Thanks, I just reread the ASSA history again, which seems to be fairly detailed at least from the commencement of American involvement. Would appear that the ~13" size was the standard back then, which when modern diet is added to the equation explains larger size along with more crossing to Collies in the USA.
JLSOhio51, just the other day I saw the smallest dog ever at the park, honestly maybe 5-6" to the top of his head. That dog had everybody laughing because he spent the whole hour plus away from his owners and friends at one end of the park and went evrywhere else, investigating and checking out other dogs. Extremely cute, and astounding in his pluck.
However he is the exception in my experience.
Small dogs were and are bred for certain tasks, like companionship, ratting, etc. Its not right or wrong, it is what it is.
So on one level, if someone can responsibly breed a Toy, I guess its no different.
However I'm wondering if people doing this are actually half as clever as they think they are. The old-timers seemed to have a fairly good idea of how to breed down, based on dog type, motivation etc.
Just taking a Sheltie which is arguably a working dog, and breeding it down, even intelligently with 'runts' that are not defective, seems to be asking for trouble. You are taking what used to be a small-mid sized dog, and reducing his size. Thats it. As you breed them smaller and smaller, you are changing phyiscal attributes, but not mental or motivation.
So these 10" Toys are going to naturally think they are 15-18" dogs when dealing with other dogs, people, animals.
However they are less than 1/2 the size they think they are, and their dealing with others will be impacted negatively.
Size still matters in the animal kingdom, and even though its sometimes funny to watch a small dog with attitude bark at a large dog, I don't know if we can truely say what is going on in their minds.
Breeding a Toy from a larger line just on runts is different than breeding something like a Min-Pin for example, where they bred them down from European Herding and Guard dog stock by including smaller stock such as Italian Greyhounds and Dachshounds which have different motivations.
You don't have a full sized Pinscher living in a tiny body, you have a Pinscher/Greyhound/Dox cross with motivations more suited to its size, and consequently, will not be trying to fulfill some inner motivation that it simply can't due to its size.
This may be less of an issue with Shelties by comparison, however if just breeding Toy Shelties from smaller and smaller runts, I think there is a good chance that they're innately going to continue to try and do whatever the breed instinct is too do, and continually be frustrated at their inability to do it. Which may manifest itself in any number of ways.
Or maybe the breed is resiliant enough to be bred to Toys, and be happy as a curiosity without any issues at all. I'd just hate to hear in the future that many of them are killed because they get stepped on trying to playing ankle-footsie with their owners...
So many things to add.
I'll start with the last article by the retrieverman, he is way off the mark, better to stick with the official histories undertaken by experienced people with extensive research. The question isn't about the role and existence of the Toonies - the questions are around which breeds it contains. His premise is that Toonies were not farm dogs at all but just a toy breed and boy does he twist things up.
Height change. Two reasons why Shelties have gotten bigger - one is the Roughs being bred into them increased the size. This is also partly why British and American sizes differ, because Roughs come in British and American sizes. And we feed them much better now so generally they will get bigger - it's part of nature.
Breeding from runts troubles me. Runts are more likely to have health problems so doesn't that mean you're continually breeding from dogs with potential problems, increasing the risk of problems in your lines.
