A true Texas dog (and cat)

The Lacy brothers—Frank, George, Erwin and Harry—moved from Kentucky to the Texas Hill Country in 1858. They were masons and worked the granite operations at Granite Mountain near Marble Falls.  

George Lacy was one of three businessmen who donated stone for the Texas State Capitol in Austin. He and his brothers also raised cattle and hogs on open range and herded them to market in Austin on horseback. (They owned the market, too. No middleman for the Lacy brothers.)

Cattle drives were one thing but hog drives were something else. A dog can go nipping at a cow and that cow will try to get away. Hogs are more inclined—and equipped— to fight. 

To get the dog they wanted, the Lacys reportedly bred a greyhound with a scent hound and maybe threw in a little wild canine— either a coyote or wolf— for good measure. They refined the mix until they ended up with the Blue Lacy, a Texas-born, Texas-bred dog that was at home on the range or in the wild. 

But there came a day—and it arrived  rather suddenly—when the frontier that inspired the Blue Lacy was gone. People took to fencing what was once open range. They penned their hogs and fed them corn and didn’t need a specialized dog for that. Blue Lacy numbers declined for years. The years turned to decades but the Blue Lacy was too good (and useful) a dog to just fade away like that. 

Registries first recognized Blue Lacys as a separate breed in the 1970s. Advocates touted their value in hunting and in search-and rescue-work. And then the feral hog thing happened. The original Texas hog dog got its old job back. 

In 2005, the state Legislature designated the Blue Lacy as the Official Dog Breed of Texas. The resolution hailed it as “a dog that has more than pulled its weight on many a Texas spread…where it was said that one such dog could do the work of five cowboys.” 

The resolution further noted that Lacys herded cattle, hogs and chickens (chickens?) and that Blue Lacys also served as excellent droving and hunting dogs.  

The Blue Lacy of today is about 18-23 inches high and weighs 30-55 pounds. Typically, as the name suggests, it’s a shade of gray that looks sort of blue (though not as blue as Huckleberry Hound or Bluey). It can also be yellow, red, or multi-colored and is sometimes identified as a Lacy Hog Dog or the Lacy Dog without specifying a color. 

Texas is one of a dozen states with an official dog breed. It is one of 47 states without an official cat breed. The three states that do have state cats all start with the letter M. The Maine Coon Cat is an actual breed but the Calico of Maryland and the Tabby of Massachusetts represent colors and shouldn’t even count. 

If Texas were to adopt an official cat breed  it probably won’t) the Wampus Cat would be a good choice. It already serves as the Itasca High School mascot. The lack of verified sighting shouldn’t matter. We have a state dinosaur and no one has reported one of those around here (or anywhere) for a very long time. 

 A better choice might be the ocelot. Ocelots are wild cats about the size of a bobcat but with coloring that makes them look a little bit like a leopard. Its scientific name is Leopardus pardalis, but it’s not a leopard. Some of us wish it was but it’s just not. 

Ocelots once thrived in Texas from the Edwards Plateau—and Louisiana and Arkansas—south to Mexico and on down to Argentina. Now the U.S. population consists of a hundred or so survivors in a two or three county area of South Texas brush country. Ocelots could sure use the publicity that being the official state cat would bring. 

Besides, having the Blue Lacy as the state dog breed and the ocelot as the state cat would give Texas a one-two official dog and cat punch that no other state can ever match. Just saying.