A Farmer's Best Friend

Cari is a farm dog. An ebony coloured kelpie. She isn’t comfortable in town. Or in the house. She likes to roll in muck and eat pig poo and chew on enormous bones I get from the butcher. She’s used to paddocks and livestock, not trucks and crowds. She also likes to be patted. A lot. And have her tummy rubbed. A lot.

But instinct is instinct and if there’s a sheep, a turkey, a chicken, even an enormous cow hanging around in one of the yards, she’ll have a go at rounding them up. As a pup she nibbled my heels as I walked, as she would a sheep in a muster. Now she’s more grown up, she will stalk her prey, crouching down, black as a panther and svelte as a springbok, trying to get up close and bring them around.

Kelpies are working dogs. If they’re well trained, and kept bored when they’re not working, they can be marvellous at rounding up sheep. Cari, because she’s a home dog, has a great life. She will come, mostly, when called, and her herding instinct is hard to manage. Take the cow out to move her into a different paddock? Cari will razz her up, not round her up.

Let her in with the chooks (or, more accurately, after she rakishly finds her own way into the orchard with the chooks) and she’ll scare them so much they take flight onto the neighbour’s farm. Give her a chance to hang around with the turkeys, and well, the turkeys just leave the yard a little earlier than they already would. With the sheep, Cari is always on alert, though the ram’s horns, and the tough attitude of the ewes, means she rarely gets her way.

The most curious thing the dog does is bond with other animals. For a time I’m sure she thought she was a pig. She’d run along the fence with them. She’d play with them. She’d try to join in their feeding frenzy each morning and evening. She still protects my legs from the girls when I venture into the pig paddock to feed them each morning. Without Cari I’d probably be king hit from behind. A loving, snouty kiss from Cassoulet or Prosciutto behind the knees, now they’re so big, would be enough to have me face down in the wallow.

Coco, the angus/jersey calf, also thinks she’s a dog. At least sometimes. When left alone for too long, Coco will start to chase the sheep, a manoeuvre she’s learnt from Cari. I first saw it from the sunroom; the flash of white, as three ewes and the ram darted across the top of the paddock. I immediately thought of the dog and cursed myself for leaving the gate open. But right on the back of their hooves, instead of an escapee coal black kelpie was an adolescent cow, all legs and hips waggling in hot pursuit. I’m not sure why the sheep take off, or why the cow likes to chase them, unless it’s all in good fun. Just like the dog, however, I doubt Coco would know what to do if she caught them.