American Shephard

Description

The Australian Shepherd was made in the American West. The name is the one piece of the story that points somewhere else, and it has been confusing people for a century.

The likeliest explanation runs through the Basque country. Shepherds from the Pyrenees emigrated in the nineteenth century, a good many of them by way of Australia, and when they carried on to California and the mountain states they brought working dogs with them — their own, and collie-type stock picked up along the route. American stockmen saw good dogs arriving with men who had last been in Australia, and the name they gave those dogs stuck to a breed that was then developed, refined and fixed entirely on ranches in the American West.