Oz working dogs, blue or red iirc.wtf is a blue heeler ?
Ive seen them on sheep cant remember where thoughErr, they were bred as cattle dogs. That is their common name here. “Cattle Dog” means a blue or red heeler breed . . .
The “heeler” part of their name comes from their habit of nipping at the heels to get cattle moving.
very loyal & trainable dogs, but my guess is they might be a bit hard on sheep.
Never seen them used in sheep here, but that’s not to say it can’t be done
most seem to use kelpies or collies for sheep work
Had a couple come to me for training years ago. I tend to think a dog that will heel but not head is only useful if the stock are already pointing in the right direction in which case you dont really need a dog. I think they can be useful for people who are working cattle on horseback which is where the two I started went. Used kind of like a remote cattle prod. Hard dogs, too hard for sheep I think and hard to get a good stop on them once they commit to a bite. Also have a bad reputation for sneaking up on people and nipping them from behind.
we had a Bluey when I was a kid ( ive had a few blue & red dogs myself, & our 3 pet dogs now are all cattle dog crosses - wolfhound, Rottweiler & mastiff ). My aunt had remarried, to an Englishman who was an ex Para in WW11 & had lost both his legs ( below the knee ) in I think the Arnhem landings & then a POW.
Anyway, they visited us one day & as they were leaving, Sam ( the cattle dog ) ducked out & grabbed Bill’s heel. His leg came off, Bill fell over & Sam was left with a leg in his mouth. The look on his face as he dropped it & took off ( presumably in fright ) was priceless
Does anyone know of any or will have any blue heeler pups in the future?
You will find pets, working ones are their but like hen s teeth . Mel Gibson had a good one but I’m not sure if he breeds themDoes anyone know of any or will have any blue heeler pups in the future?
we had a beardie cross collie which was a better driver than gatherer. great for keeping the pens full. solid muscle, a fraction larger than a collie and he weighed 26kgs.. a great friend as well, when he went suddenly due to a ruptired undiagnosed liver tumour the wife and i shed a lot of tears.Pat Macgettigan, a famous sheep dog trainer up here, took me to see some Scottish beardies that were cattle dogs and probably ancestors of the Australian dogs. They had mouths like crocodiles! Fifty years ago, I also saw smaller beardies on Speyside owned by a 90yo shepherd that were used exclusively as sheep dogs. He'd had the same strain all his life.
I've noticed tooth/jaw size to be an indicator of what various breeds of terrier were bred for. Border and Lakeland terriers have charactistically strong jaws and big teeth because their job was to go down into dens in rock that can't be dug to and kill the fox below ground. Jack Russell types, on the other hand, were bred to either bolt the fox for the hunt or stand back and bay to locate and hold so they could be dug to. Killing the fox was considered a major fault.
Having said all this, there are few species that can be changed as quickly and dramatically by selective breeding as the canids (witness https://evolution-outreach.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12052-018-0090-x) and if buying a pup of any working breed today I'd very carefully research it's recent ancestry to make sure it hadn't been "improved" by The Kennel Club and the show bench! We are losing our working dogs, which were created by unqique sets of circumstances over a period, at a horrifying rate because the circumstances that determined their selection are simply not present any more and are unlikely to be reproduced. Don't use it, you'll lose it.
Indidentally, Pat also had an artificial leg. His leg was amputated after he fell from a electricity pylon while working for the Scottish hydro electric board. (Didn't stop him poaching the odd deer, though, or dragging it home! ). He, too, had been bitten by a collie and although his leg did not come off, the look of absolute astonishment on the dog's face was something he often remarked on!