Hiya
I had my sheltie pups ears glued over since I got her and took it off at about 5 1/2 months, then used vaseline till 6 months when she went to her first show and I couldn't get it off!  Her ears have always been all over the place, got all her adult teeth at 5 months.  But this last week her ears have pricked up she's 6 and a half months, I don't want to use vaseline becaue I can't get it off for her shows.  So what else is there?  And if her ears are pricked at this age (I massage them for ages every day but she shakes her head and they go up again) do you think there's any point in bothering to get them down and face facts she'll be no good to show because of her ears?  It just seems that they just don't want to stay down, do you think sometimes no matter what you try they will just have pricked ears and there's nothing you can do?

gina

Is it usual to glue a dogs ears? I have not heard of this before,but I have been wondering about our border collie's ears as one is permanently upright 'pricked' and one lays flat,I do not know if this is 'normal'.It doesn't bother either her or us,but I am interested to learn more about ears now,so will be following this thread :)
Jacqueline

Hiya gina

Had a friend with rough collies that used to put blue tack to the end of their ears to bring the tips down and that worked

Jacqueline, glueing ears I think is becomming popular now, i think its an american thing.  Many people glue the dogs ears while they are teething to keep the ears in the correct place.

Rox

Remember that it is against KC rules to use any procedure that alters the natural conformation of your dog! Personally why on earth do you want to set your pups ears artificially? The only way to find out whether your dog has correct ears is to let the dog develop naturally. If there is an ear problem then it is hardly surprising if everyone is continually sticking their dogs ears down in order to conform to the breed standard. The ear problem will never go away.
Try BREEDING to the standard rather than trying to cheat it.

Jesse

It is quite common to glue cardboard inside ears to help them stand up ..it isn't cheating :)

Gina ...I have heard that daily massage of the ears can help the circulation and improve the chance of them standing up though I would have expected them to be up by 6 months old ...I have to say that if they aren't up now , it wouldn't surprise me if they don't improve

Melody :)

There's no need to be like that, it's not my fault that the breed standard is to have tipped ears and just because they are pricked they would get chucked out all the time.  You can't breed ears to stay tipped, I think everyone I have talked to with shelties has used vaseline on them and it doesn't hurt them so what's the problem?
gina

It's the same as any fault, ginauk84. You breed away from them, not 'repair' them. Altering the natural conformation of the dog is against KC rules and dogs can be disqualified - just as using bootpolish to darken pigment, or using braces to change tooth position is cheating, so is tinkering with ear carriage. Just because 'everybody does it' doesn't mean it's right! Nothing personal - just that them's the rules.
:)

If the ears are not going to stand up they won't. No amount of massage or glueing will alter that.

The point of massage etc is to encourage the ears to stand rather than to drop. It isn't the same as having an operation to change something.....as far as I am aware it is a common thing with prick ear dogs ..some puppies just need extra help ..sometimes this will come to nought as there is nothing you can actually do to MAKE the ears prick if they aren't going to.

KC Rules say that "No act or operation which alters the natural conformation of the dog or any part thereof may be performed except:-
a) operations certified to the satisfaction of the general Committee.
b) the removal of dew claws of any breed.
c) the shortening of tails of customarily docked breeds but only up to an acceptable age limit which shall be prescribed from time to time.
d) operations to prevent breeding provided that such operations are notified to the Kennel Club before neutered dogs are shown.
Nor must anything be done calculated in the opinion of the General Committee to deceive.

I don't see where it says taping/gluing/cardboarding ears is okay.

I am well aware of the rules but thank you very much for writing them all out for me Jan :)

So you would say that massageing the ears daily is wrong too then?

Where do you draw the line? I used to massage Hudsons ears to encourage them to stand ..he had a droopy ear for quite a while. In prick ear dogs you can't always tell if their ears will stand or not ..until you have had them with you for quite a while :)

Hmm acording to your definition I am a cheat ..ah well c'est la vie :D

May I make a tiny comment... I massaged Will's ear as his flew out to the side a bit when he was teething and it worked...but I would see that as acceptable...using glue or cardboard I wouldn't....

Stepping out of the ring now :D :D

:D

According to the KC's definition, Mel - I don't make the rules! ;)

(I'm sure you did know the rules, though it appears that there are people who are unaware of them, despite their being printed in every Show Schedule. If my writing them out here has made people aware of them, then my time wasn't wasted!)

Massaging would, IMO, be okay - attaching anything to the ears would be wrong. But that's just my opinion.
:)

Hiya
There is a product about called sheltie ear tip (which I haven't got as it is very expensive) it helps the ears tip over surely if making them tip wasn't allowed this product would be banned?  Also I don't breed so I wouldn't know about breeding for tipped ears, and the rest of her family had tipped ears so I am not going to know if they were naturally this was or if they had been manipulated.  Of course a breeder is hardly going to say they had to manipulate the ears for them to be tipped are they so there's no way of doing it.

Gina

Jeangennie, entering this discussion a little late as just got back from the USA - the KC reg you are quoting refers to Veterinary procedures - operations and procedures which make permenant changes  by removing/adding to the dog.  They do not refer to basic, everyday routines which help get over the little problems which development causes.  Ask any Sheltie breeder - prick ears occur with teething, and it is routine to weight them to encourage tipping, blu tack, glue, micropore tape (and even fruit gums) are all used to encourage the flying ears to tip over.  Left to own devices many, many top class shelties would have upright ears (or at least one), it is hardly more of an issue than putting a yorkie or maltese coat up in crackers, is it?  \bye
Gwen

Gwen, it's just that the Regulation is carefully worded to say "act or operation". 'Act' means 'a thing done'. A good lawyer (I'm not one! ;) ) could easily prove that taping ears came under this ruling.
:)

Jeangenie, this part of the regulations has been carefully worded so that acts or operations by Vets (or illegally performed ones by lay persons) are covered.  I can assure you (on the word of the KC dept involved in this)that they have no problem with ear help in this way!  Likewise, they dont object to coats being blow dried straight, or poodle/bichon coats being fluffed for fullness!  This is not altering confirmation, but helping along the development in a way to meet the required breed standard.  Lots of little things happen when pups are growing - these are not things that can be "bred out" as they are juvenile developmental "hiccups" not heridatary faults.  Some are ironed out with training, some with trimming and coat care, some with gentle help (such as ears) this comes under the same sort of heading, in my book, as tooth cleaning - certainly not a forbidden procedure by the KC, but could lead to a dogs losing teeth (and placings) if not done.  Of course, going into the ring with "ear fixings" in place is not allowed!
bye
Gwen

I'm not disputing what you say, Gwen, just after a little clarification.

If it's okay to tape/glue/whatever a dog's ears to make sure they end up the right shape, it follows that it is therefore acceptable to 'encourage' with fixings any part of the dog's anatomy to try to make sure that it's the ideal shape - the ring at the end of Afghans' tails, a tight curl on a Spitz breed's tail etc. Or has the KC decreed that ears are a special case? I genuinely don't understand the logic behind it.

Hoping you can help.
:)

Well that information is different to that which I got from the KC. Besides if it really is just a 'juvenile development' then you don't need to do it in any event. In my book this form of 'help' is cheating. The dogs should be allowed to be developed naturally then you will know exactly what you have rather than forever wondering whether they would have developed correctly or does this never cross the minds of those who do it?
Blow drying a coat, stripping breeds etc do nothing to alter the conformation of the dog. A good judge will see through the disguise trimming does and I don't see that this can in any way be compared to physically attemptng to alter the ears of a dog.
Besides the poodle standard does not specify 'type' of coat other than it has to be profuse, dense and harsh! However, it does specify that the short areas should be curly!!

Jesse

Gwen, sorry to butt in, but just interested to know, how can a fruit gum help?

Crackers in coats does not alter the dogs natural conformation. Besides if these dogs do have faulty ears then they shouldn't be being used for breeding. If it is true that many top dogs would have poor ears if they didn't assist in getting them the right shape then that just shows poor breeding!

Jesse

If crackers in the coat doesn't do anything then may I ask WHY they put them in the coat??????

I said it doesn't do anything to alter the conformation of the dog. They are put in place to keep the coat mat free and clean.

Jesse

Gina

Can your breeder help on this one if not I would talk to an experienced Sheltie breeder.  I think blue tac is the norm as it is easy to get off, my sister used some sort of poultice, but I don't know what it was made up from, that why I think a Sheltie breeder would be your best bet. 

If you are still stuck pm me and I will ask her tonight.

Sandra

Oh wow ! Someone who agrees with me!!

A fellow breeder was parading her first home-bred pedigree puppy.  We all noticed sores around the ends of its ears and just above the eyes.  She told us she'd had the ears glued as they were starting to stand up!  personally, if that was my first own-bred pedigree I be concerned to know where my breeding plan had gone wrong!

Listen to Poodlebabe!!! Of course Poodle people don't use hair spray or dye on their dogs, it just stands up on its own!
Dawn.

Try a plaster or micropore tape, I use it for cuts etc... and it doesn't take off the coat when you remove it, not tried it on ears though!
Dawn.

Thank you I'll try a 5 pence piece on a plaster.

Gina

Thank you I'll try a 5 pence piece on a plaster.  As don't have any of that tape.

Gina

Not all poodle people cheat Dawn I certainly don't. If you are any good at trimming then you don't need to use hairspray. Those that do are only cheating themselves and deserve to be caught as some of them have been!!
I just feel that dogs should be allowed to develop naturally with regards as to their conformation. Any method used to alter a dogs shape is cheating in my book so if the cap fits wear it.
Besides terrier people use hairspary too to make coats harder and of course the lovely chalk clouds that accompany some of the terrier breeds!

Jesse

I have to agree that the ear carriage,  colour,  teeth alignment, whatever has to be bred for.

In my breed we require erect ears.  In the UK since I have been involved with the breed (12 years) we would normally expect a pup to have erect ears at around 6 to 12 weeks of age.  t

Now we have had a number of dogs imported from the USA, and having spoken to quite a few breeders there, they would not be concerned if a puppy had soft slightly floppy ears until 5 or 6 months of age.

There have been dogs in the history of our breed with soft ears, and some that did not go erect.

With my own breeding I have noticed that there is a definatley inherited pattern to how early ears go up.  If I had one that was slow, I would then mate her to a dog that I knew had erect ears early, to stop this becoming a problem.

Now with collies and Shelties.  Surely the breed standard was drawn up for the desired ears (which must have been those prevalent).  The more that the ears are messed about with the more likely it is that the genes for naturally good ears will be bred out, and the trait lost.  A breeder using this method in the long run is only kidding themselves.  Even if they try to correct this tendency in their own stiock, and use a dog with beautiful ears, they may in fact be compounding matters if that dog had to have the ears artificailly forced into shape.

I don't beleive the argument about this just speeding things up, and that they would all have been roght eventually.

Dobermanns are cropped, and their ears taped so that the remaining part of the ear becomes erect, left naturally this will have been drop.

I never glued the skin!  Just the end of her fur and then washed it off, people recommended that to me.  And I don't want prick ears I want tipped.  I do massage them for ages everyday her litter sister had the same problem.  And the breeder used vaseline like I did.  Clipping a poodles coat in that odd way isn't natural either if it was natural it would be long, there are a lot of things that people do to their dogs for the show ring that isn't natural. 

Gina

When I got my first Aussie pup, he had one pricked ear, so the breeder told me to massage it to soften the tendon/tissue, as well as tape a 5 pence piece on the inside of the tip using micropore tape, so that the weight would pull the tip of the ear down.  He had this on for several weeks, and no longer had a pricked ear.  Not sure how glue would work or if you can change things at over 6 months old though!  At the time I never thought about it, but I suppose it is sort of like cosmetic surgery!
  Hilda

I love my dog just as she is :D  - Even with her 'too high tail carriage' - Wouldn't change a thing, a judge might not think she's perfect...But I think she is :D
Sarah

Well I actually prefer the prick ears, think it looks more cute :-)  I don't see why just because a dogs ears are pricked it is chucked out of the breed ring.
Gina

lol, well my dog wouldnt get placed because he's too fit! go figure!

Yes I do agility so Ember will probably get like that when she's older but then I won't be doing much showing anyway so I am a bit half-hearted with her ears as I know I won't be showing her much when she's older, it just would have been nice to have a dog who fits the standard as my other two are rescues.  I know a lot of agility collies that get chucked out of the ring because they're too fit, I know if my collie were purebred and shown she would, she's got the muscles the size of Arnie Shwarzeneger!lol :-D

gina

Gina

Agility collies do not get chucked out of the ring because they are too fit, the breed requires fitness and muscle on the dogs.  They don't often get anywhere because of their general confirmation, usually I have to say because they are receiving too much excercise too early.

As you learn about breed confirmation with your sheltie, have a look around at the agility collies at an agility show, I think you will see what I mean.

You never know you just might catch the showing bug, 2nd place at your first show was very good ;)

Sandra

Hiya
I don't really know, wasn't my opinion just what people have said to me :-)  From what I have seen watching the collies at just one show so far, was that agility collies seem to be a lot lighter coned and more leggy than show collies.  but I intend to have a look at them more seeing as I will probably go back to collies with my next dog and would like it to have good confirmation :-)
Gina

Gina

You are right and it is the legginess which usually comes from over excercise as a puppy.  You only have to see agility handlers exercising their dogs at a show, the pups, by which I mean up to 12-14 months are running ragged with the adult collies.  It is such a shame, there really needs to be some education amongst agility folk.  Agility is such an enduring sport, especially with all the training that goes on during the week, you really do need a dog with good conformation.

JMHO Sandra :)

Oh right hadn't realised that's what caused the leginess, you are right though at an agility show you seen young pups charging about a lot after the adults which at that young age they shouldn't.  I have heard about some top handlers putting 6 month old pups over mini height jumps!  I don't exercise the pup with my collie because of this, the pup and my x-breed go out together and have a potter, then I'll take my collie with her border terrier friend and they get to charge round like loonies!  We had my collie at 6 months and she didn't have much exercise either, mainly because she was 1/3 of her proper weight so we didn't want her burning up her food.  So she's petite.  Very light boned though.

Gina

Legginess does not always come from over exercising a pup! The breed standard is designed so that BC's can work all day. My BC is bred for the show ring, but she is also for working. She could easily go all day as a sheepdog. But one of the things judges put in their write ups was "needs to put some weight on", so off we go to the vet, is she too thin? No!, Another vet, same question, same answer. I have seen so MANY FAT BC's in the show ring and I can't stand it. The dog is meant to be a working collie and from what I can see, many would not fit that criteria. With the pet passport scheme, dogs are coming from the continent, yes some are lovely dogs, but what is becoming more and more noticeable is their huge thick coat (breed standard says moderately long), short legs, and soft coats. I've also been told not to enter under such and such as they like a pretty face (on the dog), ie tipped ears etc, and my dog does not have tipped ears. But her movement is superb and this year at champ shows we are going to enter her under working judges, by this I mean judges who appreciate a fit dog who can move properly, and does not judge purely on what she looks like, but what her conformation is like.

And the future for the show BC? They are going to end up not resembling the working dog it should be, but looking like the dogs that are from New Zealand. I am pretty sure people who know some of the NZ lines know what I am talking about.

< The breed standard is designed so that BC's can work all day > 

Yes this is true, but you will not find a respected shepherd doing this to a young pup.  A shepherd would not want a leggy pup either, it would not go down quicky enough or be capable of doing the typical creep that is required.

As for fat Border Collies.....have you actually gone over them to see if they are fat.....I think not, they may have heavier coats to what you see on a working sheepdog, but that doesn't make them fat.  Coats are getting a bit heavier I agree, they are only feeling soft as most BC's will be bathed the day before the show, they will still have the double coat required for the breed.

Your BC does not have to have tipped ears for the showring, they can have pricked.  All judges will be looking for good movement and good confirmation but at the end of the day it is a show dog if you have presented it in the ring so must be pleasing to the eye.  Different judges will have different opinions which is why we are all still showing or the same dogs would win every week.

As for the NZ breeding, do they not have sheep over there, where the BC is also a working dog.

At least by getting your BC from a respected show breeder all the relevant health checks will have been done, which can only be good for the breed in general.

Sandra

Used to put boiled sweets on the RC's ears years ago.  Fortunately we never really had a problem.  Have to say that if they're not down at 6 months I wd. think that they wdn't. go now unfortunately.

Can I just say this was a really interesting post to read didn't know all this happened to these dogs ears,how gullible am I to think they were born with them,DOH!!!Sandra.

Some actually are if the pet ones I have seen are anything to go by, though there are quite a few with prick ears too. :D

Whilst I understand how important showing is to some people, I cannot believe that people use these methods on dogs ears!!!, can owners not just enjoy their dog for what it is??????.  I to have BC'S and one's ears are down and the other up, who cares!!! I love them just the way they are.

Just my opinion

You have movement judges, and you also have judges that do not take movement into account as highly as other factors.

And yes. Some of the BC's are fat. The huge amount of coat they have (does moderately long mean huge?) does not hide the fact that when they move they role from side to side. Not quite what the BC was a few years ago.

although I am very aware of show ring exaggerations in my breed (SBT) and others, its still dissapointing to actually hear from other working breed owners they suffer the same problems if they put up a dog that is true to its working type.
Its shocking that a dog bred to work, and that can do its job with ease is often considered faulty in conformation shows!!
yet in the same hand, thank god for those who do still put up a fit dog, and keep health above all else!
I am constanly told if I put more weight on my dog he would start to clean up at the shows, this from hardened showers, but no way will I ever do that!
A good friend of mine has what she describes as a an old type Rough Collie. She still has the long coat, but it is not as thick and heavy as todays show dogs. I cant comment further, as I do not know the breed, but she has studied it for many a year, as I have with my staffords! But she knows her dog would also not fair well in the ring.
Id like to see the day when breeds that still work have to obtain a working title before they can compete in conformation.
Of course for those with hunting breeds, that could soon become impossible..a sad day that will be. And for my breed, it would not only be barbaric, but illegal, so prehaps we will always be at the mercy of the show world :/!
hopefuly im not going to much off topic! but I think this does kind of tie in with gluing or whatever a dogs ears down to look pretty for the show ring! no wonder so many dogs seem to have "incorrect" ears if they are having them forced into place!!!

I'm pretty ignorant about showing i'm afraid, but i'm learning!
But surely if lots of shelties are born with pointy ears, why does the breed standard say they have to be tipped? I can't see it makes that much difference to the dogs working ability so i can't see it would have origins in that, like docking? It seems daft to have to try and change the dogs natural appearance just because the breed standard says it isn't right. If it wasn't why do so many owners have to change their dog's ears just to satisfy a judge?
Not a dig at anyone who does this of course, but i still can't understand some of these breed standards, but i'm trying to learn! :-)