Dog breed · Australia
The Australian Stumpy Tail Cattle Dog, commonly known as the Stumpy, is a naturally bobtailed or tailless medium-sized cattle dog closely related to the Australian Cattle Dog. The Australian Stumpy Tail Cattle Dog and the Australian Cattle Dog share Halls Heeler origin.
Temperament: The ideal temperament of the Stumpy is described in the breed standard as alert and watchful, as well as responsive to its owner and reserved around strangers. They are high energy dogs with high stimulation needs.
Appearance: The ANKC standard asks for "a well proportioned working dog, rather square in profile with a hard-bitten, rugged appearance". They have small pricked ears and a naturally short tail under 10 centimetres (3.9 in). The coat is short and dense with a small ruff around the neck. They come in various patterns of blue or red. Unlike Australian Cattle Dogs, the standard forbids tan markings, which are considered signs of a mix-breed dog.
History: The first domestic dogs to arrive in Australia came with the First Fleet in 1788 and later convict fleets. (The Australian Dingo is not classified as a domestic dog.) A thriving stray dog population soon grew. Some of the strays, those with stock work potential, apparently found home with the free settler, George Hall. Thomas Hall, a son of George, developed them into working dogs. Robert Kaleski, who wrote the first standard for the Cattle Dog breed, called Hall's dogs Halls Heelers.
The Halls Heelers were later developed into the two modern breeds, Australian Cattle Dog and Australian Stumpy Tail Cattle Dog. Kaleski also suggested that Thomas Hall imported dogs from England.
The Sydney-based Kaleski described only long-tailed cattle dogs in his breed standard, published in 1902. The short, or absent, tail is an inherited defect. In Queensland, however, the two types (long- and short-tailed) were originally exhibited as two varieties of the one Cattle Dog breed, but by the 1950s, separate classes – Cattle Dog (long-tail) and Cattle Dog (short-tail) – were more usual.
