THE AUSTRALIAN SHEPHERD'S ORIGIN AND HISTORY
PART THREE

by Gwen Stevenson

(Working Aussie Source editor's note: Gwen Stevenson was a founding member of ASCA, who lived in Oak Run, California. This is a collection of her own and other people's stories, articles, and correspondence, some of which was first published in the newsletter of the Animal Research Foundation, one of the earliest organizations to recognize the Aussie. It was eventually assembled into a small book, published by Dorrance & Co. in 1972, now out of print. The following portions are the initial pages of the larger work.

It must be noted that, although it is all of historical interest, the genetic information in these articles is now known to be incorrect.

For easier online reading, this work has been divided into several sections, and has been edited slightly for purposes of clarity only; some headings have been added. The text is original.)

Part Three contents:
• Breeding Australian Shepherds, by Tom D. Stodghill (pp 11-13)
• When to Start Your Pups, by Tom D. Stodghill (pp 12-13)
• Letter From Australia from Rod Berry (pp 13-14)

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BREEDING AUSTRALIAN SHEPHERDS
By Tom D. Stodghill

Time has proved that if you will breed enough females to one good hub dog, all the pups will be like one great sire. The more females you blend together, the more you weaken their blood and by holding 50 percent of one great sire all your dogs will be alike.

Now a hub dog of Australian Shepherds is about the same as we have in the Catahoula Leopards. It takes a little time to be sure that your hub sire has a good dark blue base. Then you have to use good judgment in the females that you use. If a female is too light, her pups should be mated with a female that is dark. Regardless of how you breed, if you will breed clockwise and have selected the right hub sire, you will not have to worry about color or type.

Now color and type are much easier to obtain than temperament and working qualities. It is true that you can hold your color and type with 25 percent controlling gene, but you cannot hold your temperament and working quality. In fact, the exact truth is this: be sure your hub dog has the temperament and working qualities that you want, for you can more or less control color, but working quality is something that took the Animal Research Foundation many years to learn how to hold. It is a proven fact that it takes 50 percent controlling gene of one great dog to be sure that your dogs will work the way you want them too.

If your pups from your hubsire do not work the way you want them to work, don't be too disappointed because it is the next generation when you will get what you want. The more generations you breed clockwise, the more likely you will get the hub dog you desire. To make a long story short, if your hub sire has all the qualities you want, you do not have to worry too much about the females you breed to him because when you breed clockwise, you develop a magnetic gene which seems to separate the Australian Shepherd blood from the other blood, and as you blend enough females together, you will re-establish the old breed of Australian Shepherds.

( Reprint of Article in Animal Research Magazine of Spring-Summer-Fall, 1968, Quinlan, Texas, 75474 ).

WHEN TO START YOUR PUPS
Note by Tom D. Stodghill

The older the pups are when they are taken out of the pens and carried to the pasture, the longer it takes to get the pups started. The best way to start pups working cows that were raised in pens is to chain the pup where cows come up around the dog house. The older the pup is, the longer it will be before it will start working, but you can watch the pup on the chain and tell when to carry him to pasture.

In fact, it helps young dogs to haul them in a pick-up when feeding cows to get them started working cows Young pups will start working as soon as they can follow you if you carry them to the barn and pasture with you. but if you kept the same pups in a pen where they can't see cows, the older they are the longer it takes to get them started working cows, whereas the same pups would have started trying to heel the cows at six to eight weeks of age if they had a chance. I raise my pups in a pasture where I have cows and hogs, and they start running pigs and calves while they nurse.

( Reprint of article in Animal Research Magazine of Spring-Summer 1969, Quinlan, Texas 75474 ).

LETTER FROM AUSTRALIA
By Rod Berry

Dear Mr. Stodghill: I must first apologize for the lateness of this answer to your very welcome letter. I have not had an hour at home for a very long time, so have been unable to answer any letters at all. I am still busy shifting cattle by rail, and will be very busy at it for some time to come. I am writing this in the brake van of a stock train, so please excuse any bad writing.

Strange to say, we have a quantity of grain for the stock, but a lot of our trouble is lack of water. This does not apply in all cases, but unfortunately, in a great many. There has been some rain, but it has been accompanied by strong hot winds which have dried the ground and burnt off all the grass that has shot up. I am sorry that I confused you over those two types of heelers and the Dingo, regarding tail length. You are right when you say the Dingo is a long tailed dog. What I meant is that he has a short tail as long tail dogs go, that is, that it reaches only to his hocks and no further.

The bob tail cattle dog I mentioned is an original cross between the Dingo and the bobtail dog, the Smithfield. During my trips about the country with stock, I have done a great deal of gathering of information regarding the dog you call the Australian Shepherd. I have come up with this: the Smithfield is not quite the same dog that you have, but he figures strongly in the breeding of the so called Australian Shepherd.

Many years ago, one family who lived and pioneered some of our best mountain cattle country known as the Upper Hunter River in New South Wales, brought with them from Scotland some black bobtail dogs. These dogs were built fairly strong and, as well as a black hard coat, they had a white ring around their necks (these dogs are not extinct; I will explain this later). They had a good square head, very bristly muzzles and brows; they were quite intelligent workers but had bad feet and were also good heelers but could not stand the heat of this country, so they were let die out.

But it was decided that a cross with something else was in order. This particular family possessed some merle-type, long haired dogs (and long tailed dogs for sheep work - collie types), and it was decided to cross these two. The blue merle dogs had white or blue eyes, sometimes broken-color eyes. The bobtail black was the original Smithfield, and the other merle dog is a dog that exists here today and is known as the coulie or German collie. The coulie is identical to the photos of your Australian Shepherd. The only difference is that he does not have a bob tail, but is the same in every other way as your Australian Shepherd.

To carry on with the story, some of the menfolk of this aforementioned family, Simpson by name, went to California, back just before or during the early Gold Rush days, and took some of these bobtail dogs with them. These were the old Smithfield - coulie cross. This also explains why there are very few, or perhaps none in this country today, as only one family ever bred such a dog, and only a few at that.

This is apparently how the Australian Shepherd got its name; it was named in America and not here. This, I would think is the true history of this dog as it is not known anywhere else but the Hunter River. I am going to get you some photos of the coulie, and I am sure you will see that they are exactly like your Australian Shepherd, except for the tail. Also, I shall send you some photos of the bobtail Smithfield as he is today. He is blue speckled and not black, as he was originally, although he has no coulie blood today. He gets his blue color from an old cross of the old blue merle smooth Scotch collie.

( Reprint of article in Animal Research Magazine of Summer - 1966, Quinlan, Texas, 75474 ).

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