Miniature Australian Shepherd? Discussions

They seem to me as if the runts of the litters or the smaller ones have been bred together to create a shorter variety of the breed

one just been on crufts novie jump agility...

Sadly they are not bred to improve the breed but to improve the finances of the breeders.

They are sold for considerably more that correctly sized ASDs

As for the breeders being anti docking-they have no choice re docking it is banned for pastoral breeds QED. My friend breeds correctly sized ASDs & would not breed from an MDR1 carrier(the breeder on the site has let her dog be bred to a carrier !!!)

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Quite frightening really that these two people chose to breed & risk producing puppies that could be MDR1 carriers & have the reaction that can kill to such common drugs !!

As for Rough Collies being Smooth Collies with a coat-yes that is completely correct I have all 4 types of BC coat amongst my dogs

Rjj who is a Smooth coat

Keewee who is a Medium coat

Jessie who has a mix of medium & rough coat

Wu who is a defo Rough coat

They are all BCs

However Shetland Sheepdogs are not miniature Rough Collies. There are no smooth coated Shetland Sheepdogs, there structure is different(especially the heads), there characters & temperaments are completely different & the way they work sheep is also totally different.

Rough/Smooth collies work sheep in a Huntaway style-ie they "bark the sheep"to get them to move & need human supervision. Shetland Sheepdogs were traditionally left with the sheep alone for up to 48 hours & their job is to keep the sheep out of the sea on the beaches where they graze the seaweed unsupervised. They are very independant dogs & if they get "lost"they can prove very difficult to catch trap as they can quickly go almost"feral"(one near here went walkabout for a month in terrible snowy weather a couple of years ago & was running free for a month-when recaptured she was dirty & unkempt, but very very fit as she had obviously been hunting on her own in a very isolated spot)

I have a friend who owns a mini Aussie and she is absolutely gorgeous! A real character

Our friends in Canada have one and he's a handful. He has a natural bob-tail too.

Hmmm, my Roxy is allegedly a Australian Shepherd cross. I wonder if she's a cross of the 'miniature' variety then.

Rough & Smooth collies are the same breed & sometimes Roughs will be born in smooth litters(the rough coat being a recessive gene)

The Shetland sheepdog is not a Miniature Rough Collie, they were originally from smallish spitz dogs used for herding & crossed with small herding mainland dogs were used to herd the smaller sheep native to the Shetland Islands. A small rough collie was crossed into the bloodlines in the 1900s, but otherwise they originated from separate sources.

They look different(especially the head shape)& things like the tail carriage(which in Shelties can be over the back from the Spitz behind them)& temperaments are quite distinctive.