***A Life with Collies*** An interview with Linda Ward of Sinkona Collies

COL: How did you get your start in Collies? Tell us about your first collie and how that shaped your life in collies.

Linda: I have always loved animals, specifically horses. Growing up, I was a product of the “Lassie” generation. As a result, collies also made it to the top of the list. In the early 1970s, I was in a pet store where AKC-registered Collies were for sale. I bought a sable rough male. Of course, even though I had AKC papers, he was not a full collie, which is not a surprise to many of us today. Obviously, I had a LOT to learn! When he was a bit older, I wanted to buy a girl for me to breed my male to. This was how I came to know Loretta Spence of Sunara Collies. She was very truthful and to the point. A lifelong friendship began with a wonderful collie mentor. I also got a 4-month-old sheltie bitch named, "Skyla," out of it. For the next 14 years, she grew up in our house alongside my two kids. When Skyla was around a year old, Loretta offered me a beautiful rough mahogany sable male named "Neeko." I was training obedience with Skyla at the time and Neeko earned a CD along with teaching me all about the show ring and collies. I joined the Inland Empire Collie Club in 1973, introducing me to many knowledgeable collie folks, among them Bonnie Young and Joyce Berk of Shadaglen Collies and Joan Meagher of SumerHill Collies to learn from.

COL: How did you decide on your Kennel Name “Sinkona Collies?"

Linda: Neeko’s registered name was Sunara Cinchona. I was getting a divorce in the early 1980s and Loretta encouraged me to change my kennel name from what I had been using for the sheltie litters. I asked her if I could use Sinkona (pronunciation of Cinchona) as I really liked it and it seemed very fitting. I also had a Neeko daughter at the time, Sunara Slightly Skarlet, "Peaches." She was a sable merle rough that you knew by just looking at her, back when sable merles were, for the most part, dumped in the breed ring. However, she became my first Canadian Champion easily. She was also my first American Champion but not until she was 7 years old!! She finished at home with a large group of people who knew about our journey and the crowd went wild with clapping and cheering as she was Winners Bitch for the needed major and then went over Specials to finish – a very fond memory.

COL: Have you always lived in the Pacific Northwest area? How does where you are located affect how you participate in Performance or Conformation events? What are the advantages and disadvantages to competing in your area?

Linda: Today, I live in Otis Orchards, a mile, and a half from the Idaho border. Originally, born and raised in Montana, I came to Spokane to go to business school, got married and stayed here. I was raising two children when I got divorced and decided that the advantages of staying here for their educational future was important. For a few years I pulled back to the background of shows, both performance and breed as my kids were in high school, I worked full time and life was busy. My access to collie people, the collie club and performance club, Spokane Dog Training Club, was also important. I have never had a lot of collies at one time and did very minimal breeding, only twelve litters since 2000, producing eighteen champions. We have limited breed shows on this side of Washington and northern Idaho. However, there are many shows on the west side of Washington and in Oregon, as well as western Montana.

COL: You compete in both conformation and performance events with titles on both ends of your collie’s names. How much priority is put on performance vs conformation? How do you decide the order of how a dog will participate in the variety of available venues?

Linda: When I really settled into Collies and learned so much about the health of the breed, my main goal became to breed dogs with brains, beauty, and health. As the years have progressed, with so many changes in testing and knowledge, this can be quite a test of patience for breeding. I always try to do the best I can for the results I want. Since I do not breed a lot, I really try to think it through and ask the necessary questions. My goal is to have dogs that hopefully will be shown in the breed ring and if there is a desire to do performance, that is a plus. First and foremost, the puppies must be a good family companion as most of them will be in companion homes.

When I have a litter, I am hoping for that special pup that will be both a Champion and a performance star. We handle our puppies a lot and try to have lots of visitors do the same. We take them on road trips to visit friends in safe places. Sometimes before they are even 3 weeks old. We spend a lot of time watching how they act in unfamiliar places to sounds, smells, people and how the litter interacts with each other and toys. It is important to do puppy aptitude testing at seven weeks in a strange place with a strange person to get a guideline of what each puppy could be.

I was introduced into herding and agility in the 1990s and I have been striving since then to produce dogs that can do both breed and performance. I train in tracking, scent work and herding and, with my daughter, Tanya, we compete in breed, obedience, rally, and agility. Tanya does not do herding anymore. We do not just train one thing at a time but a mix of things. Collies are smart and they can figure out what you want, quickly. We start with basic training obedience as a puppy and conformation training mixed in. Rally is a natural transition with obedience training. Pups are exposed to stock very young and off and on, but no serious training until after a year and then still light training until older. Scent work and tracking can be started as a young puppy. In fact, scent work is new to me with an adult having titles in the last year and I just started a young pup, and it has been fun. We try to get our pups out to breed shows as youngsters and with luck, finish their Championship and sometimes the Grand. We do not special our dogs a lot – too much traveling and expense. With the performance that we do there is only so much time and money to accomplish things. I am now retired and have more time but less resources. Tanya is a teacher and that limits events during the school year.

COL: Who have been the most influential Collies in your life that have shaped your life in Performance. Who have been the most influential people?

Linda: I will start with the people. First there is Loretta Spence, without whom I would not be in collies and have accomplished so much. Everyone should have a mentor so great, who is willing to take a dog apart and put back together, the good and the bad. She taught me from the beginning to make hard choices and only keep the ones that truly were outstanding. This meant looking at all sides for structure and health, not only from the sire and dam but the grandparents. I also learned when things went wrong to move away in a different direction. Also a great influence to me was Joan Meagher of SumerHill Collies who was always honest with our many heart to heart conversations. There was also Bonnie Young, Shadaglen Collies, who was always willing to give her opinion whether it be good or bad on a litter, sometimes not always agreeing as we looked for different things. One of my closet friends, Sandy Kirsch, San-Dee Collies, was always there to have a heart to heart and sometimes difficult conversation. Loretta, Joan and Sandy shared the highs and the very lows with all the tears and heartbreak.

Performance just seemed to come naturally, and Tanya loves that aspect as much as I do. But if you think only breed competition offers the highs and lows, performance has many of the same. In the life of a performance dog, there are heartbreaks, disappointments and frustration, but it is important to keep working when things get tough. Patience and time to figure out what that dog needs to understand, what we are striving to teach them and thinking outside of the box at times. We have wonderful performance folks in our area with many different thoughts, training methods, and help. We are competitive against each other but also very supportive. My daughter is a lot of my strength for performance and has pushed me to try new things, push for higher goals even though I am not getting any younger. We balance each other for the most part. We sometimes cross train some of our dogs so that either of us can work them.

COL: What were some of the significant accomplishments with your collies in the past couple of years.

Linda: I have put this question prior to the next question. I have had to “start over” in collies three times. The Sunara line was lost. The line my first non-Sunara collie came from was also lost. In 2000, I leased CH Shadaglen Loves A Storm, CD HX – "Huri," from Bonnie Daley and bred her to Shadaglen Prince Of Thieves, CD TD HSAd VX ROM-P, "Robin," producing a sable rough bitch. She was "Sierra" – Sinkona’s Firestorm, CD PT NA NAJ. Sierra was bred to Cresthaven Easy Come Easy Go, a smooth tricolor male, in 2000, giving me CH Sinkona’s Miss Kitty, CD RN PT OA OAJ VA – "Kit," a smooth tricolor bitch, my first home-bred Champion, and my foundation bitch for my current breeding program. Kit is also the first collie in the Canadian Kennel Club Herding program to earn a herding title. I bred her to CH Edenrock The Mask Of Society, who I had seen at 6 months of age when he finished, in three shows, with three 5-point majors. I spent a lot of time talking to Adria and Cindy Weiner of Edenrock Collies at that show. After waiting 15 months for Kit to come in season, the breeding I had planned suddenly was not going to work. So, I called Cindy and we did a chilled semen breeding with no stud fee up front as I needed the semen faster than I could get her the money. I will never forget that kindness and help, forever changing my direction. That litter produced seven puppies. I kept a smooth blue bitch "CJ" – CH Sinkona’s Calamity Jane, CDX TD RE PT AXP AJP VX. The reason this is important is because she produced CH Sinkona’s Gone With The Wind, CD RN HSAs OA AXJ VA JHD – "Tara," a bitch I had been striving to produce for many years. Tara was, for me, the perfect dog, with beauty, brains, and drive for performance. However, she was tragically lost in 2013 just before she would turn 6 years old. My heart and spirit were broken. I considered not continuing to breed or have collies at all. At first, I thought I only had ties to one male. After things settled a bit and Tanya said I could not quit, I remembered that I had ties to Tara’s daughter, "Tango," who, at six weeks, had a broken leg. She was sold with a litter back. We leased Tango (a smooth tricolor bitch) and I, again, changed my path to get back to healthier litters, specifically to produce MDR1 N/N puppies. Kit was MDR1 N/N (one of the dogs that Dr. Mealey pulled blood from to start her research) and in three generations Tara was MDR1 M/M. Sinkona’s Shadow Dancer, ROM ROM-P was bred to GCH CH King’s Valley Smooth Blue Jazz, HT CGC – "Fergus." In this litter there was an incredibly special smooth blue bitch born May 13, 2014. I did a repeat breeding eighteen months later to start on the journey where I am now, with my last three litters being MDR1 N/N. In that first litter, Tango tied for the #2 Top Smooth Champion Producing Bitch, something I had never dreamed of happening. I will never forget when Nancy McDonald called me and asked, “who is this bitch?” The other thing I changed was to be sure that I have ties back to other special dogs in a litter.