Rare, small dog gets official nod
Lancashire heeler earns recognition of breed registry, approval for shows
A small dog has now officially entered the big leagues.
The Lancashire heeler, a dog bred to keep cattle in line by nipping at their ankles, is now the 201st breed recognized by the American Kennel Club. Registration with the AKC, the nation’s oldest purebred-dog registry, is required for any dog to compete in the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show and raises the profile of the rare breed.
The United States Lancashire Heeler Club has tried since 2017 to have the breed join the Miscellaneous Class. In April, the AKC announced that the breed would be eligible to compete in the 2024 Herding Group, a category that includes the Australian cattle dog, border collie and Belgian Malinois.
“People think it’s a beauty pageant. It really isn’t,” said Sheryl Bradbury, president of the United States Lancashire Heeler Club. “It’s about putting what you visualized — your breed — putting it up in front of the world to see what you’re doing.”
She said recognizing Lancashire heelers standardizes and legitimizes the health and sporting benchmarks for the breed.
Lancashire heelers are drovers, meaning they have been used to herd cattle and other livestock. But their history can be as muddy as their paws — the story isn’t fully known.
Experts generally believe the breed is an outgrowth of 17th-century crossbreeding of livestock-herding Welsh corgis in a northern Wales meat market that were later infused with Manchester terriers, according to the AKC website. The breed earned the nickname butchers’ heeler by driving cows from pastures into the slaughterhouses of the Ormskirk area in West Lancashire — about 12 miles northeast of Liverpool. Bred for generations, it eventually became a family pet in the area.
They are still kept as pets today.
Liz Thwaite and her husband live with five Lancashire heelers about 25 miles northeast of Ormskirk. She is the secretary of the Lancaster Heeler Club, Britain’s equivalent of the United States Lancashire Heeler Club.
“Once bitten, you’ll never have another dog,” she said. Thwaite said she got her first Lancashire heeler in 2011 and loves that they were bred to be the smallest cattle-herding dog, with short legs and long bodies.
“They’re small, lively, feisty, loyal, healthy, long-lived and intelligent,” she said.
Thwaite said the dogs, which sometimes don’t clear a foot off the ground, struck fear in cows. She said that no-nonsense instinct endures even in domestic life: “They’re no pushover. Sometimes people don’t [come] into my house if they don’t like the look of them.”
Lancashire heelers are typically colored black and tan or liver and tan, according to the Kennel Club, Britain’s version of the AKC. The dogs usually live beyond 12 years.
Thwaite shows her Lancashire heelers and won a “Best of Breed” in Crufts, Britain’s Westminster equivalent, in 2022. Her winner was Ribblespride Crakemoor. When asked to explain his positively English name, she explained that they lived in the Ribble Valley and that “Crakemoor” was the name of the road on which they lived.
The family lives on a farm, which is where Lancashire heelers have thrived for centuries.
“Every farm had one. It was your standard dog on the farm,” she said.
She said Ribblespride Crakemoor, who goes by Benson when he isn’t under the lights, is still a ratter who helps rid the farm of vermin. But farming has modernized, and Lancashire heelers are no longer needed to steer cattle.
“Their original purpose for them are waning, but we promote the dogs and love them,” she said.
Promotion is needed because the breed is exceptionally rare and on the Kennel Club’s list of vulnerable breeds, which shows there were 149 registrations for Lancashire heelers in 2022.
Thwaite said that’s why it was so important for the breed to be recognized by the Kennel Club in 1981 — because being on television is great advertising for the breed.
That’s what Patricia Blankenship and the rest of the United States Lancashire Heeler Club hopes the AKC can do for the breed in America.
Blankenship, the club’s treasurer, said estimates indicated there are about 350 or so registered Lancashire heelers in the United States.
The group is relieved after the yearslong journey to get the breed recognized. “It feels good, it’s kind of a long road,” Blankenship said.
Joining the AKC’s Herding Group requires proof of a minimum of 20 litters bred with a three-generation pedigree to ensure the breed is sustainable, but also physical tests and 10 dogs owned by parent club members that have earned certificates of merit.
Efforts to gain AKC recognition for the Lancashire heeler date back to 2001.
“The numbers were extremely low then,” said Blankenship, who lives outside Jackson, Miss. She started in 2009 with a male and two females.
Animal rights activists argue that breeding dogs and adding breeds can lead to puppy mills and reduce pet adoptions, while worsening canine health due to a shallow gene pool.
But breeders at this level said they are fastidious about deepening the gene pool, exporting and importing dogs globally. There are online trackers. One can even see the bloodline of Thwaite’s dog Ribblespride Crakemoor online.
Bradbury said diversifying the gene pool is vital to the breed’s survival. She said she was at Crufts showing another breed when she was floored by these scruffy, loyal dogs.
“I was fascinated by their tough little exterior,” she said.
Bradbury, who had grown up with Great Danes and mastiffs, promised herself she would look into this more manageable dog when she got home. The breeding world of Lancashire heelers is small; Bradbury purchased a female from Blankenship.
Bradbury named her Baaba Bananko — the word “baba” means “grandmother” in many Slavic languages, and “Bananko” is a banana-chocolate candy bar that Bradbury ate as a child visiting Croatia.
Baaba is retired from breeding but remains a fixture in Bradbury’s life: “Some people have Harley-Davidsons. Other people crochet. And we have dogs.”