HERDING DOGS: BORDER COLLIE VS. AUSTRALIAN CATTLE DOG
– [Narrator] Dogumentary
TV, producing the best breed
documentaries on YouTube
(barking)
(slow-paced guitar)
– My name is Rachel Maness,
I work here at On The Lamb
ranch full-time, I’ve been
working here for the last
two years and I work primarily
with Australian Cattle Dogs
although I do also have a Border Collie.
Border Collies are great
pets and working dogs because
they’ve got a drive and
focus, and intelligence that’s
really unmatched, they are
brilliant problem solvers
and that can make them a
little bit difficult if they
don’t have a job to do.
Australian Cattle Dogs are
slightly less suited for
suburban life, they are
specifically bred to solve
their problems with their
teeth and you can run into
a lot of problems with nipping
if they aren’t properly
stimulated, Cattle Dogs are
very much a one-person dog
though, if you imagine a
dog that loves everybody
like a Golden Retriever or a Labrador,
and a dog that just
loves everybody they meet
and just take all of that
love and focus it like a laser
on one person, and that’s how
much your Cattle Dog loves you
they are very focused on their person.
I’ve been involved with Cattle
Dogs since early childhood,
the first ones I ever met
were on a cattle ranch where
I took horseback riding lessons,
and those dogs were amazing
they could do anything, and
after a full day of work
they were happy to run behind
the pickup truck all the
rest of the evening.
I wanted to get into agility,
and I wanted to find a breed
that could do all of the
dog sports, and of course
I went with a Cattle Dog,
since coming here to work
on the land, though, I found
I also needed a Border Collie
to help with the sheep.
The Border Collie is very good
at precision and gathering
the sheep and getting them
exactly where I want them to go
and my Cattle Dog provides a lot of power,
so the Border Collie I’ve
only had the Border Collie
for a couple of years now,
Cattle Dogs I’ve had all my life
and they are amazing.
Border Collies are bred to work
sheep out on the highlands,
they’re bred to work far out
from the sheep and move them
with their eyes, they’re
called a close-eyed breed,
they are bred to move the
sheep by staring at them.
Cattle Dogs are bred to
move big, nasty, angry cows
in the Australian outback,
they’re bred to be aggressive,
stubborn and in your face,
and get up there and get those
animals to move, so I find
combining them I have a dog
that can move the sheep with
great precision from a great
distance, and sometimes that’s
not enough power to move the
sheep when they don’t wanna
go, when they’ve gotten into
somewhere they shouldn’t be
and they’re eating the haystack
or the grain, I’ve got just
stubborn sheep that don’t
wanna go, the cattle dog is
phenomenal at moving the sheep
and getting them going and
getting them motivated,
because the sheep don’t
actually think that the Border
Collie is going to eat them,
but they’re pretty sure
the Cattle Dog will,
given the opportunity.
(Low-key blues music)
Australian Cattle Dogs were
developed in the early 1800s
not long after Australia was
settled in the late 1700s
they were developed
specifically by Thomas Hall in
New South Wales, he needed
dogs that could move
thousands of cattle because
he had over a million
acres of grazing land and
he was putting thousands
of head of cattle out on
these pastures and it was
unfenced, they were leaving
the cows out there for
months at a time and the
cows were just nasty,
and he needed dogs that
could move with power
and force, and could also stand the heat,
and the dogs that were
coming from England that
the settlers were bringing
with them couldn’t handle
the climate, so what he
needed was something with the
climate and the power and
ability to move the stock,
that could also handle
the Australian climate
and moving thousands of
cows over hundreds of miles
to market.
So what he did was he took
the Northumberland Rovers dogs
from the North of England up
on the border with Scotland,
the same place Border Collies
originated, these were some
of the dogs that would eventually
be called Border Collies,
and he crossed those with
the native Australian Dingo,
and so what he got was a dog
that would bite the heels
of the cows to get them
moving and could move even the
nastiest, wildest cows, and
could move, again, thousands
of cows over hundreds of miles.
Before he developed these
dogs, Thomas Hall had written
that he’d lost 200 cows in one
day, out just in the brush,
because the terrain was so
rough, so he developed these
dogs that could move the
cows and keep them together
and they didn’t have that
kind of losses after that.
(Slow harmonica, guitar)
The Border Collies originated
on the border of England
and Scotland and they were
bred to get sheep that had
been out on the highlands
without a lot of predators,
and so the sheep would be
spooked by sending a dog
out to get them, so you had
to have a dog that could
work out, far and wide,
and not spook the sheep,
and move them with gentle pressure.
(music)
Border Collies are bred to work on sheep,
Cattle Dogs are bred to work on cows,
Border Collies are bred
to be chasing sheep around
in grassy hills of Scotland,
Cattle Dogs are bred to
be herding cows in the
Australian outback, to move
cows through a mountain
range in the middle of
New South Wales, so
Cattle Dogs are tough and
they are stubborn, I
personally think they are
the toughest dog out
there, as an example there
was a dog a few years ago
named Sophie, in Australia,
who fell off a boat in
shark-infested waters,
in really rough seas, swam
five miles to an Island,
hunted feral goats for about
three months until they
decided that she posed a
problem to the native wildlife,
she was trapped like a wild
animal, returned to her family,
went home and slept on
the couch that night.
The Australian Cattle Dog
is a breed with many names,
they started out being
called Hall’s Heelers, until
about the 1870s when Thomas
Hall died and his lands
were sold off, from then
they were called Heelers,
they come in two colors,
blue and red, and they’re
frequently called Blue
Heelers, Red Heelers,
or Queensland Heelers, these
are all the same breed,
it’s all the Australian Cattle Dog.
The breed name that the
kennel clubs decided on
when they decided to
start registering them in
the 1870s was Australian Cattle Dog.
The first breed standard was
written by Robert Kaleski
in 1903.
Working sheep with a Cattle
Dog is a little bit of
a challenge, because she
does have a lot of power
and my Cattle Dogs are
specifically bred to work cows,
so a lot of it is convincing
the Cattle Dog to work
farther enough and calm
enough that the sheep don’t
really think the Cattle
Dog is going to eat them,
although they’re always
a little bit worried.
(upbeat music)
In a pet home, Cattle Dogs
and Border Collies both excel
at activities like agility,
disc, frisby, dock diving,
really anything where their
brain is being engaged,
they’re not the kind of dog
you can go run five miles
with all day, run five
miles a day with and then
they’ll be tired, they
need mental exercise too,
so if you’re going to
run them five miles then
you need to go home and do
some trick training with them,
teach them to sit up, teach
them to spin in circles,
they are wonderful dogs for
people that enjoy training
their dogs, they’re not
couch potatoes, I do think
Border Collies are a little
bit better with children,
Cattle Dogs tend to be
very nippy, they are born
wanting to bite things’
heels, and while most puppies
are very nippy, Cattle Dogs
are more persistent about it
than most.
Border Collies can be very
sweet, sometimes a little bit
sound sensitive, they have
feelings, you can hurt their
feelings, they are wonderful
dogs, some of them make
great service dogs, they’re
up for doing whatever
you want them to do.
Border Collies are more
likely to love everybody,
Cattle Dogs and Border
Collies need about the same
amount of socialization
and exercise and training,
I do think that Cattle
Dogs, the socialization
aspect is a little bit more important,
Border Collies tend to
default to being mostly okay
with everybody especially if
they’re from a good breeder.
Cattle Dogs just come in one
coat type, they shed a lot
but they don’t tend to matt
up, so as long as you don’t
mind sweeping things up and
combing the hair off of them
they require very little
grooming, I like to say that mine
is made of Scotch Guard and
Teflon because nothing sticks
to her, no burrs, no foxtails, nothing.
Border Collies come in two
coats, you can have smooth coats
and you can have rough coats.
The smooth coats tend to
be like my Cattle Dog,
they shed a lot, but
they don’t pick stuff up.
Border Collies with longer
hair you do have to comb them
out, especially out here I have
to check my dog for foxtails
all the time, I feel like
the rough coats don’t shed
quite as much, but they
do require some grooming
to make sure they’re not
getting matted and tangled.
Cattle Dogs’ breed standard
says they should be between
17 and 20 inches and weight
isn’t as important as balance.
What you get with the shows
though is you get dogs that
tend to be long in the
back, short in the leg, and
very heavy-bodied, and you
end up with dogs that can’t
really work all day, this
is a breed that’s supposed
to be running in the outback all day long,
and if you see ones on ranches,
mostly working cattle dogs
can work all day, but the
confirmation ones that you see
in the show ring, they’re
trending more and more towards
losing that ability to work
in favor of this big, heavy,
low body.
Border Collies have a huge
range especially working
Border Collies can be 25
pounds or 70 pounds, they can
be long-haired, short-haired,
their ears can go any which
way they can be any color.
My Australian Cattle Dog is
named Sissy Godzilla, she is
a Red Heeler, she’s a little
bit unusual for Cattle Dogs
because she was born with a docked tail.
Cattle Dog breed standard
says they’re supposed to have
a tail but sometimes they’re
born with a naturally short
tail, so she was born
with a little tiny nub,
we didn’t cut it off, but
people do sometimes dock
their tails, I think there’s
some confusion between
the Australian Cattle Dog
and the Australian Shepherd,
the Australian Shepherd was
developed in the American
Southwest to herd sheep that
were coming in from Australia,
Australian Cattle Dog was
actually bred and developed
in Australia, Australian
Shepherds are supposed to have
their tales docked, and
I think at some point
there was a bit of a
disconnect because there is
an American tradition of
docking Australian Cattle Dogs
even though it’s against
the breed standard
and it’s not traditionally
done in Australia.
Sissy Godzilla weighs about 28
pounds, she’s 17-inches tall,
she’s very small for a Cattle
Dog, she’s also very leggy,
so she doesn’t look at all
like the show ring dogs,
but she certainly has the
ability to cover ground
and zoom as fast as she needs
to go to get out and around
the sheep.
She is two years old, she
comes from working lines in
Arizona.
My Border Collie Zip is
three years old, she was born
here at On The Lamb ranch,
she’s an On The Lamb dog
bred by Robin Elliott, and
she is an amazing worker,
she can figure things
out like no other dog,
I can send her out where I
think there might be sheep,
and if there are sheep out
there she will go and get them.
Sometimes I do occasionally
lose her because if there’s
not sheep over that hill,
she’ll be over the next hill
and keep looking until
she finds some sheep.
Zip is 18 inches tall, she
weighs 36 pounds, she’s
a little bit on the light
side, but for a female
Border Collie she’s
right in breed standard.
Zip is a long-haired Border
Collie but she doesn’t
have a heavy coat, so
she jumps in stock tanks
to cool off all the time,
and then with a few minutes
later she’s dry cos she’s
got a fast-drying coat,
specifically for that purpose.
Sissy Godzilla, when we
first started herding sheep
she was pretty sure her
entire purpose here was
to bite the sheep and so
training for Sissy was
originally don’t bite the
sheep, do anything other
than bite the sheep, and
once that clicked for her
she turned into an amazing working dog.
(bird tweets)
So Zip and I once went out
to the field where I had some
sheep inside a portable
fence and it turned out
they had escaped and
they hadn’t just escaped
out of their small area,
they’d escaped off of our land
completely and they were
out in the public lands
in heavy brush where people
are known to get lost
100 feet from the trail
and be lost for a week
because you cannot see
anything, and all I could
hear was a bell on one of the
sheep somewhere out there,
and I said Zip go find the
sheep, and about ten minutes
later she brought be back
all 30 sheep in a nice little
row and it was brush over my
head and I couldn’t see them
and she just went and got them all.
(guitar blues)
I love Australian Cattle
Dogs, they are a breed like
no other, they are
tough, they are stubborn,
and if they decide they’re
gonna work for you,
they’re gonna be stubborn in your favor.
They are fierce, they are
untamed, you can always
see a little bit of that Dingo in them,
especially the red ones (laughs).
Since the early days of the
breed there’s always been
a concept that the red ones
have a little more Dingo
in them and it’s thought
to be a myth but I honestly
kind of think maybe there’s a
little bit of truth to that.
Border Collies are amazing
as far as their precision,
their brains, their
ability to problem solve,
and their ability to do
things independently,
and together I find the two
breeds make a perfect pairing
for the jobs that I need
to do here on the ranch.
