BORDER COLLIES are one of the oldest documented breeds known to man. It  appears that herding dogs have always been in existence, at least since man began to domesticate livestock and that was millenia ago. We do know this. Around 55 B.C. when the Romans marched into Britiain they brought with them their large sized herding dogs and these same animals are one of the forebearers of our modern Border Collie. As early as 36 B.C. a book on Roman agriculture was written and in it was a description of a tricolored dog that was used to herd and protect the flocks of sheep.

This dog was half of the seed that not only sported our Border Collie but also a few other breeds....including the Great Pyrenees, Rottweilers and Bernese Mountain Dogs. You can tell from the lineage, this canine was a rather large dog. Then centuries later,  around A.D.794 the good ole Vikings stormed into the Isles and this, as far as our Border Collie is concerned, was a major event in its' history. This wild group brought with them their own smaller herding dog that they used to herd, of all things, reindeer. Once the Vikings conquered and vanquished the Romans, they started to breed their small dogs with the Romans large herders. This cross breeding was practiced over the centuries and at  the apex of  this gene pool was produced a dog of extreme intelligence and stamina,  a dog that was well suited to run and herd sheep in the hilly mountain terrain of Scotland and Wales, this border country of green grass and undulating hills. Thus, the modern Border Collie had evolved.

Documentation of this breed is quite abundant over the centuries. From the 1576 classic Treatise on English Dogges, by  Dr. John Caius where he describes a medium sized herding dog that  responds to the sheperds voice and hand signals to A.D. 943 when a Welsh king described an amazing black and white dog that can take the sheep out in the morning and bring them back in the evening to the numerous descriptions in the 1700s and 1800s where Border Collies in books where everywhere   "...collies were black with a white tail tip..."  This was also brought on by the flourishing wool market of the late 1700s, early 1800s when sheep were everywhere. This was a time when  shepherding was the occupation to be in but one lone shepherd couldn't  take on these great herds without help. The Border Collie was everywhere at this time, learning and developing the instincts that would eventually epitomize its' workaholic stature and to classify it as the most intelligent breed of dog ever known.

A typical cottage in Wicklow Ireland.

Dingle Peninsula, Ireland

"This Soldier, I realized, must have had friends at home and in his regiment; yet he lay there deserted by all except his dog....I looked on, unmoved, at battles which decided the future of nations. Tearless, I had given orders which brought death to thousands. Yet here I was stirred, profoundly stirred, stirred to tears. And by what? By the grief of one dog." Surveying the moonlit field at the end of battle, Napoleon came upon a dog sitting beside the body of his fallen master, licking his face and howling. This image continued to haunt him until his own death in 1821. Napoleon Bonaparte....1769-1821

Greyfriars Bobby. Died 14th Jan 1872 Aged 16 years. Let his loyalty & devotion Be a lesson to us all.

Inscription on a headstone marking the grave of Bobby, a Skye terrier, in the church cemetery in Greyfriars, Scotland. American donors erected it in the 1930's to pay tribute to the dog that slept on his master's grave every night for fourteen years until his own death in 1872.

home