Border Collie

Border Collie (Zingo), in the forest.

The smartest dog breed in the world, the Border Collie was originally bred to herd sheep and originates in the border area between Scotland and England. There is today a lot of controversy around the breed, about whether it should be bred for working ability or in accordance to a breed standard. In many parts of the world there are double registries for this reason and in some countries, dogs that are merited as show dogs get excluded from the working registry. Also it is common that dogs that are of the working type (and registered as such) can be registered as pure bred border collies in the show registry as well, but no the other way around. The supporters of the working type wants this dog to stay a functional herding dog, and not become a degraded show dog, like many other working breeds have become (i.e. the German shepherd and many others).  

Border Collie (Micke) showing a trick where he does push ups :)

There are almost no limits to what you can teach a Border Collie, it is a very easily motivated dog. Sometimes it seems that your praise is enough for it to do as you say. Harsh methods is not good to use with these gentle dogs. They will still try their best to please you, but if the dog feels you are angry it will try to calm you down by moving slowly or not at all. If you don't understand why, I recommend you pick up a book on dog behavior and language.
The Border Collie have a natural will to please the owner and since they are also very intelligent they will try to solve problems themselves. That also means that if you do not give your Border Collie a meaningful "occupation", it will start looking for a job on its own. A under-stimulated Border Collie is likely to start "herding" everything from the neighborhood kids to the cars on the street.

Border collie (Mist) during obedience training. Here the dog has done the task correctly and is rewarded with a toy.

The Border Collie should get a long walk (at least 1 hour) every day, but it also needs mental stimulation. This can be provided by simply teaching the dog tricks, training obedience (which really is a long series of tricks), agility, fly ball, freestyle, heel-work to music, or better yet, taking the dog to herding training if you have the possibility. Like any other breed, you will find that not all Border Collies are good at what they are bred for, but when you see a dog realizing its purpose it is a genuine joy! All dogs like feeling like they are "useful", just like we do. Give your dog a "job", even if the job consists of doing tricks or getting the newspaper, it will be forever grateful and a lot more balanced. 

Being the smartest breed, the border collie is often seen in different dog competitions, here obedience.

Appearance

Since the Border Collie mostly is bred for their herding ability, there is a wide variety of appearances. The coat can be everything from long as in the Rough Collie, to short as in the smooth collie. Colors can be white-black, tricolor (with either black or brown) and blue-merle. There are other colors too, but they are very unusual, such as blue, lilac, red-merle, brindle, and "Australian red"/gold. Border Collies may also have single-colour coats. The weight also varies from less than 10 kg to almost 30 kg. Ears can be erect, semi-erect or fully dropped. Eye color either brown or blue, or one of each or even two colors in one single eye.

The coat colors of border collies varies; here we see a black and white border collie male (Elvis), with "freckles", brown eyes, semi-long fur and semi-erect ears.

Health

The border collie, like other collies (Smooth and Rough Collies) and some other related and unrelated breeds (Shetland Sheepdogs, Australian Shepherds, Lancashire Heelers and Nova Scotia Duck Tolling Retrievers) suffers from an eye disease called Collie eye anomaly. It is less common in the Border Collie than in the other collie breeds, but animals used in breeding should still be checked. The disease can cause blindness and there is no treatment. It can be diagnosed by ophthalamoscopy (aka fundoscopy) as early as when the dog is just 6-7 weeks old.

There are two other genetic diseases of concern in the breed, epilepsy and hip-dysplasia. See more about epilepsy in dogs in this blog post [link]. Hip-dysplasia can be diagnosed by taking an x-ray picture of the hips.

There are also some other diseases that are known, but luckily not very common, such as: Elbow dysplasia, osteochondritis (inflamation of the joints), deafness, and hypothyroidism (causing too little thyroid hormones to be released, and thus low metabolism, slow heart rate and other symptoms), Neuronal ceroid lipofuscinosis (only in show dog lines, affecting the nervous system) and Trapped Neutrophil Syndrome (a disease that causes the dog to have a faulty immune system). 

To end this post on a brighter note: Below is a video from the dog show/agility competition last year in June in Tromsø. A Border Collie competing in agility. Enjoy!