Rutlands Australian Cobberdogs Then And Now

The evolution of the Australian Cobberdog from its roots 30 + years ago to 2019, is a unique story, because nothing like it will ever happen again.  In those early days there was no internet, very few ordinary folk had computers, there were no databases for breeders, dogs were not microchipped as yet, and DNA health testing would have been akin to science fiction if anyone had even thought about it.  I  can still remember laboriously writing out pedigrees by hand, because there was nowhere a non pure breed could be registered and I thought "it would be nice" for people getting a puppy to know that a lot of thought had gone into the breeding of its parents.

  My records were literally kept in labelled shoe boxes inside a cupboard in my bedroom.
There were no digital photos, so we had to take photographs on a film which then had to be driven into town to be developed, which usually took a few days, meaning a second drive into town - just to find sometimes that there wasn't one decent picture on the roll!   When I began exporting my puppies, I faxed their photos in black and white across the world.

---