During her life, Mrs Newbery senior gave Joan a bound three
month copy of the Our Dogs canine paper, dated October to
December 1926 and including the Christmas Supplement. Joan has now allowed us to borrow this tome and I am currently extracting relevant items for preservation, including the precursor to the modern breed notes then known as ‘Collie Chatter’, show reports and judges critiques.

The sheer thickness and
tightness of binding makes
scanning page from this
copy of Our Dogs difficult,
particularly as the page
size is no longer standard,
and rather larger than most scanning equipment,
including mine. It is therefore perhaps fortunate that
early canine newspapers were largely text based,
in fact the Our Dogs newspapers of this period only
included images on the front cover and page two,
throughout the remainder the publication relies on
descriptive text, with occasional cartoons.

 

Top right — Accepting these limitations who could
not be intrigued by this image of exhibitors at a
Midland Collie Club members’ show which
appeared in the Our Dogs issue dated October 29,
1926.

Clicking on the image will allow you see this image within the context of the printed page
in Adobe Acrobat pdf format.

 

 

In addition to this bound copy of Our Dogs, Joan has
also acquired permission to supply images from the
Alphington Scrapbooks, and many of these, like the
two examples reproduced here, are of a less formal
nature.

 

Centre right — Mr Alf Newbery senior, relaxing with three of his
collies in the gardens of his Newlands home. Well perhaps relaxing
is not the most appropriate description.

 

Bottom right — Mr Alf Newbery junior in a more informal pose with
three of his collies, including the tricolour dog Ch Alphington Nigger
King, the kennel’s first post war champion, in the centre.

Joan Parker, who worked for the Newbery family for many years, must be congratulated on her perseverance in encouraging the daughter of Mr and Mrs Newbery junior ‘Alphington’ to allow the National Rough Collie Archive access to Alphington Scrapbooks
and photographic albums.
We understand that this
collection is ongoing, and
that further material
should be forthcoming in
the future.