When I was a child,  I read through the entire collection of my hometown library’s Sunnybank Lad books. I used to lie in the grass in my backyard daydreaming of owning a Lad of my very own.  I asked my mom, “Can we get a dog?” She replied,  “We are cat people.” I asked my dad, “Could we please get a dog?” He replied, “We had a dog once. It wee’d on everything and everyone; we are never getting another dog.” And that was that. So I reluctantly put my daydreams away. In 1992 after my marriage to Tom, I did finally get my first dog; a runt off of a working farm. An Australian shepherd, he was a smart and busy boy. As the years progressed I knew the narrow nosed, fluffy coated collies were not the Lads of my daydreams, so I never pursued owning one.
A few years ago, we moved and I became a Chicken Lady. My husband had grown up with poultry and thought it would be a good hobby for our children. Our fluffy white dogs would rather chase chickens instead of protect them. I began the search for a farm guard dog. My friends with a Pyrenees never mentioned that their dog barked all night long. I may be in a country setting but I wanted my new neighbors to like us. As I cruised the web looking for the right dog that fit the bill—family-oriented protector, but could also be a pet—I came across the idea of farm collies. They are not bred for show, but bred to work. Not long after, my Google searches brought me to the Old Time Scotch Collie website.  Be still my heart! These are the “Lad” of old or as close as they come. I proposed that one of these noble dogs should join our family and got a lukewarm response from my husband. *sigh* A few months later when predation of our flock became an issue, he reopened the conversation. Perhaps we could get a puppy. So I started calling breeders in our area and found one who had one last puppy from her litter. She had kept one puppy back and was thinking of breeding him. Would I be willing to spread his gene pool around for the sake of the breed instead of getting him fixed? “Of course!” was out of my mouth before I had even thought about it. What a privilege to participate in keeping this landrace alive.