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 The King of the stock dog breeds, Catahoula Leopard dogs outwork and outfight all other breeds of stock dogs when protecting their master, livestock, and property.
They are the largest and most aggressive of the cattle dogs, bred to handle wild cattle and hogs in the roughest, most remote country.
Catahoulas will also hunt coon, bear, or whatever else they are introduced to. These dogs are not good city dogs as they need several acres to roam to be happy. A farm or ranch is really their element.
Catahoulas are bred to go and find livestock in swamps, hilly canyons, thickets or forests, or mountains. They will trail, nose to ground, but prefer to throw their heads up and "wind" their prey, taking the shortest route to find, gather up or bunch, and circle and bay the quarry until their master can reach them to take control.
Catahoula Leopards are extremely agile and athletic, territorial, protective of "their property".
They are more primitive psychologically than most breeds and need consistent obedience reinforcement. The owner must understand the Alpha concept and stay in control at all times, but still be loving to the dog.
Very loyal, loving, intelligent and independent... they really think for themselves.
An ancient breed, the Xoloitzcuintli, is known to have existed in Mexico 3,300 years prior to the arrival of Spanish explorers, and the Peruvian Inca Orchid had been living with Peruvian citizens for several hundred years before the Spaniards landed on North American shores in 1539.
It is only reasonable to assume representatives of these breeds made their way North through the hands of various native peoples into an area which later became Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Georgia, and perhaps even farther North.
French explorers invaded the area in the late 1600's, and most certainly would have brought their dogs... one of which, the Beauceron, is still known today and displays leopard (merle) coloration.
The Carolina Dog is a feral relic of antiquity, directly related to the Australian Dingo, African Jackal, and New Guinea Singing Dog, and has been only recently discovered surviving in uninhabited areas of our own Southeastern United States.
The Carolina Dog was most likely the "Indian dog" base stock which interbred with dogs brought in by Spanish explorers, producing the ancestors of what we now call Catahoulas. |
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