Sparks Flying Over Border Collie Decision

Dognappers once made the mistake of stealing one of Lewis Burkholder’s border collies. Burkholder, a quiet sheep rancher from White Post, Va., pursued the thieves across several states.

The moral of the story was really pretty simple. Because the dogs are more than pets, it’s not a very good idea to steal someone’s border collie.

Now, the American Kennel Club has decided to take all border collies against the wishes of Burkholder’s brethren, the nation’s ranchers.

But wait, I’m confused. Lewis Burkholder isn’t real. He’s the hero of Donald McCaig’s best-selling novel “Nop’s Trials.” Nop’s life was fiction, but AKC just handed McCaig the script of an even juicier dog opera. In their December board meeting, AKC’s directors voted 9-3 to next month start registering border collies, until now a non-AKC breed.

AKC’s decision goes against the repeatedly expressed wishes of friends of the border collie. Why? Because America’s border collie owners don’t much care what these work-obsessed dogs look like. They care how they perform. AKC breeding standards, on the other hand, are silent about talent, but voluble about looks.

“It’s hard enough to breed a dog that has the brains that you want,” says McCaig, who also raises sheep and is a passionate border collie owner and breeder himself. “If you decide that you not only want the brains but you want it to wear Calvin Kleins, it’s doubly hard.”

In “The Cow Dog Song,” a ditty that accompanies a film clip shown periodically on “Sesame Street,” the dog speaks for itself: Now, some dogs can fetch a stick, other dogs will shake your hand. I even heard of a dog who can roll over. All I know how to do is take a hundred cows and teach ‘em some manners!

(The truth is, your typical border collie will also fetch a stick until your arm falls off, if that’s the work you want done.)

In Scotland, where border collies come from, the highest compliment a thrifty shepherd can pay his dog is to call him a “useful beast.” These blue-collar animals routinely run 100 miles in their daily work, and their feelings get hurt if they can’t toil constantly.

In obedience trials, border collies are hard to beat. The nation’s all-time high point obedience dog, a female border collie named Sweep, shows no signs of slowing down at age 9.

Sweep was the KenLRation obedience dog of the year for ‘92 and ‘93, and is cover dog of the current issue of Purina’s Today’s Breeder. Sweep’s breeder, Kay Guetzloff, is “sick” about AKC’s plans for the border collie; she expects the breed to deteriorate rapidly - “within a couple of generations” - if AKC can make its brand stick.

Beyond that, Guetzloff thinks AKC’s decision to take the breed could come back to bite AKC worse than AKC officials anticipate.

“I don’t think AKC realizes who they’re dealing with when it comes to the border collie,” Guetzloff says, referring to livestock growers who might not take kindly to AKC’s designs on their four-legged ranch hands.

Based on rumors that AKC has been coveting the border collie as a show dog, a coalition of border collie owners - McCaig is one of the leaders - have for years warned AKC to perish the thought. By deciding to go ahead anyway, AKC may well have started a kind of range war with, in effect, several thousand of Lewis Burkholder’s neighbors.

Early last week, the border collie preservationists were drawing up battle plans that include suing AKC.

AKC’s encroachment on border collie turf comes at a time of increasingly negative public opinion and publicity. Last summer, Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer, in a story called “Save the Border Collie,” referred to AKC as “the politburo of American dog breeding,” saying AKC “wanted to turn the world’s smartest dog, the border collie, into a moron” by slicking it up. In September, ABC News’ “20/20” aired an expose on fraud in AKC’s registry. And the Dec. 12 issue of Time magazine carried a cover story blaming AKC for much of America’s canine genetic pollution.

Maybe AKC will succeed in getting the border collie. Maybe not. Either way, there is the possibility that AKC has just shot itself in the foot with a buffalo gun of bad PR. Shouldn’t somebody at AKC ask why? xxxx