Dog breed · United Kingdom, Scotland
The Border Collie is a breed of British herding dog of the collie type of medium size. It originates in the region of the Anglo-Scottish border, and descends from the traditional sheepdogs once found all over the British Isles. It is kept mostly as a sheep-herding dog or as a companion animal. It competes with success in sheepdog trials. It has been claimed that it is the most intelligent breed of dog.
Description: Border Collies are, on average, medium-sized dogs with a moderate amount of coat, which is often thick and prone to shedding. They have a double coat that varies from smooth to rough and is occasionally curled. While black and white is the most common colouring, the breed appears in just about any colour and pattern known to occur in dogs. Some of these include black tricolour (black/tan/white), liver and white, and red tricolour (red/tan/white) which have also been seen regularly, and other colours such as blue, lilac, red merle, blue merle, brindle, and Australian red (also known as ee red, blonde, recessive red, or gold) which is seen less frequently. Some Border Collies may also have single-colour coats.
Eye colour varies from brown to green, and occasionally eyes of differing colour occur; this is usually seen with merles. This trait is known as heterochromia. The ears of the Border Collie are also variable — some have fully erect ears, some fully dropped ears, and others semi-erect ears (similar to those of the rough collie).
Although working Border Collie handlers sometimes have superstitions about the appearance of their dogs (handlers may avoid mostly white dogs due to the unfounded idea that sheep will not respect a white or almost all white dog), in general, the American Border Collie Association considers a dog's appearance to be irrelevant. Instead, it is considered more useful to identify a working Border Collie by its attitude and ability.
Dogs bred for show are more homogeneous in appearance than working Border Collies since to win in conformation showing they must conform closely to breed club standards that are specific on many points of the structure, coat, and colour. Kennel clubs specify, for example, that the Border Collie must have a "keen and intelligent" expression, and that the preferred eye colour is dark brown. In deference to the dog's working origin, scars and broken teeth received in the line of duty are not to be counted against a Border Collie in the show ring. The males' height from withers comes from 48 to 56 centimetres (19 to 22 in), females from 46 to 53 centimetres (18 to 21 in).
Life Span: A 2022 study in England of veterinary records found a life expectancy of 12.1 years, slightly higher than the 11.82 life expectancy for crossbreed dogs. A 2024 UK study found a life expectancy of 13.1 years for the breed compared to an average of 12.7 for purebreeds and 12 for crossbreeds.
Leading causes of death in a 2004 Kennel Club survey were cancer (23.6%), old age (17.9%) and cerebral vascular afflictions (9.4%).
Conditions: Collie eye anomaly is an autosomal recessive condition caused by an autosomal recessive mutation in the NHEJ1 gene that affects Collies and related breeds, such as the Border Collie.
Two types of hearing loss occur in the breed. The first type is pigment associated and is found in Border Collie puppies, although the puppies can have congenital sensorineural deafness from birth as well. The second type is known as adult-onset hearing loss. These dogs have a normal auditory brainstem response test as pups but gradually lose their hearing some time between one and eight years of age. The American Border Collie Association's Health & Education Foundation (ABCA HEF) is supporting research into the genetic causes of this disease. Suspect regions of the genome have been identified, but the exact causal mutation(s) have not so far been located.
Neuronal ceroid lipofuscinosis (NCL) is a rare but serious disease that is limited to show Border Collies. NCL results in severe neurological impairment and early death; afflicted dogs rarely survive beyond two years of age. The mutation causing the form of the disease found in Border Collies was identified by Scott Melville in the laboratory of Alan Wilton of the School of Biotechnology and Biomolecular Sciences, University of New South Wales. There is no treatment or cure, but a DNA test is now available to detect carriers as well as affected dogs.
History: The Border Collie is descended from landrace collies, a type found widely in the British Isles. The name for the breed came from its probable place of origin along the Anglo-Scottish border. Mention of the "collie" or "Colley" type first appeared toward the end of the 19th century, although the word "collie" is older than this and has its origin in the Scots language. It is also thought that the word 'collie' comes from the old Celtic word for useful. Many Border Collies today can be traced back to a dog known as Old Hemp.
In 1915, James Reid, Secretary of the International Sheep Dog Society (ISDS) in the United Kingdom first used the term "border collie" to distinguish those dogs registered by the ISDS from the Kennel Club's collie (or Scotch collie, including the rough collie and smooth collie) which originally came from the same working stock but had developed a different, standardised appearance following introduction to the show ring in 1860 and mixture with different breeds.
