4J ACRES SCOTCH COLLIES
Old Time Scotch Collie Organization History
Starting in 1892 when The Fancier’s Journal said “sooner or later (it will) have to be recognized that the show bench collie is absolutely distinct from his ancient prototype, and the formation of an old Scotch Collie Club will have to be seriously considered” there has been a small minority of collie owners who wanted to keep and breed the original collie as it existed before conformation breeding changed it into the dog know today as the Rough Collie.
In 1912 the publication Country Life in America took up the cause and argued for the formation of an “Old-Fashioned Collie Club”, this effort proved premature and in time fell apart. The numbers of these old fashioned Scotch Collie lovers were small and in most cases they were separated by hundreds of miles of distance and had no easy way to locate or contact one another, so slowly the twentieth century wore away at the numbers of these dogs as breeding mates grew harder and harder to locate and great dogs grew old and died.
By the 1990s the situation was dire, some people had begun to search for the old type of collies and it seemed none could be found anywhere. In the late 1990s after the discovery of the Allison dogs, one of the last remaining lines of old fashioned collie, J. Richard McDuffie organized the Old-Time Farm Shepherd breed (a breed with no written breed description) under the auspices of the National Kennel Club (NKC) to keep these dogs alive and true to type. Mr McDuffie probably did not realize that the formation of the OTFS breed would be seen as a threat to certain groups, these people would go to great lengths to stop his efforts.
Ole Shep
Sojourner Jacob
Ole Shep and some other key dogs were stolen, then pressure was exerted on the NKC to stop recognizing the OTFS as a breed, the NKC subsequently pulled official recognition of the breed while quietly continuing to register new OTFS dogs on the side. A disheartened McDuffie lost interest in the project and handed the reins to Chandler Strunk who kept the OTFS going for a few more years, eventually declining health brought an end to Strunk’s efforts to promote the breed in the mid 2000s.
In the meantime Guy Ormiston attempted to get the Scotch Collie breed recognized by the United Kennel Club (UKC) in 2002 by writing a breed standard and club rules but the UKC, like the NKC, declined to recognize the Scotch Collie as a breed. Andy Ward became interested in these dogs around this time and visited Strunk at his home in Tennessee, at that time Strunk signed papers to make Ward an OTFS breed inspector however the NKC, presumably hoping for the whole OTFS hot-potato would go away, refused to approve his status as an OTFS breed inspector. The handwriting was on the wall, the Old-Time Farm Shepherd could go no further as a breed, the NKC had the breed but refused to recognize it, there was no written standard to define the breed and by refusing to approve new breed inspectors they knew that the breed would die with the last breed inspector, Chandler Strunk.
What had been needed most for all these years since an “old Scotch Collie Club” was first suggested in 1892, was a written breed standard, a place to track pedigrees and an organization to promote the Scotch Collie, and in 2010 Andy Ward working with the advice and support of the few breeders who were not breeding the last of the OTFS blood into the English Shepherd breed (Miriam Munson, Jessica Hennings and Rebeca Bradley) put these pieces in place with the formation of the Old-Time Scotch Collie Association (OTSCA).
The name Old-Time Scotch Collie was discussed and carefully chosen by those founders, the use of the term “old-time” was an homage to McDuffie’s efforts and was intended to indicate that this was a continuation of those efforts. The name “Scotch Collie” had been purposely avoided by McDuffie because he felt it was too closely associated with show collies, but the OTSC founders thought that it had fallen into disuse enough by that time that it no longer carried much baggage other than that associating it with the original pre-dog-show collies and it was less generic than “farm collie”.
The OTSCA used Guy Ormiston’s breed standard with some amendments, they also built an open, online, user-edited pedigree database using the Whippet Breed Archive as a foundation to build upon and the rules used for registering dogs and entering new blood were based on those of the Jack Russell Terrier Club of America, so the foundations of the OTSCA came from various places, this helped the OTSCA to get up and running quickly.
What the OTSCA is doing today was not possible in 1892, the internet has been a key component in the farm collie movement since the 90s, allowing breeders from across the country to connect with each other and potential puppy buyers wherever they are located. It's been a rocky 126 years for the dogs we are currently calling the Old-Time Scotch Collie but things are definitely on the upswing now and their future is looking brighter than it has in a long time. - Old Time Scotch Collie Organization
For more information visit: http://www.scotchcollie.org