CHAPTER XXIII 

 THE SMOOTH SHEEP DOG 



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 member of the rather large family which 

 in olden days went under the general name of mastiff. Mastiff is now 



369 



