Old Shep is of course the most famous of the Old Time farm shepherds. He has a statue
in his honor, see his story above link "Old Shep"
You can see he is a collie type dog, only judging from the train in the backgroiund, he was much larger than the dogs we see today.
Old Jim is another famous Farm Shepherd, a large dog from the Northeast.
Custer had many dogs, this pup here is pretty typical of the "breed". Many dogs were left entact, and bred and choose their own mates. The larger, more protective type dogs went west with pioneers as livestock and family protection. Many were used as draft, driving livestock and night guard.
this is the most famous photo of Gerneral Custer. The dog was of the "lurcher" type, only much beefier. Heather Houlahan has this to say about the photo: "The beefy piebald dog in the first photo has the field marks of the once ubiquitous farm shepherd or farm collie, from which sprang my own working dogs."
This photo shows a large collie type dog, unusual white collar not usually found in these dated photos. The team is a draft team, so emagine the size of this dog!
Elaine Reynolds has been researching the Old Time Farm Shepherd for years. This is on her site: She and I have had many discussions about the differences in the Farm Collie, of which she mostly speaks of here, and the Old Time Farm Shepherd as pictured above.
OLD TIME FARM SHEPHERDS
Once the most popular dog in the country this dog was all but extinct when a few people decided to revive it. J. Richard McDuffie of Aiken, South Carolina and Erica DuBois of Nova Scotia began a simultaneous search for the old
Scotch Collie type of dog in the eighties. This dog was a quite different dog from the show collie of today, although the AKC Collies are one of the breeds that descended from this type. In spite of being separated by distance,
Erika DuBois and
Mr. McDuffie have helped one another and have found four separate bloodlines of this type of dogs. Due to the efforts of these two individuals, there are now over fifty Old Time Farm Shepherds registered with the National Kennel Club, an organization that specializes in the registration of treeing hounds, earth dogs, and
squirrel dogs as well as other rare breeds.
Mr. McDuffie in particular is interested in locating the dogs that show the hunting instincts of the Scotch collie, or "treeing farm shepherds" that were so common everywhere until the last half of this century. Mr. McDuffie is experienced in this type of endeavor, having successfully led efforts to locate and reestablish viable populations of two other breeds of dogs and one breed of horses. He also writes two columns for Full Cry.
Many descendants of the Old Scotch Collies were registered with various associations as English Shepherds, Border collies, or Australian Shepherds, and in Great Britain, the Border Collie, AKC Collie, and the Shetland Sheepdog continued to develop as other branches of this family. The Welsh Shepherd, or collie, still exists in Great Britain and there are currently efforts underway to form a registry and breed association for them. Many of these dogs today retain the instincts and intelligence of these forebears.
These dogs were a versatile breed, they excelled at herding livestock, guarding (both livestock and the family), hunting and predator control. Their duties varied from protecting the baby from snakes to moving the bull. As the focus of American life has moved from the homestead to the urban areas, the need for this type of all-purpose dog is dissappearing. People have abandoned the Old Time Farm Shepherd for more "exotic" specialized breeds, and show and trial dogs from Great Britain.
Today the descendants of these dogs are more often merely companions than herding partners, and even the dogs that are being entered in herding or agility competitions are not necessarily being selected for their ability to think on their own. Some are now being trained for search and rescue, and there is a movement currently underway to use this breed as guide dogs, endeavors that hope to use this superior thinking ability in a wonderful way!
Old Time Farm Shepherds exhibit an amazing intelligence and the combined instincts of herding and livestock guardians. They love to please their human partners, but can think on their own and think using choice and consequences to a degree that is often unbelievable to many canine training experts that are unacquainted with this breed. One owner of a farm shepherd said that he could tell his dog the name of the cow he needed, and the dog would fetch the specific one! Shep, an Old Time Farm Shepherd from Montana in the thirties, exhibited undying devotion.
Many modern English Shepherds still exhibit this amazing intelligence. Sue Lesly, reports that her English Shepherd dog, Abby, herded her goats into the barn and held them there until she could get home to fix the fence. For a detailed account of Abby's story click here. Another fine example of this herding/guarding combination is Micki, owned by Val Dambacher and bred by Rick McDuffie. Ranger is the grandsire of Micki, as well as Traveler, Jake, and Jacob.
Others continue to help their families on the farm like Chico here.
The farm shepherds in this country quite likely also carry the blood of other types of herding dogs that were brought here by immigrants from other locations in Europe. Some of the breeds that very likely had an actual, but less significant influence on the genetic make-up of the American Old Time Farm Shepherd, are the French Beauceron, the various types of the Scandinavian Lapphunds, the various types of German Spitz and earlier types of the German Shepherd. Caucasian Ovcharkas very likely accompanied the immigrants from Eastern Europe and Russia as well. The farm shepherds in Kansas exhibited various types of this mixture. Delilah is said to resemble these midwest farmshepherds. Delilah came from Hearts United for Animals in Nebraska. Other farmshepherds that were described this way were from the Pacific Northwest. Dusty Copeland said:
". I have been trying to bring back the old farm Shepherd from the Pacific northwest. my husband's family, as well as most ranchers from the area had old fashioned farm shepherds years ago. They were descendents of dogs brought across the plains in wagon trains, used to guard the family and flocks. They were larger than the dogs that appear to be on your site, 80-130 pounds, rough coated, usually yellow with a black mask, or sable or light tan to white in color. Most of the other characteristics as described in some of the old articles were the same, including the double dewclaws. If you or anyone else is interested in these dogs please e-mail me at dustyc@cot.net"
Although his color is somewhat unusual, JJ is also said to be representative of a type of farm shepherd formerly common in the Pacific Northwest. Here are photos of JJ.
The predominant ancestor of the American Old Time Farm Shepherd was the "old Scotch Collie". These dogs originated in the north of Scotland, as evidenced by Bewick in 1790. Historical incidents, namely the Battle of Culloden and the subsequent immigration of numerous Scotsmen (including Flora MacDonald) to North Carolina around 1750, had introduced a viable population of this breed. Dunrovin's Old Shep was a dog of this type, and quite possibly this line is the last pure line of this type in the country today. Shep and his littermates are the backbone of the NKC Old Time Farm Shepherd genetic pool. Compare his picture to this photo from the Library of Congress.
After the Revolutionary war, many of the Scottish settlers in North Carolina lost their land, (due to their unfortunate allegiance to King George), and either returned to Scotland, or moved west.
The first Scottish families settled in Tennessee at about the same time as Bewick published his book of quadrupeds. Not surprisingly, the descendants of Dunrovin's Old Shep closely resemble these dogs in looks and function. This is due to the efforts of the family that was devoted to the careful breeding and preservation of this line for decades.
Queen Victoria was a dog fancier, and she had Scotch collies in her kennels. She crossed these dogs with Borzois that were imported from Russia. This initial cross had far reaching and long lasting effects. Throughout the first part of this century, the registered show collies had to have the look that this cross gave them to be competitive in the show ring. Unfortunately (or fortunately depending upon your perspective) the Borzoi blood did nothing to enhance the ability of the collie to earn his keep on a farm, and the term "farmcollie" became a derogatory appelation among the registered, show collie crowd, The placid, Borzoi temperament was deemed more valuable than the traditional Scotch Collie working ability. Nevertheless, there are some AKC collies of today that retain much of the original instinct of the working Scotch collie.
There is now a small group of Collie fanciers that want to locate registered AKC collies of this type, and encourage the preservation of the important functional, physical, mental,behavioral and aesthetic characteristics of this type for the future. They are the Classic Victorian Collie Club, and have a good library of historical collie pictures and information online. Tracy of Fordwich,is considered by many to be a beautiful variation of this type..
Another Scottish influence on the Old Time Farm Shepherd was the ancestral (pre-AKC) form of the Shetland Sheepdog. A small type of farm shepherd, called the midget collie, (about 30 lbs average), is known to have existed between the Oklahoma Panhandle and central Arkansas during the nineteen fifties and sixties. I have seen three of these that were white, two of the white dogs had sable caps or ears. Another was reportedly a grey and white, the grey being non-merle, like the color of a beardie. Those of us who are familiar with this breed agree that Daisy, a registered English Shepherd looks remarkably similar to these dogs, as does this "collie" from New Zealand. Here is Chipper a 45 lb "farmcollie" that was a registered "Shetland Sheepdog".
This picture of a
Montana sheep dog from the forties resembles the midget collies we knew in the fifties.
You can see the changes in these photos from the Farm Collie to the Farm Shepherd
Old Farm Collies in Nova Scotia
Bear, sibling of King | 
Yuill's Tippy, sibling of King |
Here is Delilah, another recent OTFSAnd Old Shep, in many OTFS pedigrees
these dogs are recent Farm Shepherds. Chico is another example of a recent Farm Shepherd. In fact, these type stories are the NORM told by owners of Old Time Farm Shepherds. In Chewy's first litter, every owner had contacted us with similar stories.
Chico a "once in a lifetime" dog 
Ben Kozar and Chico about 1985 I got Chico in 1975 when I was a young mother ad Erin was just a toddler. The first time I saw him I fell in love. He was the cutest pup- red with a white blaze and black circles under his eyes, these clownish circles were made even cuter by a very solemn expression. When he was grown the black circles dissappeared and but he still had a few black hairs at the base of his tail. The first day we played together all day, puppy and toddler and I and I taught him not to jump on the baby. He was very willing and attentive. The second day he ran gleefully up to us and slid to a stop with his little puppy butt on the ground, because he remembered the lessons of the previous day. At that point I knew this pup was really something special! I soon found out that he belonged to a neighbor he belonged to a HUGE guy whose nickname was Tiny and his name was Chico. Tiny had won him as a prize at a county fair. When Tiny would go to work he would leave the pup put and the pup would come play with us. After a week or so Tiny gave him to us, telling us that he just couldn't housebreak him. We were thrilled to have him and I must add that for 11 years, the rest of his life, he never had an accident in my house. From that time forward whenever possible Chico was my shadow, even when he was outside and I was not, if I would sit at the sewing machine and sew I would glance out the window and he would be lying where he could look inside and gaze right into my eyes. Chico loved the entire family, but he was MY dog! In his eyes I was a goddess, the epitome of everything a woman should be, I was the most beautiful creature that ever walked the face of the earth and my wishes were his commands. He knew the rules and lived by them. I could leave a steak on the coffee table in the room with a hungry Chico, and he would never dream of touching it! Because of Chico I know how I should worship and serve my God, and I realize how far short of this goal I fall. I know I can never be as good a person as Chico thought I was, but I hope someday to be as good a person as he was a good dog. Chico would try his very best to talk to me, using his voice and intonations and imitating human speech. Once he was gone for a week or so and when he returned he told me a long story of woe and adventure, then ate a pan full of gravy on his dog food and curled up and went to sleep. I have wished a thousand times that I could have understood what he was trying to say. He learned to greet me at the door every time I returned home from a trip to town and say "Aroh!". When he was a pup sometimes we would go down to the ranch and watch my dad's Aussies work, since we didn't have any livestock I just had him sit and watch, and a couple of years later, he began helping, and he never made any of the mistakes he had seen the Aussies make. He worked upright in a very gentle manner, applying only as much pressure as needed, but never failing to apply enough to get the job done. Often he would accomplish the goals without the stock knowing what had happened! The other 4-H kids were jealous of Erin because while they had to walk their lambs to exercise them , Erin just had to ask Chico to chase hers around a little every day! This chore was also accomplished very gently with minimum stress to the lamb. Chico hated snakes. Sometimes he would come home all swelled up and I would get some DMSO from the vet and treat him with it but in a few days he would be back to normal. I have always been a boots and jeans type of girl, but one day I was running around barefoot in a housedress and decided to run outside and check on a doe that was about to kindle. The rabbit hutches were in the old tractor shed behind the chicken house and to get there I had to go down a space that was six feet wide between the chicken house and garage. Halfway there I met a five foot blacksnake that had been eating the baby rabbits! I called for Chico! He arived on the double and grabbed the snake and dispatched it immediately by grabbing him and popping him- in the process hitting my bare leg with the snake's fangs! I "knew" that the snake was non-poisonous, but it was quite an adrenalin rush all the same! This reptilian hatred extended to the hard round kind and if he found a turtle they were treated to the same shake and throw method that dispatched snakes so effectively. One summer day he had an adult spotted terrapin and was shaking her and throwing her up in the air and had her shell cracked and she was bleeding a little, Ben at that time was the little boy in the photo above. We took the turtle inside and got a rabbit nest box and kept her for a pet for the next year or so. Ben named her Orange Spot Polka Dot. We knew it was a girl because she had brown eyes. Males have red eyes. In the eighties, Erin was in the 4-H, and we got 50 white leghorn pullets- from the highest production commercial laying strains. These chickens were provided to the 4-H kids each year, and to pay for the chicks we were required to bring four back to the fair in the fall to be sold and the proceeds going to purchase the next year's chicks. We always had some of the best ones at the fair, as ours ran loose and cleaned up after our horses. One year my chickens started disappearing. I told the county agent, and he said "coyotes" a few mornings later I looked out the window and there was Chico in the middle of the road defying the right of TWO WOLVES to approach the house. I went out to back him up, and they left. We had a little part beagle at the time, named Snoopy, who had delusions of grandeur like the cartoon character, and thought he was a German Shepherd. By this time, Chico was 11 and practically toothless! I told my brother and the county agent that the problem was wolves, they insisted that it was coyotes, but these wolves were a good eight inches taller than Chico! That Saturday morning we heard Snoopy chasing something down the slough. My husband said, "I hope that coyote doesn't get Snoopy." "I feel sorry for that "coyote" if he can't outrun Snoopy!" I replied. (I had seen Chico and Snoopy take on larger dogs before. Chico would get their attention and Snoopy would jump no their heads and pierce their ears!) About half an hour later, one of them showed up in front of the house. I called him like he was my long-lost dog, and he was overjoyed to come up to me. We loaded him up and took him to Wal-Mart and dumped him. (WalMart was always busy on Saturday, and we didn't have time or money to take him 75 miles to the nearest humane Society.) He was probably 1/2 Malamute, weighed about 95 lbs. The other one was more wary. He would never get close to us at all. He soon dissappeared, so the chicken slaughter stopped. We had enough pullets left to take to the fair. Incidentally, the one wolf that remained wild was red. Throughout the eleven years that I was privileged to own him, I never found a female like Chico. The old farmshepherd dogs were dying out along with the family farms! After internet access entered our lives, it took me three days to find dogs similar to Chico and the other dogs my family had since before I was born. Since that time I have done everything I can to see that this breed and dogs similar to my Chico continue to exist. I have not bred one just like him, but I have come close and along the way many people have told me that a dog I bred turned out to be their once in a lifetime dog! At times breeding dogs can be heartbreaking and disappointing, but when someone tells me that I have bred their once in a lifetime dog, that makes all the trouble and effort of breeding dogs worthwhile! When my house burned down in 1990 I lost most of the photos I had of Chico and have to carry most of my memories in my head. My relatives had lots of photos of my kids, but not my dogs. Maybe this makes the memories I have of Chico seem even more vivid, these memories of my once in a lifetime dog are there each time I plan a mating or evaluate a potential breeding dog. If I have bred any good dogs, I owe most of it to Chico, and the rest to the people who bred the ancestors of my dogs. Elaine Reynolds September 2006 |
I came near meeting a heavy loss two days before leaving the city. Somehow I got sandwiched in on the East Side above the Brooklyn bridge in the congested district of the foreign quarters and finally at nightfall drove into a stable, put the oxen in the stalls and, as usual, the dog Jim in the wagon. The next morning Jim was gone. The stablemen said he had left the wagon a few moments after I had and had been stolen. The police accused the stablemen of being a party to the theft, in which I think they were right. Anyway, the day wore off and no tidings. Money could not buy that dog. He was an integral part of the expedition; always on the alert; always watchful of the wagon during my absence and always willing to mind what I bid him to do. He had had more adventures than any other member of the work; first he had been tossed over a high brush by the ox Dave; then shortly after pitched headlong over a barbed wire fence by an irate cow; then came the fight with a wolf; following this came a narrow escape from the rattlesnake in the road; after this a trolley car run over him. rolling him over and over again until he came out as dizzy as a drunken man—I thought he was a “goner” that time sure, but he soon straightened up, and finally in the streets of Kansas City was run over by a heavy truck while fighting another dog. The other dog was killed outright, while Jim came near having his neck broken, lost one of his best fighting teeth and had several others broken. I sent him to a veterinary surgeon and curiously enough he made no protest while having the broken teeth repaired and extracted. He could eat nothing but soup and milk for several days, and that poured down him, as he could neither lap nor swallow liquids. It came very near being “all day” with Jim, but he is here with me all right and seemingly good for a new adventure.
No other method could disclose where to find him than to offer a reward, which I did, and feel sure I paid the twenty dollars to one of the fellow-parties to the theft who was brazen faced enough to demand pay for keeping him. Then was when I got up and talked pointedly, and was glad enough to get out of that part of the city.
From The busy life of eighty-five years of Ezra Meeker By Ezra Meeker
1916
The dog Jim shown here with the team on the bridge, has come all the way across the continent; his habit of trotting on the way ahead and then returning to meet the team, and next to run out on first one side the road and then the other, has caused him to travel more than three times as far as the oxen; estimate has travelled 10,000 miles; he always disliked to ride in the wagon; Scotch Collie, 3 years old (July, 1907).
Jim was the faithful companion of Washington Territory pioneer Ezra Meeker, and accompanied him on his two overland re-crossings of the Oregon Trail in 1906 and 1910. Jim survived being pitched over a fence by an ox named Dave, a fight with a wolf, an encounter with a rattlesnake, and being run over by a trolley. He later disappeared in a train station near Brooklyn, NY, but was returned when Meeker offered a reward of 20 dollars. “Money could not buy that dog”, he explained. “He was an integral part of the expedition.”
The dog Jim shown here with the team on the bridge, has come all the way across the continent; his habit of trotting on the way ahead and then returning to meet the team, and next to run out on first one side the road and then the other, has caused him to travel more than three times as far as the oxen; estimate has travelled 10,000 miles; he always disliked to ride in the wagon; Scotch Collie, 3 years old (July, 1907).