J. Frank Baylis – Life In The Fast Lane

By Joan Harrigan

Frank Baylis of Bayshore Kennel and Farm in Toms Brook, Va. has lived the equivalent of several lives in his six decades. “If I ever write about my life, I think I’ll call it ‘Life in the Fast Lane,’” he says. Born in Virginia, he grew up with horses and dogs, but wasn’t allowed a dog of his own. There was a remedy for that—Baylis left home at 16, acquired an American Eskimo, and went to live on a commune while finishing school. He went on to college at the Shenandoah University and Conservatory of Music in Winchester, Va., but left after it occurred to him that he didn’t need a degree to meet his goal in life, which was “having fun!”

His “hippie” life on communes in the Shenandoah Valley introduced Baylis to two breeds in which he’d later make his mark as a breeder and exhibitor—Border Collies and Australian Shepherds. In 1973, he bought a male Border Collie from Scotland, intending to use him as a working dog. “He was great until the sheep learned to challenge him, and then he’d head back to the house,” Baylis recalls. He purchased a Border Collie bitch from the legendary Ethel Conrad to breed to his Scottish dog. “I kept a bitch puppy I called Dale,” Baylis recalls. “I could never leash break her, and she would bite—but never me!”

Baylis met his first Australian Shepherd after his horse threw a shoe just before a recreational trail ride. When he took the horse to his farrier that night, Baylis noticed a tailless blue dog and a little mongrel. Baylis dog in the world—an Australian Shepherd.” To demonstrate, the farrier issued a series of commands, all of which the dog obeyed instantly. His last command was to “send that dog home,” and the Aussie ran the little mongrel off.

Baylis asked the farrier to find him an Aussie, and he did—a blue merle bitch that Baylis named Mora. “She was ugly, ugly, ugly, but she did everything I ever asked,” Baylis says. Mora used to herd sheep through a hole deliberately cut into the fencing of a neighboring farm’s pasture, moving the flock into the borrowed pasture at night, and bringing them home at first light. The commune’s neighbor was never the wiser.

Baylis ultimately left the commune for Washington, D.C., and placed Mora, a true working dog, with a farmer friend. He wanted a “pretty dog” next and bought his first show Aussie, another blue merle, Sitting Pretty of Sunnybrook. “Pretty” was shown to her ASCA (Australian Shepherd Club of America) championship, as the breed did not yet have full AKC recognition.??

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Posted by Alex on Jun 22 2020. Filed under Current Articles, Featured. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. Both comments and pings are currently closed.