A bit over a year and a half ago my parents received a big eared hyperactive little Black and Tan Kelpie Bitch from a really progressive farmer, Clayton Fischer from down near Goondiwindi. Personally I thought it was a bit weird my old man had taken on a bitch as he had always had Dogs, and he currently had a dog, Rusty a red and tan kelpie and as history had made plain dad was a one dog man. Sure he had many a time taken on a second dog but it usually fell on to me, because even though he would love the little bugger he just seemed not to have time or patience for a second dog ever since I have been around...and that now over 30 odd years.
With dad a dog learns his many many idiosyncratic behaviours, and it seems that only one dog can fit into his patterns of rushing off from this one hundred jobs that need to be done to the next one hundred, but then be able to stay close to the ute so that even if house have past ...if not entire days past between seeing him he will leap into the ute and drive off, if you are a dog that is not always close by the ute then you are left behind....and need to be a pretty good tracker to work out where on his two 45,000 acre farms he will end up. Whilst having to stay close to the ute, dads dogs must also learn not to stay to close, as it is always being used for every which use imaginable which often means erratic movement and lots of things being taken in and out of the back of it without much noting to there being a dog in the way of flying objects.
So once a dog learns that its cooler underneath than on the back where it reaches blistering heat on the metal, but the ute moves in any direction without warning at any time of the day.... which means underneath means certain death unless you have the agility of a juvenile fox, and anything and everything is flying in and out of the back at any time which means projectiles of varying size from a 5/8 spanner to a D8 BullDozer engine....and that inside the cab of the ute is fine...unless you have been in mud or someone used your coat as an oil rag....or 5 station hands need to pile in because one of a hundred jobs needs doing on the other side of the property before torrential rain that is falling makes the roads completely impassable...yeah when you have all this worked out you would be considered handy by dad.....and I didn't even mention that's just the dog getting around the farm and not even doing what he is meant to do...mustering, yard work and political lecturing soundboard.
Well little Rosie as she was called didn't quite meet the standard, she was too little to get on the back of the ute herself and too keen on investigating the world to heel, so she was often left at the homestead with my mother to perform all the hallmarks of an unemployed young sheep dog. Those behaviours include running around like an insane Usain Bolt, barking at anything that moved in the wrong direction or when in her cage, chasing after passing utes, digging holes like Cooper Peady needs to replicated across my mothers lawns and gardens, chewing and destroying anything and everything that is at pup height, greeting every guest like she is on coil springs, to herding the chooks from one part of the universe to the next so that they forget about ever laying an egg again.
Feeling sorry for the little dog, I decided to give a her a bit of training when up on the farm, she proved a willing little student, learning, not to do anything (the most important thing a dog learns...that means no destructive behaviours) as well as sheep hearing in the yards and basic obedience. mum noticed the difference straight away and hinted to me taking her with me to train up until she was in a better state before returning to the farm.
So our journey together began. Personally I never liked Black and Tan Kelpies, I don't know why, maybe just because I like the solid colours of the reds and the blacks, maybe because I had come in to contact with so may before with erratic behaviours as they were much more common, I don't know, but little Rosie to me at that time was particularly ugly. She had huge bat ears, poor unclear markings, and rather than being a nice deep tan her markings were not quite white and not quite cream let alone tan. Whilst I had had a few incredible females since I stopped breeding red kelpies for sale over 15 years ago, they were never my close buddies, but rather they always were the aloof lead dogs that mesmerize the cattle into following them like pied pipers and all had been killed either by baits or vehicles who failed to slow down despite 'slow down' signs and the hundreds of cattle being driven along the highway.
Rosie was different, not just because she was hyperactive, I mean seriously Hyperactive, but that she was more keen on anything going on than any dog I can remember and her focus back on me was minimal. So I took her on as a challenge, and what a wonderful challenge. She probably taught me as much about dog training as I taught her. About what is motivating and what is not. About totally eradicating distractions whenever learning new behaviours. About ensuring and enriched environment if ever she is left alone, even for a few minutes. So for her I was lucky that the yard she was in contained a fish tank which allowed her something to mentally heard when ever she was not under my direction. I also came upon so many ideas and products to help entertain her. She taught me to be responsible for one thing like never before, she started to embody what I loved about my homeland.
Writing this is getting a bit hard. As I had a lot of work that involved flying all around Australia recently I left Rosie up on the farm after our most recent sheep muster so that she had a solid place to stay and got more stock work under her collar. She went missing from the back of Dads ute 2 and a half weeks ago, whilst he was blowing down a harvester on our northern property near Moonie. I had pretty strict rules on how she was to be treated, one of the was to be always leashed on the back of utes, but on this occasion as stuff was flying in and out of the ute, she had got off and some how wandered off.
Who knows what she was doing, looking for me, unlikely, but hey that's what everyone romantically suggests, heading off to greet the many road workers fixing up flood damage on the Highway, or just assuming that what dad was doing was boring and it was time to look around. Whatever the reason Rosie, the little bat eared Black and not quite Tan Bitch with my telephone number and a night safety light on her collar microchip number 981000300520355 has not been seen since.
I miss her and I hope she is being looked after.
