

 conformation. That is the twist at the end of the tail, which every artist 



