Friends of the Old Farm Collie, Bulletin #3 page 2
As was seen in the photos of Tracy and Dunrovin Ole Shep in the last bulletin, the appearance of the dogs being referred to as "Old Farm Collies" can vary. This should not be too surprising, as the original working farm collie did vary considerably in appearance. The modern, narrowly-defined idea of purebred dogs with a highly standardized appearance is of fairly recent origin. Before that, there were broad types that could be said to be "breeds", but they had a wide range of appearance. From this broad pool, people selected out the individuals that matched the type they considered desirable, bred them together, and eventually developed standardized, more narrowly-defined modern breeds. Most breeds, where the emphasis came to be on the show ring, became highly standardized in appearance. A few working-bred breeds, however, have kept the earlier variability of appearance, such as the Border Collie, which is bred to a standard of work rather than a standard of appearance.
Contrary to what is sometimes thought, kennel club breeds have no special claim to "ancient purity." They just had written pedigrees being kept and an organization formed for them earlier (but still fairly recently in historical terms) rather than later. The Rough Collie club was established in the 1880s; the Border Collie was officially given its name in the early 1900s; beardie-coated working collies were collected to form the modern registered Bearded Collie in the 1940s; clubs for the English Shepherd and the Australian Shepherd were formed in the 1950s. Before that time, "collie" included a very wide range of physical appearances and working "styles." Coats would be long, short, bearded; ears might be erect, semi-erect or folded against the head, sometimes each ear might be carried differently by the same dog. There were no requirements as to color. Dogs might work one type of stock exclusively, or be expected to work a variety of types of stock.