Juanita Ely, a rancher, was one of the oldest documented breeders in the country. She had acquired her first Aussie in the 20s with two bands of sheep she bought in Idaho.  As a livestock person, she knew the value of recording the lineage of the dogs, to preserve and establish them.  Juanita recognized the need to need to register the ancestry of ‘Blue Australian Shepherds,’ and was largely responsible for contacting Ed Emanuel at the National Stock Dog Registry (a division of the IESR) to use their services to register the breed.

Juanita Ely used her dogs to herd their several bands of sheep and cattle on the range in the harsh working conditions (thick cactus, heavy crusted snow, heavy underbrush), rain or shine in the real world. Ely’s Blue, the dam of both Goody and Badger had been proven on the ranch, day in and day out.

We traded Goody to a very close friend of ours who owned Jinx, a litter sister to Goody, who ran a very large sheep operation in southern Colorado.  Jinx had gotten crippled by a broken shoulder.  Even though Jinx worked on only three legs; when it was time to gather sheep on our place in the Boulder Valley, my father would send Jinx.  She would disappear in the horizon until finally she had gathered every ewe and brought them down the lane along the creek.

Goody’s next four years were filled with every description of hardship and irresponsible herders.  One day, one of the herders suffered a heart attack while out on the range.  Little Goody watched over him and guarded him for three days (without food or water), and protected him from predators until our friend, Joe Fernandez, found them.

Goody was then mated to her sire, Ely’s Feo while at the sheep ranch. It was there that she whelped Hartnagle’s Goody II (Ironhide), a dog who later became the foundation matron for our Badger line. Goody II was named “Ironhide” because of her tireless endurance. She was fearless.  She worked stubborn rams, or handled bulls just as easily.  Goody II was inbred Feo. 

The Badger line had courage, longevity, and staying power. We admired these characteristics and continued to breed for them.  Once when working a single Brahman bull, Badger got tromped pretty hard.  Dad thought the bull had killed him.  He sadly picked up Badger’s limp body and laid him aside, so he could bury him beneath the lilac bushes at the house.  Apparently, the bull had just knocked him out cold.  After a few minutes, he came to and shook his head.  The next thing we knew Badger went back to work and put that bull in its place.