At 11:50 AM 5/2/97, Ranid wrote:

>Intresting, Can you tell me more anout the BC/Rough and Aussie/Rough crosses?
>
>Sounds like a intresting cross. Are their any pictures online of these dogs?

 There's a picture of Jan Ziff's BC/Rough cross BlueJay on the farmcollie
pages (at: http://www.bcrescue.org/Images/BlueJay.gif). I personally think
Blue Jay is one of the most beautiful dogs in the world. He's sounds like a
nice dog, too.

 As I posted this morning apparently there is a person purposly breeding
BC/Roughs and I hope to have more onthat one soon. I think this is an
intriguing cross given the right bloodlines on both sides - put some of the
fire back in modern collies and take a little of the refinement out.

 As for the Aussie/rough crosses. There is a woman here in Vermont named
Laura Lee who wants to get back to what we've defined here as the Victorian
Collie and he approach was to breed an aussie to a rough collie. I saw some
of her pups, oh, three years ago and they looked great but I didn't buy one
because I knew I'd be selling my house and building a new place and didn't
want to be raising a young dog in that sort of mayhem.  Once I found this
farm collie fan club I got in touch with Laura (because of course I'd never
lost her phone number in the intervening years even though i could hardly
keep track of anything else - priorities, priorities) to tell her about
this group. She's not really online yet though so she hasn't joined our
group. She's still big on Scotch Collies tho and I want to get down, get
some photos and find out what she's up to.

        In the intervening years I've gone back to English Shepherds which
is what I had as a kid and loved so much.  The ES, as a breed, is so close
to the dog I see in my minds eye and I personally thrash around the
crossbreed vs. purebred arguement a lot.

        The great thing about purebred dogs is you should be able to get
one and know what you are getting. This of course is far from the truth.
But a good breeder can do some research and pretty much know what sort of
puppies they will be producing (i'm talking temperment and ability as much
as conformation and colour). With hybrids it's a gamble and with later
generations there will be a lot of variation before things settle out.

        no easy answers...