This article first appeared in the AKC Gazette.
Written by Marianne Sullivan
Sometime in the late 1800s, the story goes, James A. Watson, a prominent judge and Collie fancier, sketched a drawing of a Collie that everyone agreed illustrated the ideal. We’ve been working on that ideal ever since. In my September 2016 column I write about the importance of words, how we choose and use them, and how they inform our image of the Collie. As Edwin J. Myers said in an article on the evolution of the American standard “our standard is a word picture of the mental image of the perfect collie.” It’s the phrase “mental image” that took me on a different tack. We have to have a mental image before we can put the ideal into words.
The first American standard was adopted in 1886, nearly verbatim from the English version, and up until about 1923 relatively few changes were made. Regarding changes, Dr. O.P. Bennett lamented “I am quite frank to admit that there are some descriptions in it that I think might be worded better, but to me it seems we are not so much in need of a new standard as we are of a more uniform interpretation of the one we have.” Sounds pretty contemporary, doesn’t it? They faced a dilemma that continues on into present day; with increasing numbers of dog shows across the country, how were new and inexperienced fanciers who, as Myers states, “Did not have the years of experience enjoyed by the long-time pillars of the breed,” going to develop a mental image of the ideal?
As the chair of the committee to clarify the standard, Ed Myers felt strongly that the standard was simply the mental image in words and that it hadn’t changed since that first pencil drawing in the late 1800s. He insisted, “Without a clear mental image of the Collie, the standard is little more than a meaningless jumble of words.” (It would be an interesting experiment to ask someone who has never seen a Collie, or a dog for that matter, to draw a picture of one based on our written standard.) Myers recalls Chris Casselman of Hertzville fame tapping the side of his head and declaring, “I don’t have any need for the words of the standard. The standard is right up here. If it isn’t up here no one can drill a hole in the side of my head and cram the words in to any advantage.”
With this perspective in mind, one has to ask how this ideal mental image is taught-and learned-today. A look at dog show results or photographs on facebook and one might be tempted to say there is a broad translation. Refer to our Illustrated Standard by Lorraine Still and that interpretation is increasingly divergent in some areas! The standard was written, as O.P. Bennett said, to provide a more uniform interpretation of the ideal Collie. Yet the Catch 22 of this is, according to Ed Myers and others, there must be a mental image before the standard can be properly interpreted. We often hear folks say that we must read the standard in order to have a mental image, but that image in actuality comes from learning the ideal first. It then follows that it is the experienced breeders’ responsibility to provide the proper interpretation. The CCA breeder’s seminar and the judge’s seminar at the National are opportunities to learn from the masters, as are any regional seminars and the Virtues Match at Sunnybank. One venue in decline, sadly, is local specialty clubs offering programs where novice and experienced fanciers come together. One hundred and fifty years later, we still have the challenge of that mental image and the interpretation of the ideal Collie.
