Good Kelpie Sheep Dog Worth Its Weight in Gold : In the Australian Outback, Man’s Best Friend Earns His Keep

The sheep dogs of Australia don’t drink beer, advertise airlines, make crocodile movies, walk on the wrong side of the road, sail yachts, wear slouch hats or come to work hung over on Monday morning.

They do what their families raised them to do: herd sheep.

That they do with the amazing brilliance of a mind reader, the endurance of an Olympic athlete and the doggedness of Winston Churchill.

They also sit when they’re told.

“My old dog here, Broc, can herd 4,000 sheep at a time. I can’t,” says Geoffrey Blight, a contract sheepherder from Highbury in the outback of the southwestern corner of Australia.

‘God’s Perfect Slaves’

“They’re God’s perfect slaves, the sheep dogs. What else do they get for working all their lives but a touch of your hand?”

Broc, who has herded 10 million sheep in his 15 years, is retired now. Bright had brought him to the national dog trials here at the Muresk Institute of Agriculture.

While Broc lazed in a pen with five baby lambs, his working kind were worrying sheep through a series of gates and pens. They were timed and rated for their performance.

Sheep dog trials are a showcase for breeders. One was watching intently as the dogs went through their paces at their owners’ commands: “Stay.” “Come ‘round.” “Push up.”

Tools of the Trade

“They’re not pets. They’re not toys. They’re tools,” says the breeder, Jens Ambjerg-Pedersen from Naracoorte in South Australia.

“World agriculture is having to cut down on costs. Therefore we’re more dependent than ever on dogs to be efficient. Dogs can do things 10 farmhands can’t because they have a natural reaction to animals.”

The Australian sheep dogs are called kelpies. The breed, based on Scottish border collies, came to Australia in the 1840s. Sheep men still argue whether someone may have crossbred the collies with dingoes, the wild native dog.

Whatever, the result is a mutty looking black or brown animal usually with some white on its intelligent face. It is short-haired and a little over half the size of a fleecy sheep.

Rather than the fenced pastures of emerald-green England, stockmen in Australia were confronted with a huge, arid continent where sheep had to roam over vast distances to find food and water.

Kelpie originally was the name Scots gave to working bitches. In 1872 a female dog named Kelpie gave such an outstanding performance at the first sheep dog trial ever held in New South Wales that the name became synonymous with the breed.

Natural Herders

Kelpies can herd almost anything: water buffalo, cattle, goats, wild pigs. Laplanders even use them to herd reindeer.

“Working sheep is a game of bluff to the dog,” Pedersen says. “The sheep react as to a predator.

“Actually, sheep are highly intelligent. They react out of fear. They have a flock mentality. When threatened, they put their heads together. The predator will take one sheep but not the flock.

“Human beings exploit the dog’s instinct to not single out one sheep but to bring the whole herd home.”

A sheep dog was barking at the 24 animals he was herding in a simulated pen.

“We actually breed for tone of bark. Not a frustration bark, but a working bark,” Pedersen says. “Barking dogs are best in the yard, the open range.

“In the paddock, you want an eye dog. Watch this one. He has a good eye.”

The dog was in a crouch staring intently at a sheep as if to mesmerize him. He catches an animal’s eye. The sheep sees wolf, or the like, and turns. The dog is up and running to steer the flock as his master commands.

A really good dog can herd sheep miles from its master’s voice.

“It was pouring one night and about to flood,” Bright says. “Broc went out and brought 4,000 sheep home. Over 125,000 sheep drowned that night.”

“You can train a dog in a fortnight, if you want to,” says Carl Carlon, president of the Kelpie Assn. of Australia. “But you run the risk of boring the dog. Normally we take up to a year to break a dog in.”

Kept Outside

Customarily a sheep dog is kept out of the house. He is not a pet in the normal sense of the word. But the relation of dog and master is far beyond just business.

Bright is not highly schooled, but he wrote an account of how he brought his father’s old dog to his bedside as he was dying of cancer. It is impossible to read it without eyes misting.

A new dog was introduced at the trial, held under lights on a grass field you could land a small plane on. Six sheep were let out at the far end. At a word from his master, the dog was off like a shot.

He corralled the sheep while circling and drove them across the field. One sheep broke away. The dog widened his circle at flank speed and turned him in.

He drove them to a circle of white stones and kept them inside it. The knowledgeable crowd applauded. Then the dog herded them into a pen with 18 other sheep. Jumping on their backs or dashing underneath them to nip at their heels, he channeled the sheep into a chute and through a gate. It was a time for barking.

Then he drove six released sheep toward a gate in the middle of the field. It was a time for eyeing. All the while, the master was barking commands of his own.

“A dog either has it or it doesn’t,” Pedersen says. “You can tell right off.

“Dogs have always been with humans. At the hunt, in war, as pets, toys, even status symbols. The dog views the sheep as a toy, and its meat-hunting instinct is still there. He’s bluffing them just as dogs do to each other.

“The most important thing in breeding is instinct: to go to the head of a mob and turn them. If that instinct is not there, you can’t train the dog.

“Then there’s temperament. You want a dog that’s non-aggressive but boisterous. A dog’s no good if it goes to his head and he bites.

“You want intelligence. Not the intelligence to work out math problems, but quickness to learn, to adapt.

“Lastly, you want association behavior. Dogs have a pecking order. I want that dog to accept me because I am his leader. It’s no good if you have many chiefs and no Indians.”

Firm but Not Cruel

Suburban pets get into trouble, Pedersen says, because their position in the household is uncertain.

“Don’t be cruel, but be firm. The dog has to find his position on the family ladder: a rung below the kids but above the garbage man. You can let him in the house, but tell him here’s your part of the carpet or out.”

The master also has to know himself. “You have to be consistent. You have to let the dog know what you want when you want it. You build up his confidence in the environment he’s going to work in.

“A good dog doesn’t work for the farmer. He works with the farmer.”

Broc dozed through the trials, ignoring the lambs and responding once in a while to Bright’s voice.

“I’ve been morning, noon and night with that dog,” Bright says. “I work with disadvantaged children when I can. Everything I’ve learned about handling those kids I’ve learned from that dog. Yes, you have to love them. But you have to be firm.

“Broc taught me, something else, too. He taught me to give it your best shot.”