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by Sue Ritter INTRODUCTION Every breed comes from the desire of individual breeders to develop a dog that fills a need that other dogs just don’t fill. As breedings toward that purpose continue, a breed emerges with dogs that have an identifiable look, temperament and function. So is the case with the development of the Miniature American Shepherd breed. However, the Miniature American Shepherd’s origin is deeply rooted in the Australian Shepherd. This is well-accepted and visually obvious since the main difference between the two is size. Some people have voiced that the size difference is due to breeding Australian Shepherds to smaller breeds, but anyone who has had a connection to Australian Shepherds prior to the 1990’s knows that 2 phenotypes existed even then in Aussies. There were lines of Aussies that consistently produced dogs below 18” and then there lines that produced dogs that grew as large as 25”. Selective breeding produced dogs that fit the current Aussie size standard, but selectively breeding the smaller Aussies did produce even smaller ones that were called the Miniature Australian Shepherd. With AKC recognition, they were then called the Miniature American Shepherd. Most acknowledged that there were breeders who brought in other breeds to decrease the size of the Miniature Australian Shepherd. On the other hand, it’s also common knowledge that some Australian Shepherd breeders brought in other breeds like Rough Collies or Border Collies to add coat or improve herding ability in the Aussies as late as the 1990’s. Prior to DNA parentage testing these “mixed” breedings could not be proven nor stopped. But those breedings were only minor contributors, if much contribution at all, to the development of the size difference between the Australian Shepherd and the Miniature American Shepherd since the genetic basis for size difference existed in the Australian Shepherd already. The history of the Australian Shepherd below will show the origin of the two size phenotypes. Further proof that the Miniature American Shepherd had its genetic roots firmly planted in the Australian Shepherd breed is that on the first day that the AKC accepted registration of the Miniature American Shepherd, hundreds and hundreds of AKC Australian Shepherds were transferred by their owners into registry as AKC Miniature American Shepherds. Hundreds more followed suit by transferring within the next years. United States Australian Shepherd Club of America (USASA), the parent club of the Australian Shepherd, had determined that over 15% of their breed’s registry were dogs that could be registered as Miniature American Shepherds based on size. Since the AKC Miniature American Shepherd comes from the AKC Australian Shepherd, then why are they called the “Miniature” American Shepherd when there is no American Shepherd. Even more curious is why aren’t they called the Miniature “Australian” Shepherd? Again, we must turn to the Australian Shepherd’s history as they entered the AKC registry to find these answers. BRIEF HISTORY OF THE AUSTRALIAN SHEPHERD Beginning in the Basque region in the mountains of Northern Spain, it was a practice to…