By Linda Cole
I doubt there were many dry eyes at the conclusion of the movie “Old Yeller.” Yeller was a Black Mouth Cur played by a Van Nuys shelter dog named Spike, a yellow Lab/Mastiff mix that was rescued from the shelter and trained by Frank and Rudd Weatherwax. According to the Merriam Webster Dictionary, a cur is a mongrel mutt or crossbred dog. However, like the feist breeds I wrote about recently, cur dogs are uniquely American and played a crucial role in the lives of early rural settlers who developed a hardy hunting dog that helped them tame the wilderness in the South where these dogs originated. Cur breeds are considered the first true American purebreds and have their own distinct hunting style.
Humans learned many centuries ago the value of having a dog around. An early warning bark from roaming domesticated dogs would have been extremely helpful for a man to defend his home and family. Dogs would have been prized hunting companions as well. Since those early years, we’ve developed breeds to do specific jobs – control, manage and protect livestock, guard our homes and families, control vermin, and help put food on the table. For poor farmers, a reliable all-purpose working dog needed to be versatile and able to earn his keep around the farm. A dog wasn’t a luxury and needed to perform his duties well for his owner to justify the cost of food to feed him.
The acknowledgment of cur dogs can be found in historical writings going back to the 1700s. However, there are no recorded documents telling exactly when this type of dog was developed, nor the exact breeds used in their makeup. Curs are a blend of different hunting breeds, hounds and terriers, as well as feist dogs brought to America with immigrants who settled in the South, mainly around the Appalachian Mountains.
The breeds used in developing a specific cur dog type were dependent on the 
needs of a farmer as well as the climate and terrain. Individual dogs were bred based on working and hunting performance regardless of their breed. However, the mix of breeds used in the makeup of a cur dog wasn’t a random choice but rather a deliberate pairing of the best to the best.
Early southern settlers didn’t have much money; they worked hard and expected their dogs to do the same. Cur breeds were developed to perform, and it was essential for them to have good working instincts. Dogs need to be spirited, intelligent, fast, agile, powerful, have lots of stamina, be able to cover large areas of ground, have the ability to pick up scents from the air or ground, and track across rough and swampy terrain. Their main job was that of a hunter, and breeders weren’t concerned with how the dog looked, only how he performed.
Cur breeds are short coated, medium to medium-large dogs used to hunt squirrel, raccoon, bear and mountain lion. In Texas and Louisiana, their prey is wild hog. Their treeing instinct is strong and they can tree small and large game and hold them at bay until hunters show up. These dogs are formidable hunters and have the courage to stand their ground with large game like bear and cougar. Along with hunting, cur dogs were multipurpose farm dogs and stock dogs used to round up free ranging livestock that included feisty feral pigs and Texas Longhorn cattle.
Around their family, cur dogs are affectionate, extremely loyal and protective. Even though the different types of curs were all developed in the South, each breed has a distinct style of hunting and traits. What’s common in all of them is they were created first and foremost to help put food on the table, along with working around the farm, hunting vermin, and protecting their home and family.
The different types of cur dogs include breeds like the Yellow Black Mouth Cur, Blue Lacy, Catahoula Cur Dog, Mountain Cur, Southern Black Mouth Cur, Kemmer Cur, Leopard Cur, Stephens’ Cur, Treeing Cur, and Canadian Cur, just to name a few. Most of these unique individual breeds have been around as purebreds since the early 1900s, but it wasn’t until the 1950s when they were officially recognized with their own breed club. Most breeders were farmers and interested primarily in a good hunting and working dog, not what a dog’s pedigree was on registration papers.
Cur dogs are credited with helping poor farmers in the South survive. They were developed because of the necessity for an efficient, all-purpose hunting dog to help early pioneers feed their families. They are still found primarily in the South as a working farm dog and hunter. These are dogs that live for the hunt and wouldn’t be happy confined inside the home as a pet.
Top: Black Mouth Cur by Christine Burger/Flickr
Bottom: Blue Lacy by TrueBlueLacys/Wikimedia Commons
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