Part Dingo

In the tradition of one of our favorite photographers I’m including adorable photos of my Dog as a way to boost traffic to this site. Ok, well it’s not really my dog as it is my family’s dog and I’m pet sitting. The dog’s name is Mimi and one thing which has always troubled me is to find out just what kind of dog she is. You see I heard she was pure bred but she looks like a mut. I also heard she was Australian Shepherd but she looks nothing like those dogs except that they are about the same size but her fur is much shorter and courser and her coloring is both spotted and mixed.

For a long while I just assumed she must be a mut. That is, she must be a mixed breed. So one day I was playing Fallout 3 and decided to research the game a bit. I happen across this page. It says there is a dog companion in the game. It also mentions it’s the same breed of dog that plays in Mad Max 2 and more importantly mentions this dog is an Australian Cattle Dog of the Blue Heeler type. This is important as a neighbor recently conjectured that she might be a heeler. So this sent me to this page.

From here I found photos which match almost exactly to what Mimi looks like. She is a “Blue Heeler” color with very little red mostly in her undercoat on her head and some on her back thighs. Otherwise Mimi is entirely black and white with an almost perfectly black face. I learned many interesting facts about Australian Cattle Dogs like the fact that they are considered in the top ten of most intelligent dogs. In addition I learned they were bred by combining Collies with Dingos then mixing in some Bull Terrier and finally Dalmatian. The Dalmatian is responsible for the unique coloring of the dog as it passed a long a gene with basically guarantees they will have multiple colored fur. You can see from straight on the characteristic ears from the Dingo. An interesting note about Dingo is that it was a once domesticated dog which has reverted back to wild in order to survive roaming free in much of Australia.

So there you have it. Mimi is a great dog and companion and now I know from whence she has come.