Australian Cattle Dogs Are Monsters, You Don't Want One

Australian cattle dogs basically the worst breed ever. They are so bitey their urge to bite is wired to their spines somewhere before their brains so sometimes they short-circuit and just start biting whatever's in range. They have an unreal amount of energy, and working dogs will often run several miles behind a horse or vehicle just to get to the place they'll be working for the day. They are independent and freakishly intelligent, and will find problems to solve that you didn't even know existed. Cattle dogs are suspicious and often outright aggressive towards unfamiliar people and things, and treat everything as a potential threat. They bite people they don't like, they also bite people they do like. They bite out of affection. They bite when overstimulated. They bite. They bite. They bite.

Devils, I tell you.
Photo by Erin Koski

Why the Scare Tactics?

I was recently part of a dog breed discussion in which someone asked for breed recommendations that fit these criteria:

• Moderate energy level
• Intelligent and obedient
• Agility competitor
• Very low shedding
• Neat/not slobbery
• Great with children

Soon the breed recommendations were pouring in, mostly for very low-shedding breeds like poodles, schnauzers, and Chinese cresteds. However, a few people suggested border collies and Australian shepherds. When it was pointed out that these are, in fact, typically considered high-energy, moderate- to severe-shedding, child-herding breeds, some of these people stuck to their guns. Their logic was basically that their own dog doesn't shed that much, loves their kids, and is pretty mellow, and their friend's border collie is the same way so they sort of fit the criteria. Honestly, it was a bit like these people only saw "intelligent and obedient" and "agility competitor" on the list.

I am perplexed by this attitude, the same way I am perplexed when anyone instantly blurts out their favorite breed whenever someone asks for breed suggestions. There are a whole lot of different dog breeds out there, and no single breed is a perfect fit for everything.

I've found that most people who are very active in herding breed rescue tend to do the opposite, and try to scare people away from their favorite breed. When someone thinks they want a Queensland heeler, I want them to be prepared for the very worst of the breed. Sure, they're not all literally possessed by demons, but many are pretty awful compared to the common pet breeds. What I don't want is for someone to take the advice of a friend who owns an atypical fat, lazy, child-loving blue heeler, and end up with a turbo-charged, child-herding, perpetual motion machine.

Do Your Worst.

Herding dogs are not for everyone, particularly the most intense working breeds. A large number of the Australian cattle dogs that end up in rescue do so because they were a bad fit for their first home. They were destructive out of boredom. They bit the neighbor. They herd the children. The original owners and possibly even a succession of owners were expecting an average dog and ended up with an average ACD instead. I think the more we cattledog people play up their bad side, the fewer people will decide to bring one home in the first place. 

The Australian Stumpy Tail Cattledog

The Australian Stumpy Tail Cattle Dog is a little-known breed used in the development of the Australian Cattle Dog. Stumpies are primarily found working stock in the USA, and unlike the ACD they aren't recognized by the American Kennel Club. This means they are still primarily being bred for their working ability rather than their appearance or tendency to win conformation shows. They're a bit like a grittier, more intense ACD.

The most striking feature of the Australian Stumpy Tail Cattle Dog is their natural bobtail. Most of them are born with tails less than 4" long, though they occasionally have a bit more tail. In comparison, Australian Cattle Dogs are supposed to have full tails. ACDs are not supposed to have their tails docked, but this is very common for working dogs in the USA. A possible explanation for this is that both breeds were imported from Australian to the American southwest at the same time, and early ranchers didn't realize they were separate breeds and though the natural bobtailed dogs had been docked.

Another major differences between the breeds is the colors, tan points are only allowed on Australian Cattle Dogs and not stumpies. Therefore the ACD can be red ticked, blue ticked with tan points, or just blue ticked. The ASTCD can be all red, or all blue, but not both at the same time.

Australian Cattle Dogs should be a bit longer from neck to tail than they are tall at the withers, giving them a rectangular outline. Australian Stumpy Tail Cattle Dogs are supposed to be equal in these measurements, giving them a square outline. This means stumpies have longer legs and shorter back than ACDs.

Developed in the 1800's in Australia, stumpies supposedly predated the Australian cattle dogs with tails and were used in their development. Australian kelpies were also used to develop the ACD, this is where the tan points came from. Stumpies were not derived from kelpies, and do not have tan points.

ACDs and ASTCDs have been crossbred quite a bit since the very beginning, and stumpies were in danger of going extinct as a distinct breed until the 1980's. The years of crossbreeding mean that an occasional stumpy with tan points crops up.

Many Shades of Brown

Source: Wikimedia Commons

This is a Maltese.

Source: Wikimedia Commons

So is this.

Source: Wikimedia Commons

This is also a Maltese.

Source: Wikimedia Commons

This is a Shih Tzu.

Source: Wikimedia Commons

Source: Wikimedia Commons

This is another Shih Tzu.

This is a Yorkshire Terrier, also known as a Yorkie.

Source: Wikimedia Commons

Here is another Yorkie.

When the Designer Dog fad started, I wasn't terribly concerned with breeders mashing up toy breeds. Unlike working and sporting dogs, toy breeds are pretty much all bred to be lap dogs. Therefore, indiscriminately mixing lapdogs wasn't too troubling. More recently, I had an interesting thought. 

Obviously, I love and adore mixed breed dogs. Rescue mutts are wonderful, and guessing breeds is a favorite hobby of mine. That said, there is a purpose behind purebred dogs. The point of purebreds is predictability. By getting a Shih Tzu, Maltese, Yorkie, Miniature Pinscher, Chihuahua, or Toy Poodle, a person can be reasonably confident that their dog will have a specific coat type, temperament, personality, and adult size. Obviously buying a dog from a truly good breeder helps a whole lot. A good breeder attempts to better the breed and work toward some goal, and the result is consistently similar dogs. Sure, there are marathon-running Shih Tzus and couch potato Yorkies, but the majority of well-bred purebred dogs tend towards a temperament and personality that is typical for the breed. Most Shih Tzus are happy couch lumps, most Yorkie are ready to run.

This is why there are breed clubs. This is why there are breed fans. This is why you can get coffee mugs and key chains and everything under the sun emblazoned with the image of your favorite dog breed. Owning a purebred dog is a bit like being the parent of a toddler; when your Beagle catches a whiff of the rabbits at the pet store and starts yodeling, other Beagle owners will smile and nod knowingly, or at least toss you a sympathetic shrug. "That's Beagles for ya!" Owners of other breeds haven't been there, and some of them probably wonder if you're torturing your dog over in the small animal department.

I like to think of dog breeds sort of like paint colors. All puppies start out sort of bland and potato-shaped, and its easy to assume that they will remain indiscriminately squishy and adorable. Purebred dogs are like specific colors, easily recognizable and predictably different from one another as they grow up. Mutt puppies are fun to watch grow because they are unpredictable, but when all the colors of paint are mixed together, they end up brown. There are many different shades of brown, from pale beige to dark chocolate to red rust. Sometimes it's easy to see a lot of one or two colors in a specific shade of brown. 

This is what I see happening when the various toy breeds are all mixed up. A dog may be a specific mix of Cavalier King Charles Spaniel and Bichon Frise, Toy Poodle and Cocker Speniel, Maltese and Shih Tzu, but they all end up looking the same. Designer dogs almost inevitably grow up into nondescript scruffy-looking mutts.

Source: Wikimedia Commons

Source: Wikimedia Commons

Source: Wikimedia Commons

Source: Wikimedia Commons

Each of these four dogs is a specific, known breed mix, but none of them are immediately recognizable the way actual breeds are. A few breeds are likely, the way a shade of brown can look reddish, but none are an easily definable hue with predictable characteristics and features.

There is nothing wrong with brown. Mutts are fantastic. However, I do have a problem with someone making mutts and claiming that they are something other than a specific way to make a slightly more predictable shade of brown. The ethics of breeding mutts aside, there is nothing ethical about selling brown as extra-special "purple-orange" or "plorange". There is nothing ethical about encouraging this behavior by paying hundreds of dollars for a "plorange" puppy. There is especially nothing ethical about correcting someone who just commented on a nice shade of brown with, "Excuse me, it's Plorange." Nobody is going to recognize "plorange" or "purple-orange" dog because, when mixed together, purple and orange make brown. They can make some lovely, wonderful shades of brown that are just as valid as any other colors, but they are still brown. The paint box is filled with many easily recognizable colors that have their own fans, aficionados, and victims, but a specific shade of brown isn't set apart from the others just because of the colors that went into it.

So that's my two cents of designer dogs. I just can't get behind homogenizing the small dog population and claiming to make it better somehow while losing the specific and reliable characteristics that make breed special. Even when making small companion dogs, we need to be breeding with loftier goals than just making more dogs, even cute dogs.

The Wisdom Panel DNA Test

When Brisbane was a deceptively adorable puppy, dog breed DNA tests were just beginning to hit the market. When I first heard about them, there were only two available. The Canine Heritage DNA test was done with a cheek swab, but only tested for the 20 most common breeds at the time, and did not include Australian cattledog, border collie, Australian shepherd, Shetland sheepdog, or any other breeds we thought Briz might contain. The other product on the market was the Wisdom Panel, which required a blood sample but could detect over a hundred breeds. The test kit itself cost over $100, and a vet appointment for a blood draw was an additional cost.

I knew Brisbane's mother, Sally, was a working Australian cattledog, but his father was a huge mystery. His breeder had been intending to produce a litter of purebred cattledogs, but on the way back from visiting the stud dog at the next ranch over, Sally jumped out of the back of the truck. A different neighbor returned her the next morning, apologizing for letting his beagle mix get to her. She produced a litter of seven puppies, two short-haired and houndy-looking, two tri-colored curlies including Brisbane, and three white fluffies with markings only on their faces.

I have been collecting breed guesses on Brisbane his entire life. Corgi fans often suggest his dad was a corgi mix. Sheltie-lovers are sure he's a sheltie mix. When he was a bitey little monster we joked that he was a land-shark.

The only sure thing was that he was half Australian cattledog, and that he has inherited 100% of the heeler temperament from his mother. I've always thought of him as a funny-looking ACD. Experienced herding trainers have watchied him work sheep and said that he is an absolute natural and needs very little training or direction. He's better at herding than a lot of purebred herding-breed dogs. I had always figured that his dad must have been a hodgepodge of other herding breeds.

By the time I finally got around to forking over the money for a DNA test last year, the technology had improved tremendously. Mars Veterinary had bought out pretty much all of their competitors, and had grown their database to over 200 different breeds. Ongoing research means their product just keeps getting better. I followed their instructions for carefully collecting a cheek swab, and mailed it off.

I also made this for Brisbane's fans when I announced I was getting him tested:

After three weeks I got the results, which were...unlikely.

I was ready to write off the DNA tests as amusing but obviously inaccurate. However, I noticed that on Amazon.com every bad review was followed up with a reply from the company requesting that the customer contact them. I sent them a picture of Brisbane and also this picture of his mother, asking them to tell me with a straight face that she was actually half bullmastiff.

A month later, an actual geneticist from Mars Veterinary called me and geeked out about dog breeds with me for nearly an hour. I learned that the sample dogs used to develop the breed algorithms were all AKC registered. Sally was from working lines and not a perfect match with the AKC dogs, so the computer came up with bullmastiff as a false positive. The geneticist was able to look at all of the possible results, and gave me a new analysis with the breeds that showed up in every projection. She said the bullmastiff genes were very strong, and that the Cavalier King Charles spaniel showed up in every projection. Here is Brisbane's official result:

I am very happy with this result, the Cavalier King Charles Spaniel is definitely the piece of the puzzle that I was missing. Brisbane has very spanielly ears and a perfect spaniel tail as well. AmStaff and mastiff is a very common mix. The best part is that the geneticist thinks Brisbane's dad was a mid-sized, short-haired, stocky, tri-color dog with big floppy ears. Sounds like a beagle to me! Here's what that "mixed breed" could mean.

According to the geneticist, the Xolo shows up as a false positive for a lot of pitbull-type dogs. I was hoping it meant "Mexican street dog", but apparently the Xolo genes cluster pretty tightly with European terriers. I see two spitzy-type breeds on there, which could explain why Brisbane carries his tail curled over his back instead of straight like all the identifiable breeds in the mix. Patricia McConnell, one of my favorite authors and behaviorists, has a great explanation of some of the finer points of interpreting breed DNA tests if you'd like to read more.