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A STRAY SAVIOUR
This is a story told to me by my grandfather.
The morning was calm and warm. It would be pretty hot before the day was through, the boy told his pony as he fixed the slip rails behind the cows he had just yarded.
He must hurry. His pony had to have breakfast, and so did he, before he rode to school. Suddenly he saw a black and white dog out on the flat. He went over towards it, calling gently, but the dog withdrew into the scrub.
The property already had three sheepdogs, so it was only to be expected that the boy's father did not greet the news of a stray dog with any enthusiasm. He merely commented that an eye would have to be kept on the sheep in case the dog got too hungry.
Two mornings later, the dog appeared again, lying half a mile away on the flat. The boy again called softly and gently to the dog. This time, the dog began to crawl towards the boy on its stomach whimpering as it came. Five yards away, it stopped. The boy didn't move. He just kept talking softly, with his hand outstretched. With a quick wriggle, the dog put its head under the outstretched hand.
That began an inseparable friendship that lasted as long as the dog. After a great deal of persuasion, the boy's father said the dog could be kept - especially after he discovered the dog would work sheep and cattle equally well. Nobody ever claimed the dog.
During the Depression years, many farmers had been forced to leave their properties and ifnd work in other areas. It was later discovered that the dog's original owner was one such family, but the dog hadn't settled into city life. When he returned to his old home, he had found it deserted. Hunger and thirst had forced him to move from farm to farm only to be hunted on until he arrived at Yeltana.
The dog was named Mukksy. Although he was not permitted to go to school, Mukksy would set off each afternoon, regardless of the weather, to meet the boy on his way home. At thirteen, the boy left school to work at Buckleboo Station. He took the dog with him.
One day he was mustering straggler sheep with the manager when he hit the limb of a tree at full gallop and was swept from his horse. The manager did not notice the boy's disappearance until much later. It was near sunset when the dog, which until then had been keeping flies away from the boy, left.
When the dog joined Mr Miller, who had been droving the sheep they had found that day, it seemed so agitated that Mr Miller realised something was wrong. The manager hadn't seen the lad either, and they both knew the dog normally wouldn't go anywhere without him.
Mr Miller left the sheep and began to follow Mukksy who raced off in the direction of the injured boy. It was almost dark and mid-winter.
It is doubtful if the boy would have survived the night if he hadn't been found.
This boy was my grandfather - and he still loves his dogs.
KATE HERON
GOOD ALL- ROUND
This is a story of the life of a pup. We lived on a farm in the Adelaide Hills, running about 200 sheep, three cows, seventy chooks and ten geese. We trained Lassie from a six-week old pup. Obedience was important, so she learned to sit and come and once. She also learned to pick up small articles and to put them into our hands, or in a bucket, or on a chair, wherever we told her to put them. We always gave her a small crumb or cornflake as reward.
Before she was six months old, she was able to bring me a pair of pliers, a screwdriver or a box of matches. She could even bring them out to where we were working in the paddock. Later, she learned bring some sheep shears so we could treat fly-struck sheep.
In 1955, a bushfire burnt us out and we were broke. Lassie had become a sheepdog which we could lend to our neighbours. Our own sheepyards had been destroyed in the fire.
I had to go to work off the farm and Lassie would lie with no interest in sheep until 6 o'clock on Saturday morning. Then she would be at the door and I'd just say 'fetch the sheep in' and after I had lit the fire and had breakfast, the sheep would be waiting at the gate to go into the neighbour's yards. She was both a yard dog and paddock dog and rarely left sheep behind even in the rough hills or scrub.
She was good with the geese too. If they wandered, my wife just had to say,
'Lass, the geese are on the road'. Very slowly, the geese would then be driven back to the dam where Lassie would watch them for an hour, sometimes not even allowing them out of the water.
Our neighbour, Murray, had Dorset Horn cross sheep and we had black-faced Suffolk rams. Murray's lambs always seemed to crawl under the fence and would join up with our black-faced ones. We alway tried to drive them out before they got boxed up.
One Sunday, Murray phoned and told us to watch Lassie who was over on the hill. There she was,very slwoly, walking between fourteen big weaner lambs of Murray's and our mob. While the lambs were feeding, she worked them gently towards the fence. Then she put them through the hole and moved them up into Murray's yard where she lay and watched them with her head on her paws.
Lassie knew our three cows by name; and once introduced to visitors, could single them out and drop a ball at their feet if she was asked to.
One of her last chores, at the age of fourteen, was particulary memorable. We were irrigating from the river Murray. I had left my rubber boots down in the lucerne where the sprinklers were.
I was tired and weary, so I said, 'Fetch my rubber boots, Lass'. The poor old girl loped down to the lucerne, and after then minutes appeared with one boot.
I repeated the order and she brought the other to the door. By this time, it was almost dark, but there were my boots.
The look she gave me almost said what I was thinking, 'My time is almost up'.
Lassie was sixteen years old by now. I went out to find her one morning and here she was curled up in her kennel in our garage. At first I thought she was sound asleep, but then I realised her days were over, she had died in her sleep.
WALLY KARGER
EXACTLY EIGHT
I sold some sheep to a chap at Kersbrook and he brought along a double-deck semi-trailer.
I offered Lassie to help load them, but he said his dog would do the job, and that she did.
After he put eight sheep in the small pen against the cabin and closed the gate, his almost-white border collie bitch loaded the bottom and top pens on her own with exactly eight sheep in every one.
WALLY KARGER