Several years ago while seeking understanding and hopeful for affirmation from breeders in the UK, I offered fleece samples and photographs to all who would take the time to look. I did this with great trepidation because I had concluded on day one of that trip that whatever breed my sheep were they were certainly not the same as that which stood before me in the UK. On more than one occasion I received only the vaguest hint of encouragement regarding the sheep in my paddocks back in the USA.

"Ah yes, well. Right. Yes. (Long uneasy pause).

Yes, Well I have seen sheep like these (pointing at my pictures, but not admitting where these sheep might have been seen).

Brilliant sheep aren’t they?

Right! (Another pregnant pause)

Well, lets have a look at some of MY Shetlands as long as you’ve come this far."

And it did nothing for my self esteem as a Shetland enthusiast when I caught sight of an entire wall clad in blue and red ribbons. So much for affirmation.

Some years later in the Shetland Islands, the response was somewhat more direct;

"Hmm, yes. Quite. Well, I’d say those sheep of yours are simply the result of indiscriminant breeding. Now let’s go have a look at some real Shetland Sheep, shall we? You’ve come a long way, haven’t you?"

As stunned as I was by that comment, I realized that it contained a clue. By this time I had seen many flocks in the US and far more in England and Scotland and here we were in the "Homeland" with yet another perspective on the breed.

It was only after a few years of showing up again and again (usually rudely and without fair warning) at the doorstep of yet another unsuspecting breeder in the UK that I began to have a look at ALL of their sheep. With a more relaxed attitude on subsequent visits, explorations of the flocks became less structured and I was allowed to see the rams and ewes lurking here and yonder but always accompanied by restrictive covenants not to reveal the sources of some of my photos. So, I will honor my pledge of anonymity but suffice it to say that wavy double-coated sheep are alive and well in the UK and you may even see a bit of britch and scadder from to time.

Over time this gave way to the admission by several UK breeders that they had, indeed, seen sheep like mine. Yes, they had seen Shetlands that looked like my mini wooly mammoths at home. "Where?" I asked. "Oh, right here of course, 10 years ago we all had sheep like that. "

And let’s not forget that all the Shetlands in England and Scotland DID ultimately derive from the Shetland Islands.

But the final piece of the puzzle for me occurred after reading Banks and Sinclair, when on a visit to England I was invited to see the flock of a breeder who had eschewed the show ring entirely. These sheep, we could demonstrate came from good pedigreed stock, and yet, there they were looking all the world like my Shetlands back home! This breeder had raised her sheep in the Park Sheep fashion and, left somewhat to their own devices, it would appear that they had reverted to the phenotype we in America know so well; the primitive looking tuskless mini-mammoths in my barnyard.

And so, like the Dailley import that Benji Hunter selected to represent the Sheep of Shetland and purportedly left the islands looking quite single-coated and proper from Benji’s standpoint, her sheep, too, had been "indiscriminately bred" for that particular trait and now, from different breeding lines, we had come to have the same sheep so to speak,

Indiscriminate breeding. The Zetlander was right. Not in a condescending way, but rather in the true sense of the word. This English breeder and I had both neglected to discriminate the "kindly sheep" from the "beaver sheep" . We had not bred our flocks specifically for the fleece type that put Shetland Sheep on the map and created the Classic Shetland of the 18^th Century and 19^th Century. And, we certainly had not bred for the traits that characterize the Modern Commercial Shetland of my friend in Shetland. But, I believe, we all have Shetland Sheep.

So, my proposal is that Shetland enthusiasts collectively recognize the great variety of phenotypes that we, as breeders, can pull from the depths of the Shetland gene pool. That the reservoir of genetic material underlying the breed contains remnants of contributions from outside the Islands will always be arguable but is undeniable.

From the very beginning the Sheep of Shetland have been repeatedly influenced by exogenous genetics. These sheep are surely the result of a thousand years of Nordic influence amended by genetics from Britain and Europe in man’s attempt to better the lot of the sheep and people of Shetland. But, rather than argue endlessly over the validity of our sheep, we should celebrate this variability that has resulted in a marvelously hardy, fascinatingly and undeniably variable creature. Each of these phenotypes can be thought of as a genetic time slice, a phenotypic snapshot in the development of the Shetland gene pool through time. Each of these phenotypes is rightly called a Shetland.