IF YOUR SHELTIE IS LOST

  Shelties are known to run when they are in a strange location or with strangers. They may not even respond to their owner once they start running. Be careful if you are keeping a Sheltie belonging to someone else, or for the first month that a adult or older puppy is in a new home. Keep the Sheltie away from doors that open onto unfenced yards. Take her out only on leash for the first month. Make sure all fences are secure: no holes, gaps between gates, or placed where they can easily dig under.
If your Sheltie runs away, do not chase him. Walk away from him to see if he will follow you. Call from a squatting position, which is non-threatening. If this fails, try to keep the dog within your sight and quietly corner him. 
If your Sheltie disappears from sight, you must act quickly. Go to as many houses as possible in the area where you last saw the dog and ask the residents to watch and call you if he is spotted. Instruct them not to try to catch the dog, but rather to call you if he is sighted, and not animal control. Strangers chasing a Sheltie will make him disappear quicker than anything.
     Call local humane shelters, Sheltie rescue, and the local radio station to notify them of your loss. If the dog was recently purchased, by all means alert the former owner if they live nearby. The dog may respond better to them, or he may try to find his former home. Run an ad in the local newspaper offering a reward and describing the dog (“resembles a small collie”). State his color, sex, age, call name, location lost, and your phone number. Finally, call all veterinarians in the area. Let them know if the dog is tattooed or has a microchip. Tack up reward posters with a photo of your dog in an area encompassing several miles from where he disappeared. Then go home and wait. If your dog is lost for several days, keep repeating your calls to all sources to let them know that you are still looking. Searches such as this are generally successful. Shelties are intelligent and hardy and can survive amazing odds. Eventually they will look for food.

PERMANENT IDENTIFICATION
     Microchips have  replaced tatooing as the preferred method of permanently identifying pets. You should be aware that there are many, many manufacturers of microchips and identifying organizations. Not all are equal. The only national programs that are accessed by most veterinary hospitals and shelter organizations are  The AKC CAR Program and the Home Again identification program.  Registering your dog’s microchip number with these programs probably guarantees the best chance that he can be located outside your immediate vicinity.

article by Betty Jo McKinney

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SHELTIE EAR SET

The correct Sheltie ear is beautiful. It contributes to a soft, intelligent expression and gives an alert look to the entire dog. It is set high, opening forward, semi-erect. The top third of the leather breaks forward with no inclination to turn to the sides. The ear itself is small in relation to the head; the leather strong, yet flexible, and medium in thickness.
     Shelties have one of the more functional types of ears in dogdom. The semi-erect ear is useful as well as being aesthetically pleasing. The erect base of the ear works as a scope to trap sounds, providing very acute hearing. The set of the ear allows for mobility, and again, the ability to catch more sound waves. The forward break causes rain to run off, protecting the delicate inner ear without the necessity of pinning the ear (which handicaps the hearing).
     Because ears are extremely noticeable on a Sheltie, even an untrained eye readily detects any deviation from the ideal. Therefore specifications for proper ears are more exacting than in many breeds and are one reason people sometimes place disproportionate emphasis on a Sheltie’s ears.
     Ear set should be kept in proper perspective. All other things being equal, in show competition a dog with correct, natural ears ought not lose to a dog whose ears have been “manufactured” beyond natural perfection. Although the ears are set high on top of the head, the inside edge should not touch. The ears should be somewhat flexible and the dog will move them up and down. They should not look as though they are cast from concrete. Some Sheltie’s ears are kept in braces so long that the ears hardly move, which looks very artificial.
     Shelties whose ears never needs to be corrected are convenient and desirable in a breeding dog. For decades the original working dogs exhibited a fair percentage of individuals with naturally semi-erect ears. We should expect as much today.

HEREDITY VS. ARTIFICIAL CORRECTION

     Unfortunately, ears are influenced not only by heredity, but also by emotional stress, teething, puberty, coat loss, temperature, hormonal change, calcium assimilation, humidity, health and age. And to top this off, they rarely inherit as predicted.
     Some Sheltie’s ears are perfect regardless of the environment and others are utterly hopeless. The majority need assistance at crucial times. This is especially important during the period when a pup is teething—between ten weeks and nine months of age.
     A few breeders feel strongly that ears should never be touched, and that showing and breeding dogs that have had their ears fixed causes the occurrence of problem ears in the breed to increase. Breeding only those individuals with perfectly natural ears will help to eliminate or reduce the genetics for prick or heavy, low-set ears in the gene pool.
     However this is not always practical. Dogs from several generations of natural-eared Shelties may show up with problem ears. Earset is affected by physiological, environmental, and stress factors as well as heredity. So you have to ask, if you have achieved many goals in a breeding program, should you eliminate a dog with incorrect ears but possessing more important virtues like correct shoulder angulation or perfect balance? A realistic position, it seems to me, is to value and breed for correct ears, apply corrective measures to those with less than perfect ears, and eliminate from a breeding program any dog that consistently produces very low or very persistent prick ears.

article by Betty Jo McKinney

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BREEDING THE ALL-PURPOSE SHETLAND SHEEPDOG

The late Jean Clodwick named her kennel “Trinity” to reflect her goals of breeding for conformation, obedience, and herding—a particularly tough challenge.
     Temperament was one of the qualities she valued most. “I can compromise on type,” she said, “I need to have sound temperaments and sound legs. I have to have balanced structure. I can forgive things like a little less coat or a wider backskull, or maybe a rounder eye. I want my dogs to be as correct as possible, because I want them to go in the breed ring, too, and hold their own, but I would give up a little bit on type to get the rest. The Sheltie is a working dog—it says it in the Standard.”
     Because of her aspirations to breed top working Shelties, Jean stayed away from show ring fads and focused on correct structure. She felt that an agile, moderate Sheltie best fit the bill. “Massive bone on sixteen-inch and under dogs produces too much bulk and not enough flexibility,” she said.
     Careful selection enabled Jean to claim that about 80 percent of her puppies showed with herding instinct. She looked for pups with a want-to-please attitude. “We want them to really look for us and want to be with us.”

                    Condensed from Shetland Sheepdogs at Work