Saturday, February 28, 2009




















Cleo, above, with baby Vider sleeping on her tail.

You can see Speck's pedigree here: http://www.bordersandquarters.com/Speck_AIBC_93169.htm

The dog we borrowed to breed Speck was Casey NASD 59794, a dog bred by Arthur Allen.  We borrowed him from Tom Thurman, who had a sheep feedlot in Leoti, Kansas.  Casey did his best with Speck, however, no puppies were conceived, or at least not carried.  We returned Casey to Tom and later told him we hadn't gotten any puppies.  He told us that Casey had never been interested in his bitch, so perhaps something was wrong with him, but upon returning home Casey found Tom's Dottie in season and promptly bred her for the first time.  A couple of months later, Tom called us and asked us if we were interested in a pup.

We chose a confident friendly pup who we named Cleo.


Tuesday, February 10, 2009


Welcome to the Diamond J Border Collies blog.  We are L.D. and Paula Bowden, and welcome your interest in our dogs.

We breed and raise small numbers of Border Collies in Nevada.  To us, herding instinct is the number one criterion.   We are particularly happy with and interested in Derek Scrimgeour's bloodlines and have been infusing them into our bloodlines.  We also support Derek's training theories and philosophy and are trying to become proficient in his methods.

We are concerned about genetic problems in Border Collies and DNA test our dogs for CEA and get OFA hip certifications.   

We do not breed for conformation, coat, size or color.  We feel if our dogs hold up to hard work, long distance running and fast, close work without problems, their structure is good.  We also feel Border Collies immediately descended from hardworking ranch or farm dogs or from successful open trial dogs are most likely to have structure that will hold up.  No dog is perfect, but we try to match dogs in breedings to create sound, healthy pups that will have sheep herding talent.

Our background includes managing cattle ranching operations and raising our own sheep.  We had seen some good Border Collie stock dogs and bought our first BC in 1989.  Speck came from Albuquerque, the result of a backyard breeding, but she turned out to be a tremendous help in the work that we did.

Speck had some good breeding, with names of some notable early Border Collie people and also Bosworth Coon on her papers.  She was a very biddable dog, if rather sticky, but of course, we knew nothing about training a dog so she did very well for just figuring things out on her own. Speck worked for us and was part of the family for 12 years. We bred her once but she didn't conceive and we then spayed her--however, that led directly to our second Border Collie.