Quote Originally Posted by Spiritwind View Post
I honestly have no idea why the split roughs and smooths up into 2 seperate breeds. Its really very odd in my opinion, especially since the 2 standards are the same, except for coat and the european smooths are nothing close to a short haired version of a european rough these days.

Most people really don't feel breeding roughs to smooths affects the coat. There are certain bloodlines in american collies that for atleast the last 50 yrs have only bred roughs (Tartanside collies come to mind).. pure tartanside lines are all roughs and they still don't carry the coat the european dogs do.

Now there are some families in certain American lines that breeders call "Fluffies" and they are typically (thought not always) collies with big, fluffy, soft coats.. which is very incorrect, but still not the same amount of coat the collies over seas have. A rough collie should not have a soft coat!... the european roughs coat is very incorrect... its very soft, open, and fluffy.. it does not keep water off their bodies, instead the soft coat just soaks water up...
I actually just did an essay on this for my English Comp class. From what I understood, people have stated that the Smooths and the Roughs have different personality types and the fact that the workload between the two different coats was different. Smooths were used as drovers and Roughs were used as pastoral guardians. This being said, people felt that there was a large divide between the two varieties that they decided to split them up. Personally, I think this narrowed the gene pool even more and will eventually do more harm than good in the Collie. In all actuality, from what I read it is the ROUGH coat that is recessive to the Smooth coat - if you breed two Roughs together you'll get 100% Roughs, but if you breed 2 Smooths together and they both have the same recessive Rough trait, you may wind up with a few Roughs in your smooth litter.

The European Collies seem to have been outcrossed at one point to a Chow Chow - I do not like the look of them at all. I think that they have too big of a stop and that coat looks neither functional or very easy to maintain. The function of the coat is important, to keep both heat and cold and whisk moisture away while they are doing the job they were bred to do. I prefer the American Collie vs the European Collie anyday.

Now...on to a breed that has changed drastically over the years.
American Cocker - Red Brucie circa 1921


Black/White Parti



Can you honestly tell me where in that second photo, it matches the AKC description of a moderately coated dog?