February 18, 2009

Cattle dogs


Where I live there is a multitude of working dogs. We have sheep herders that have dogs to move the sheep from location to location. The sheep are used to keep the hay fields from over growing during the winter months. There are also hunting dogs. Our neighbor has 2 coon hounds.

I am the most fond of the cattle dogs and we have one. Her name is Kaydee. She is a mixture of McNab, Border Collie and Australian Shepard. She helps me with our horses. She helped convince one of our horses to load into a horse trailer when he really didn't want to go in. Kaydee also keeps an eye on the herd and lets us know if there is something wrong.

Her breed mixture is quite common as ranchers are not interested in breed standards as much as performance. If the dog cannot be trained or does work then they are not bred, period. I often see 2 or cattle dogs waiting in their owners trucks while their owners are in the feed store getting ranch or cattle supplies.

2 comments:

TrishaRitchieNC said...

We have a blue tick (coon hound)/lab mix who's great passion in life is tracking my 17-year old cat. She doesn't care that her nose gets clawed regularly - she just wants to chase the cat and "tree" it on the kitchen table. Love those pics of yours!

TrishaRitchieNC said...

Love those pics!