Hints on using this site

The purpose of this site is to supply information on Shetland Sheepdog history, the important bloodlines in the breed, great Shetland Sheepdogs and important kennels. This is a large site, with over 500 multiply linked pages. That can make it slow, and some of the pages do not print easily. In addition, it is still under construction (as what web site is not?) This page has hints on how to handle some of these problems.

If you want to print a page with light text on a dark background, there are several things you can do. My experience is that most Mac computers (and some Unix systems) print these pages out with black text on a white background as long as you do not try to print the background. Netscape 3 and above for the PC has a "black text" option in the print setup dialog; if you select it, the page should print black on white.

If these simple options do not work for you, and the page does not have a "printable version" link, you can go into your browser settings and set them to give black text on a white page. In Netscape Navigator, under the "Options" menu select "General Preferences." Click on the Colors tab. Click on the custom background rectangle and change the color to white or a light pastel color. Then click on the radio button that says "Always use mine." Click on "OK" and from that point until you change your preferences again, you will see all pages with black text on a white background. In my experience, these pages will print with no problem. Remember to go back into the options menu and change back to "Let document override" when you are through printing. Note that if you access a page that would otherwise have a plain "Netscape gray" background, the background will be the new background color you selected, even after you deselect "always use mine."

Another way of printing out text information such as a pedigree is to select the part of the page you want to print on the browser window just as if you were selecting text in a word processor - click and hold the mouse button at the start of the selection, drag the mouse to the end of the selection and release the button. The text you have selected will be highlighted. Go to the edit menu and select "copy" or (on some systems) hold down the command button and hit "c". Then open any word processor or text editor. (You may have to quit your browser first.) Go the the menu and select "paste" or press command-V. You can then save the text or print it out. Just don't claim it as your own work!

By the way, the color schemes on the individual pages code for the line of males and the family of females. Males have light text on dark backgrounds, usually green, blue or violet for CHE dogs and brown shades for BB dogs. Females have dark text on pastel pages, again with different color for each major section of a family.

If you have a slow connection, you may want to change the preferences in your browser. Set the background and type color to what you prefer, and let them override those on the incoming page. Disable the autoload images feature. If you want to see the picture, click on the image icon that will appear if there is a picture as part of the page.

Pictures are an important part of Sheltie history, but as of this time, I do not have all that I would like, or copyright clearance on others. Some are copyrighted, and used with the understanding that that copyright will be recognized. Unless otherwise stated, you are welcome to link to anything in this site, but not to copy it to your own site, or put it up on any other server.

At this point, some photos load as part of the page and some can be reached by clicking on the header. Let me know which works best for you.

The organization of the site is at present based on several large clusters, with some cross-linking, plus an entry page, a links page, and a number of individual articles.

The largest cluster is based on a master page listing all of the Shetland Sheepdogs that have earned the Register of Merit title (sire of 10 Champions or dam of 5) plus a few others who have reached the same totals if the sum of Champions and ROMs is considered. From this master listing, there are links to a page for each ROM. The individual pages have information on the dog's history, pedigree, and (for the older dogs) a list of Champion offspring. If a dog that is listed in a pedigree, as a mate, or as a Champion offspring has a page in the file, there will normally be a link to the individual page.

The second cluster starts with a list of all of the imported Shetland Sheepdogs appearing behind ROM pedigrees. Again, each dog listed is linked to its own page. Eventually, I may try to put up some kennel histories for the importing kennels.

The third major cluster is genealogy charts in an outline format. These charts give the top (sire lines) and bottom (Families) traces of the pedigrees of all ROM Shelties back to the unregistered foundation stock of the breed.

There are also pages or smaller clusters on National Specialty Best of Breed winners, Shelties that shine in multiple fields, Sheltie genetics, Sheltie size, the Collie crosses, the corrections made by the AKC to the disputed Banchory pedigrees, and links to other Sheltie informational sites.

Navigation through a site of this size can be confusing. Most pages within any given cluster have a link back to the master page of the cluster, usually centered near the bottom of the page. In addition, the Sheltie head button at the bottom of this and most other pages will take you back to the entry page.

In order to post pedigrees without actually having to load pictures, I have used an indented style which I hope comes through on your browser. Pedigrees read like this:

               Sire of paternal grandsire
          Paternal grandsire
               Dam of paternal grandsire
     Sire
               Sire of paternal granddam
          Paternal granddam
               Dam of paternal granddam
Dog
               Sire of maternal grandsire
          Maternal grandsire
               Dam of maternal grandsire
     Dam
               Sire of maternal granddam
          Maternal granddam
               Dam of maternal granddam

This is a preformatted style that should come out looking like a pedigree without the lines and brackets, much as pedigrees are usually shown in magazine ads. If it does not look that way on your browser, let me know what browser, machine, and system you are using, and try to describe what it looks like. Getting text to format on the Internet is a problem.

The information on these pages has been gathered over a number of years from a wide variety of sources. The primary sources are the AKC Stud Books and the English Gazettes and Stud Books. (All pedigrees are derived from one or the other of these sources, plus the Canadian Stud Books.) Other sources include:

  • All of the ASSA Handbooks, including both statistics and articles.
  • ESSA Handbooks and Genealogy charts back through 1975.
  • Numerous books on the breed, including
    • The Shetland Sheepdog, by Catherine Coleman
    • Shetland Sheepdogs, by Mary Davis
    • Shetland Sheepdogs, by B. M. and J. M. Herbert
    • The Inheritance of Coat Color in Dogs, by C. C. Little
    • Sheltie Talk, by Betty Jo McKinney and Barbara Reiseberg
    • The Shetland Sheepdog, by Margaret Osborne
    • The New Complete Shetland Sheepdog, by Maxwell Riddle
    • All About the Shetland Sheepdog, by Felicity M. Rogers
    • The Shetland Sheepdog, by Beryl Thynne (first published 1916)
    • No Greater Love, by Elizabeth Whelen
  • Numerous periodicals, including
    • The AKC Gazette
    • The Nutshell (ESSA Newsletter)
    • The Sheltie International
    • The Sheltie Pacesetter
    • The Sheltie Special (no longer published)
    • The Shetland Sheepdog Magazine (no longer published)
  • Personal correspondance (and occasional face-to-face meetings) with many Sheltie people, including
    • Mary van Wagenen (who supplied many of the older photographs)
    • Elizabeth Whelen
    • Constance B. Hubbard
    • Felicity Rogers (England)
    • Mrs. Marion Marriage (England)

     

  • and correspondance with others interested in the breed, including
    • Ann Hedge
    • Karen Hostetter
    • Charlotte Clem McGowan
    • Bob Miller
    • Marie Vihonsky

Farokh Irani has been kind enough to give the site a home on his server, and Amy Zoss has put in hours proofing it. Bob Miller has provided updates on ROMs earning the title after late 1991. Any remaining errors are mine.

Many of the individual dog pages were cut and pasted from the computer files of a book I self-published in 1988, the Register of Merit Source Book for American Shetland Sheepdogs. The HTML code was initially written using WordPerfect v. 3.5 for the Macintosh, and later switched to Claris Home Page. If you find problems other than those mentioned above, please let me know.

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sbowling@mosquitonet.com

Last updated May 29, 1999