The Sunburnt Santa cast
Digger the blue heeler: takes anything you ignore
The family's blue heeler. Patient, quick, and very interested in your presents.
Digger is the family dog: a blue heeler with a speckled blue-grey coat, tan legs, a red collar and a look that says he's been waiting for this moment all day. He doesn't do much. He doesn't need to.
Where you'll find him
On Day 10, Bon Bon Snap, Digger is the last of four relatives to grab the other end of a bon bon (a Christmas cracker), after Nan, Uncle Bazza and Cousin Kylie. His pull surges and slackens like a dog on a lead, so the timing bar speeds up and slows down under you. His side of the conversation runs to "Ruff.", "Woof?" and "Wants a snag now."
On Day 21, Unwrap Rush, he lies in his bed by the tree and watches. Any present you leave wrapped for too long, he trots over, takes it in his jaws and runs off with it. In the last 20 seconds he gets keener. (He'll take Aunty's sock parcel too, which is the best thing he does all Christmas.)
He's also a card in the two-player bonus game Snap!
The real animal
"Blue heeler" is the everyday Aussie name for the Australian cattle dog, a working breed whose job is "the control and movement of cattle in both wide open and confined areas" [2]. The breed goes back to Thomas Simpson Hall in the Hunter Valley of New South Wales, who in 1840 crossed imported blue merle working dogs with dingoes to get a dog that "combined the speed and silence of the dingo with the collie's intelligent obedience" [1]. Cattlemen called them Hall's Heelers [1][3].
The breed standard describes the dog as alert, intelligent and loyal, a bit wary of strangers, and coloured either blue (plain, mottled or speckled) or an even red speckle [2]. Dogs stand 46 to 51 cm at the shoulder and bitches 43 to 48 cm [2], which is exactly the right height for watching presents under a tree.
Games Digger appears in
More of Digger
Free to use for editorial coverage, reviews and creator videos about the game: see media usage. Full-size cut-outs are on the media page.
Sources
- Hall, Thomas Simpson (1808–1870), Australian Dictionary of Biography, Australian National University
- Australian Cattle Dog (breed standard), Dogs Australia
- Thomas S. Hall, Monument Australia