r/AustralianCattleDog

Well worth all the hair and scratch marks in my truck. Life is short - bring your dog!

This dog was dumped on our road and showed up at our house. We figured she was full ACD, as we are in cattle country. She had cigarette burn marks on her belly and very timid. We decided to keep her and give her a good life. We eventually did a DNA test and was surprised at the results. We have had her for a year now. Figured we would share her here with people who would appreciate her.

Photo and dog are mine but let’s have fun, share your memes!

Long week for the young man...finally gets to watch football!

Hey all, question for those of you who have mixed heeler and cat households!

I have a female blue heeler, Sylvie, who will be 7 next month. She's on the high-strung & challenging side - we've done extensive training with her, but although she's extremely loyal & loving with her pack (us) she is very much of the territorial working dog personality, which has required quite a few lifestyle adjustments. That's (many) ACDs for you though!

About a year ago we adopted 2 kittens, boy & girl littermates (Leo and Fern). We had an older cat when adopting Sylvie as a puppy, so knew that she could be conditioned to live with them (he eventually passed at 17). After about 8 months of gradual exposure & training, we got to the point where Sylvie accepted the new cats as part of the family and no longer wanted to drive them away or eat them. Very rewarding!

The issue I'm still trying to resolve though, is that Sylvie will incessantly chase and herd them when they come downstairs to the main floor. It's not really "mean" or aggressive/unsafe behavior - just that focused heeler herding where she constantly gets in their space/way, bumps them in the direction she prefers, and just overall won't let them relax or do their own thing. It's annoying and often stressful for the cats and for us humans trying to supervise and moderate the behavior. The girl cat Fern is more reserved and now just stays upstairs, but Leo is very social and constantly trying to hang out with us downstairs while getting herded nonstop.

Obviously it's one of the most ingrained breed traits ACDs have, so I don't expect miracles but am trying to figure out how to mitigate it. Positive reinforcement during the instances she does give them space is well & good, but it doesn't seem to be making a change by itself. Scolding and/or timeouts doesn't seem to be doing much either. We've worked with multiple trainers in the past so I know a lot of the standard reward-based approaches, this behavior is just tough to crack.

We do have an e-collar that I've never used (mostly reluctant due to the stigma), with a remote vibrate-only function - I have considered bringing that out and just seeing if a reminder vibrate would be enough to interrupt the herding. We had good results with a vibrating bark collar years ago.

For the record- Sylvie's herding is much less frequent on the 2nd floor for whatever reason, so the cats do have space where they're not constantly hassled (and there's a gate at the stairs we can shut for physical separation when appropriate). But again we don't hang out much up there and at least one of the kitties is desperate to chill with the whole family!

Any advice? I have a feeling other folks have dealt with this too.

My constant companion, my daily challenge & joy is 3 today. She’s the best girl, knows when to calm & when to excite. She’s completely stolen my heart 🐕🧡 Happy Birthday Suza 🧡