Head
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"Skull-capacious and rather squarely formed giving plenty of room for brain power. The parts over the eyes(supra-orbital ridges) are well arched. The whole well covered with hair.
Stop-Well defined.
Jaw-Fairly long, strong, square and truncated. Attention is particularly called to the above properties as a long narrow head or snipey muzzle is a deformity"
From the side, there should be a lot of depth in the muzzle, along with the untapered look seen from the front. Notice the strong stop and orbital ridges over the eyes. The planes of the head should be very well defined.
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The
head should give the impression of a small box in front of a larger box
whether seen from the front or the side
Notice on the front view one should still see the depth of the muzzle and that the muzzle does not taper When clipped, you should see the "chiseling" in the head. Also notice the distance between the eyes. The standard before the reformat was very clear about the OES not having a deer hound or poodle expression |
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| The front view above is a dog and the profile, left, is a bitch. Although she is not as blunt as the dog, she should still have squareness called for. On the right, one can see the head inside the coat on a dog that is half clipped. | |
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From the front, the OES should have a very strong foreface, large fully pigmented nose and a broad backskull. This should be evident WITHOUT teasing. This dog has no teasing and illustrates this well. |
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The head in the OES must have the above features, since these are breed characterisitics. The OES uses it's head when working. It nips at animals to control them. Because of this nipping instinct, the preferred bite was a dead level bite, because it did not tear the wool on the sheep. This needs to be backed up by a head that is strong and broad, supporting this strong truncated muzzle.