Many viewers are wondering about whether Bluey is a boy or a girl, particularly people who are watching the popular children’s cartoon for the first time on Disney Plus, Hulu, or elsewhere. But even longtime fans might be surprised about Bluey’s gender. There are many reasons why people might be confused about the titular dog being male or female, at least at first glance. Here’s whether Bluey is canonically a girl or a boy.
What gender is Bluey?
Bluey is a girl, not a boy, as confirmed by the cartoon’s website that describes the blue heeler puppy as someone “who lives with her mum, dad, and little sister Bingo.”
A part of the confusion about Bluey’s gender comes from the common trope in children’s cartoons to color-code characters: blue for boys and pink for girls. Bluey also doesn’t have many of the other typical signs of being a girl that other cartoons might add, like a dress, a ribbon, a bow, or pink clothing. For comparison, Bluey’s friend Coco is a female pink poodle with a butterfly hair clip. while her male dachshund friend Snickers has a yellow baseball cap.
Older audiences might be reminded of a similar situation with Blue’s Clues, another children’s cartoon that ran on Nickelodeon from 1996 to 2006, where the blue-spotted dog was also actually a girl.
On top of that, Bluey’s breed is a blue heeler dog, which is based on the real-life blue heeler or Australian Cattle Dog of the show’s creator Joe Brumm, and shares the same coloring as her dad, Bandit. Since Bingo is the little sister and shares the same tan and orange fur as her mom, it can lead to the assumption that Bluey is a boy.
The voice for Bluey is fairly neutral-sounding, and the name “Bluey” is fairly gender-neutral too. It’s not until she is called other names in the show — particularly Margaret, Karen, Janet, and Rhonda — that her gender becomes a lot more obvious. In fact, Bluey’s full name is Bluey Christine Heeler, with her middle name giving things away a bit.
