Australian Cattle Dog:

This Australian Cattle Breed Dogs also called as Just “Cattle Dogs” locally, This breed helps to drove the cattle heard for very long distance tru the hilly terrain regions. This medium build Herding dog is developed in Australia.

This Australian cattle dog will be either in black or blown coat distributed all over the body. 

Appearance:

Australian Cattle Dog has been nicknamed a “Red Heeler” or “Blue Heeler” on the basis of its colouring and practice of moving reluctant cattle by nipping at their heels. Dogs from a line bred in Queensland, Australia, which were successful at shows and at stud in the 1940s, were called “Queensland Heelers” to differentiate them from lines bred in New South Wales; this nickname is now occasionally applied to any Australian Cattle Dog.

In Australia

George Hall and his family arrived in the New South Wales Colony in 1802. By 1825, the Halls had established two cattle stations in the Upper Hunter Valley and had begun a northward expansion into the Liverpool Plains, New England and Queensland. Getting his cattle to the Sydney markets presented a problem in that thousands of head of cattle had to be moved for thousands of kilometres along unfenced stock routes through the sometimes rugged bush and mountain ranges. A note, in his own writing, records Thomas Hall’s anger at losing 200 head in the scrub.

A droving dog was needed, but the colonial working dogs are understood to have been of the Old English Sheepdog type, commonly referred to as Smithfields. Descendants of these dogs still exist but are useful only over short distances and for yard work with domesticated cattle. Thomas Hall addressed the problem by importing several of the dogs used by drovers in Northumberland, his parents’ home county. At that time dogs were generally described by their job, regardless of whether they constituted a breed as it is currently understood. In the manner of the time, the Hall family historian, A. J. Howard gave these blue mottled dogs a name: Northumberland Blue Merle Drovers Dog.

Thomas Hall crossed his Drovers Dogs with dingoes he had tamed, and by 1840 was satisfied with his resulting progeny. During the next thirty years, the Halls Heelers, as they became known, were used only by the Halls. Given that they were dependent on the dogs, which gave them an advantage over other cattle breeders, it is understandable that the dogs were not distributed beyond Hall’s properties. It was not until after Thomas Hall’s death in 1870 when the properties went to auction with the stock on them, that Halls Heelers became freely available.

Cattle Dogs were accustomed to horses in the 1900s.

By the 1890s, the dogs had attracted the attention of the Cattle Dog Club of Sydney, a group of men with a recreational interest in the new practice of showing dogs competitively. None were stockmen working cattle on a daily basis, and initially, they were interested in a range of working dogs, including the Smithfield. They reportedly adopted the term “Australian Cattle Dog” to refer to the dogs being bred from bloodlines originating from Thomas Hall’s “heelers”, and prominent members of the group concentrated on breeding these lines. Of these breeders, the Bagust family was the most influential. Robert Kaleski, of Moorebank, a young associate of Harry Bagust, wrote “in 1893 when I got rid of my cross-bred cattle dogs and took up the blues, breeders of the latter had started breeding … to fix the type. I drew up a standard for them on those lines”. This first breed standard for the Cattle Dog breed was published, with photographs, by the New South Wales Department of Agriculture in 1903.

Kaleski’s standard was adopted by breed clubs in Queensland and New South Wales and re-issued as their own, with local changes. His writings from the 1910s give an important insight into the early history of the breed. However, dog breeder and author Noreen Clark have noted that his opinions are sometimes just that, and he introduces some contradictory assertions in his later writings, as well as some assumptions that are illogical in the light of modern science. Some of these have persisted; for example, he saw the red colour form as having more dingo in it than the blue form, and there is a persistent belief that reds are more vicious than blues. The most enduring of Kaleski’s myths relate to Dalmatian and Kelpie infusions into the early Cattle Dog breed. These infusions are not referred to in Kaleski’s writings until the 1920s and it seems likely that Kaleski sought to explain the Cattle Dog’s mottled colouration and tan on legs by similarity to the Dalmatian and Kelpie, respectively. The genetics of coat colour, and the current understanding of hereditary characteristics, make the infusion of Dalmatian to increase the cattle dog’s tolerance of horses an extremely unlikely event. There were relatively few motor vehicles in Australia at the beginning of the 20th century, so most dogs of any breed would have been accustomed to horses. The Kelpie breed was developed after the Cattle Dog type was described, so its infusion is unlikely. It is possible that there was some infusion of Bull Terrier but there is no verifiable record of this, and the Cattle Dog has not had the Bull Terrier‘s instinct to bite and hold, which would have been an undesirable trait. Early in the 1900s, there was considerable in-fighting amongst members of the Cattle Dog Club, and a series of arguments about the origin of the breed appeared in newspapers and journals of the time. While many of these arguments were misleading, some irrational, and the majority not supported by historical facts, they continue to be circulated, resulting in a number of theories on the origins of the breed. In recent years, information technology enabling the manipulation of large databases combined with advances in the understanding of canine genetics has allowed a clearer understanding of the development of the breed.

A medal awarded to A. Bevis, owner of Little Logic

Through the 1890s, Cattle Dogs of Halls Heeler derivations were seen in the kennels of exhibiting Queensland dog breeders such as William Byrne of Booval, and these were a different population from those shown in New South Wales. Little Logic was bred in Rockdale, New South Wales, however, Sydney exhibitors saw Little Logic for the first time after the dog had been added to the Hillview kennels of Arch Bevis in Brisbane. The show records of Little Logic and his offspring created a demand in New South Wales for Queensland dogs. By the end of the 1950s, there were few Australian Cattle Dogs whelped that were not descendants of Little Logic and his best-known son, Logic Return. The success and popularity of these dogs led to the growth of the nickname “Queensland Heeler”.

The prominence of Little Logic and Logic Return in the pedigrees of modern Australian Cattle Dogs was perpetuated by Wooleston Kennels. For some twenty years, Wooleston supplied foundation and supplementary breeding stock to breeders in Australia, North America and Continental Europe. As a result, Wooleston Blue Jack is ancestral to most, if not all, Australian Cattle Dogs whelped since 1990 in any country