Ya can't ride the papers, but they sure help you esll a horse - even a gelding.
My old border collie turns 18 in 4 months - yeah we were both young once, but its hard to remember. I bought Suz as an unregistered color cropout (she's mostly white) from jim Roberson at Higgins Tx for a frankie. I didn't care about the sheets, but you must have the breeding.
I've been bid obscene amouunts, well $2000 and $3000 for Suz, but wouldn't think of it. One persistant Angus Breeder kept after me, so I had to explain that Suz is family and any offers after the first one is inconsiderate. Some of my friends have asked for a pup which led me to 6 planned matings. I gave every pup to decent people - no horse beaters - with the understanding that I'd help train them, use them with Suz, and take them back if they weren't working out. Perhaps mostly owing to my judge of character, the pups are all jamb up dogs.
Now when ol Suz was a sprightly 16, we had an English Shepard show up. I couldn't pet him, but he was always arround. He was sooo smart, he'd sit and watch my kids from a hill just beyond the yard. If anyone or anything showed up, that dog was on the prod. As luck would have it, my 16 year old border collie got pregnant and had 2 pups. I kept the male and gave the female to a good friend that raises phesants and needed a dog to load out birds. My pup is working pretty well - he wouldn't make a pimple on my old dog yet - and he is very very protective. A local drifter stopped by the house when I was in the hospital "to see if my wife needed any help" and Bucky drug him by the leg out of the house. Later my boy confided in me that he'd hissed real low so that only the dog would hear it, but his momma wouldn't. I told Clayton Wyatt that we'd need to work on commands so we could get Bucky to latch onto the throat rather than the leg.
As for papers, you'll usually have papers if the breeding is solid, but in my dog's case not so. Its the breeding, not the papers. the border collie breed has gotten so popular that many people are raising pups and pretending that AKC means something.
