Salty loved a good farm trough in summer, a perfect role model for Chilli, the wannabe sheepdog. Photo: Edwina Mason.
Every dog has their day and that day came yesterday for Salty the old black-and-white border collie who obviously decided anything was better than biting cold and bone chilling droplets falling from the sky.
Salty overnight departed life here on the farm for the great hunting ground in the sky, where sheep and cattle run wild and free, except when he enters their paddock and does his due diligence in restoring them to an orderly mob ready for whatever the farm in the sky has scheduled for them that day.
His last night in the shed involved a warm bed of straw and his 44-gallon drum kennel where he was surrounded by a wary mob of sheep and lambs who had gathered unwillingly for lamb marking. He posed little threat – he wasn’t strong of body. But he had a feed bowl full of Pal – a rare treat – gently cradled in a few dry biscuits waiting as he slept.
On the farm, the loss of a sheepdog is tantamount to losing family. They’re so much a part of our every day and every night that when they’re no longer there, there’s silence first, sadness second, and then again that dreadful silence.
Out here on the farm, the list of those now lost is long and I felt this morning, much too late, that each sheepdog should have been buried not under huge granite rocks but under trees – an avenue of trees, a little like the rest stops named for Victoria Cross recipients lining the Hume Highway offering drivers pause for reflection.
Recognition for service above and beyond, for tireless contributions, outstanding dedication, exceptional merit, tireless contributions, selfless commitment and extraordinary courage.
Salty was all that and more, especially at the end. As his muzzle turned a little more salty, his joints a bit stiff, the daily runs turned to trots, then plods around the paddock, the Polaris groaning down from 10 to 7 to 4 km/h, with frequent stops as Salty’s nose caught a whiff of something yummy, like a dead sheep and we all – the sheepdogs and the sausage dogs [sheepdogs in disguise] and I – waited for the sniff to pass and for Salty to resume the plod. But plod he did. It was admirable.
Even though they’re not pets and have only one master – usually with a deep voice – one doesn’t do daily without some affection for the four-legged critters that we feed and coax into work, who stare at us with little brown soulful eyes, nudge cold noses against us as we try not to pat them on the head, which they apparently hate, but show me a dog that doesn’t like a pat and a scratch as they pant their slightly sheepy dog-breath over us.
Oh, the dogs along that avenue would date back to my dear dad – Trixie and Bessie, Baby Pup, Minna, Pebbles – the names are ridiculous. But once T-Bone, the wonder dog from the Riverina, arrived so too did a whole butcher’s shop of names such as Brisket, Chop and maybe a Chuck. Thankfully no Shank, Neck or Loin, and Spare Ribs is too much of a mouthful when yelling across a paddock.
Salty was not perfect. He would only listen to one person and that person was not me. So the daily runs would often become epic pursuits with little clue as to where Salty had disappeared.
But then one would see scores of kangaroos hurriedly hopping toward the horizon.
I have a strong piercing whistle but Salty was deaf to that and any other form of communication, especially yelling – so anyone hovering above [Elon Musk and his satellites, for instance] would see the kangaroos followed in quick succession by a black and white streak, then some distance away a Polaris with four sets of flying yapping sausage dogs in the back.
Eventually one fence or gate would come to our rescue; otherwise we’d all be in Barmedman, and then there’d be this human, me, throwing anything not tied down to get Salty out of his trance-like state as he zigzagged the fence looking for a hole.
Try as I might to work him, when the boss wasn’t around Salty was his own boss with the rather annoying habit of standing where the sheep needed to go as our relationship would rapidly dissolve from love to hate. Same when he leapt from the back of the Polaris unprompted set on blocking the exit of lambs stuck behind gates or eyeballing one stomping ewe in a paddock when the rest of the mob was hell-bent on getting to Barmedman.
Situations like this are frequent. Salty had one boss and try as I might with the pats and scratches, the fresh bones, the straw, cleaning around the kennel, the runs and plods, sniffing of the air and diversion to a dam or trough on a hot day, it was not me.
So today Salty will be placed in the ground and there’s a tree in a shop in town with his name on it. Not sure what type, but something that can endure the heat and the frost and sometimes a lack of water, as the tank frequently runs dry, especially when cattle play with the troughs.
Like all those heroic working dogs before him who also had to endure the heat, the frost, the droughts, dusty burry thistly hours behind great mobs of sheep and freaky charging cattle, during that tethered, tasteless biscuit-sometimes-bones life of a sheepdog, he will be missed.
As will that look in his eyes as he set off each day for work and how he loved it. May he have more of those days wherever he now is chasing whatever he damned well likes.
