Two Collies

Ooooh I would have loved to have pet these two dogs. I mostly associate Collies with Lassie, but I feel like I might be on the societal brink of that association. Certainly Gen-X would still have some residue from the most popular reiteration of Lassie, the television show which ran up to 1973. But while googling, I found out there was a stab at Lassie that ran on Canadian pre-teen focused television network, YTV and ran for 52 episodes spanning 1997 to 1999. I would have been prime age to ingest this media but I absolutely did not and I don't even remember this existing. 

Most of my elder millennial associations with Lassie come from the season 8 episode of The Simpsons titled "Canine Mutiny". In this episode, Bart, using a credit card acquired through forgery while filling out a application for Santos. L Halper, purchases a $1200 purebred Collie named Laddie. By this point, I believe the Simpsons was already mostly bad. I think Season 7 is the cutoff for the good stuff, this is contentious, but I'd argue it IRL. Just not in this text box. So moving on.

One thing I found most interesting about the 1997 YTV incarnation of Lassie was that during the first season, they used a collie (named Howard) who was a eighth-generation descendent of the first Lassie (1943). Apparently MOST television and film Lassie's are all bred by the same family and essentially owned by one company. The genetics get passed down to later Lassie's and this is the way that seems to work. BUT. This production decided to use a different Lassie in Season 2, which was met by protest. To remedy this backlash from the greater Lassie community, the producers brought in the 9th generation descendent and son of Howard to finish off the last of the season.

Could these two collies be descendants of the great Pal, the original Lassie?

Doubtful. But you wont hear any protest from me. In terms of 'Hero Dog' television, I was much much more of a Littlest Hobo kid.