Normally I figure whatever is sent in an email should be private, and not released to the rest of the world without permission of both the sender and receiver.

But mocksie asked me a question a while back, and has since been nice enough to sign my guestbook (yes, Silver, it was a good idea), so I figured I should answer her question here, in case others were also wondering:

"What is a heeler?"

Now I was tempted to just give a smart alecky, obvious answer, like:

"A dog."

But it was an honest question, so here's the honest answer.

First, notice the spelling. I have seen it misspelled as "healer" by folks who should know the difference. These canids are wonderful animals, and living with them is certainly therapeutic, but they don't go around healing things. They go around heeling things. Any thing that will move. Most of my jeans have fang holes in the cuffs.

A heeler is any member of the Australian Cattle Dog breed. They were (and are) bred to herd livestock. But unlike the popular border collie, which herds by literally getting in your face and never getting out of it unless you go where they want you to, heelers herd by nipping at the heels of their target, and thereby making it go wherever they want.

Australian Cattle Dog breeders never refer to these animals as "heelers." Too common place, I guess. To shorten it, they use the first two letters of each word in the name and call them "AuCaDos." But it is, to my knowledge, the only herding breed in the dog shows where the ability to actually herd is still a required standard of the breed.

Folks who work with heelers rarely, if ever, call them by the breed name. They're just heelers. Or if they are feeling classy, "Queensland heelers."

They were bred in Australia in the late 1800s, starting with the wild dingo and adding in things like bulldogs and kelpy. And dalmatian. That is where they get the speckled coat, and why the puppies come out white.

Heelers come in two basic colors, red and blue, although there is a lot of mixing. The blue heelers are actually a mixture of black, gray and white. Heeler pups are several weeks old before the colored hairs come out and you know for sure what you've got. Although you can sometimes tell color at birth, by the facial markings they often have and a light color tint to their puppy fur.

I like blues, but their coat is thicker and usually greasy to the touch (better for working outdoors), and they seem to shed all the time. Reds are a little more hyper (more dingo?), look like the Indian dhow, shed heavily only twice a year, and are soft and huggable.

This calendar has masked and unmasked red heelers on the cover. Close likeness to our sisters.

The three-legged dog in Thunderheart was a red heeler. Mel Gibson's dog in Mad Max was a blue heeler, retrieved from an animal shelter just for the movie. He peed on the floor of the semi truck in the big drive-through scene (the heeler, not Mel). Zip, the gorgeous dog in Last of the Dogmen is also a blue heeler, but maybe with a smidgeon of red.

As much as we love heelers, they're not for everyone. They need to run, which means they need a lot of space. They are terribly protective, which is good, but it also means you have to watch them. They will nip someone who they think is somewhere they oughtn't be. We found a dog encyclopedia that noted that the Australian cattle dog was "the closest you could get to owning a wild animal without a zoo permit."

I really hate seeing a heeler tied up. That's as unkind as not letting a dolphin swim or a falcon fly. Then I feel like liosha, wanting to cut the heeler loose and take it home with me.

So Shannon, I suspect that is a lot more than you wanted to know. Or any of you, for that matter. But you know how I tend to ramble...