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The Australian Cattle Dog (ACD) is a breed of herding dog originally developed in Australia for droving cattle over long distances across rough terrain. Today it is a versatile breed: a courageous and tireless worker, an intelligent and athletic companion and a loving and playful family pet.

The Australian Cattle Dog is a medium-sized short-coated dog which occurs in two main colour forms. The dogs have either brown or black hair distributed fairly evenly through a white coat which gives the appearance of red or blue dogs. They have been nicknamed “Red Heelers” and “Blue Heelers” on the basis of this colouring and their 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 and this nickname is now occasionally applied to any Australian Cattle Dog.

While there is a good deal of mythology surrounding the origins of breed, in recent years information technology that enables the manipulation of large databases, and advances in the understanding of canine genetics has allowed a clearer understanding of the Halls Heeler, its dispersal through eastern Australia, and its development into two modern breeds: the Australian Cattle Dog and the Australian Stumpy Tail Cattle Dog.

As with dogs from other working breeds, Australian Cattle Dogs have a good deal of energy, a quick intelligence and an independent streak. They respond well to structured training. They are not aggressive dogs, but they form a strong attachment with their owner and can be very protective of them and their possessions. They are easy dogs to groom and maintain. The most common health problems are deafness and progressive blindness, both hereditary conditions, and accidental injury, otherwise they are a robust breed with a lifespan of twelve to fourteen years. Australian Cattle Dogs participate in a range of activities from obedience, agility and herding competitions, to participating with their owners in hiking, flying disk, and endurance events, and working as therapy or assistance dogs.

History 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 sometimes rugged bush and mountain ranges. A note, in his own writing, records Thomas Hall's anger at losing 200 head in scrub.[24]

A droving dog was desperately needed but the colonial working dogs are understood to have been of Old English Sheepdog type (commonly referred to as Smithfields, descendants of these dogs still exist) 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 this 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.[24]

Thomas Hall crossed his Drovers Dogs with dingoes he had tamed and by 1840 was satisfied with his resultant breed. 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 the 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.[24]

By the 1890s, the dogs, known simply as Cattle Dogs, had attracted the attention of several Sydney dog breeders with interests in the show ring, of whom 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”.[25] This first Breed standard for the Cattle Dog breed was published, with photographs, by the New South Wales Department of Agriculture in 1903.[26]

Kaleski's Standard was taken up 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 has noted that his opinions are sometimes just that, and in his later writings he introduces some contradictory assertions, and some assumptions which are illogical in the light of modern science.[24] Unfortunately some of these have persisted as ‘truths’. For example he saw the red Cattle Dog as having more dingo in it than the blue colour 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.[24] 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.[24] The Kelpie breed was developed after the Cattle Dog type was described, so its infusion is also unlikely.[24] 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.[24]

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. When Royal Shows began again after World War II, Sydney exhibitors saw Little Logic offspring for the first time and these dogs and their sires' show record created a demand in New South Wales for Little Logic's lineage. By the end of the 1950s, there were few Australian Cattle Dogs whelped that were not descendants of Little Logic or his best known son, Logic Return. The success and popularity of these dogs led to the growth of the nickname “Queensland Heeler”.[24]

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.[24]

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