As I held on to all four legs of the squirming, hapless young kangaroo, all I could think was, “WTF am I going to do now?!” With my five working dogs swirling around me, I couldn’t let the little bush kangaroo go—they’d already had him up against the fence once, which is how I finally caught him. Three of the five dogs were intent on finishing the job I’d so rudely interrupted.
Joker and Blaze, brother and sister 12 year old border collies, have believed all along they were born to chase wildlife (not that chasing an echidna counts, really, but that never stopped them). They excel at working in tandem on this, while I’ve tried my best to dissuade them from their unworthy ambitions.
Fly, my 2-year border collie/kelpie/smithfield wonder dog (courtesy of Karen Fish’s kennels) still thinks this is a game, totally delighted with herself for cleverly gathering up the poor kangaroo and herding it back to Joker and Blaze for the kill.
Let me back up to the beginning of the story. When I started training working dogs, I was taught, and saw no reason to question, that the basic instinct of herding was a softer, kinder version of hunting, wherein the fastest dogs go to the front of the fleeing prey and turn them back to the rest of the pack. See David Attenborough on the wild dogs of Africa. The instinct to ‘go around’ a mob of prey animals, I was taught, is the basic building block of training a gathering dog. In this scenario, you as handler/trainer constitute the pack.
In recent times, as I began training Fly on my mob of 600 merinos, she showed no interest in going around, though she drives beautifully. I put it down to a combination of factors, not least of which is that for an inexperienced young dog, it’s a long way to go around 600 sheep. I wasn’t concerned, as Pearl, my mainstay working dog and littermate to Joker and Blaze, started working in the same way and now goes around quite nicely.
Fly looking cool, calm and collected watching her sheep. If you look closely, you can see the long lead that is keeping her with me.
What I didn’t count on was for Fly’s instinct to kick in on kangaroos. I should say here I’m talking about what are called red neck or Bennetts wallabies, which are actually in the kangaroo family, unlike pademelons or other true wallabies. Being kangaroos means they are quite happy to be out in full daylight and in exposed locations, relying on their speed and agility to escape harm. Midlands naturalist Bob Green, boyhood friend of my old stockman Davey Carnes, preferred to call them ‘bush kangaroos’, and I’ve adopted his nomenclature.
Back to Fly. A few days before the dancing with the kangaroo episode, I watched Fly manoeuvre a kangaroo back towards her pack while we were out on our evening walk. Happily for me and the kangaroo, he exited stage left over a fence. His speed and agility saved him an unhappy fate and me a lot of running around and yelling.
Not so the hapless one we caught. He was neither agile nor swift, and Fly was completely determined to bring him back to the pack. Joker and Blaze know I don’t want them to kill things, but the strength of their hunting instinct means they pretty much don’t hear me screaming at them. Joker looked abashed sometime later, as though the sound of my voice only sank in after the fact. Meanwhile Fly danced around Blaze, Joker and the kangaroo in a frenzy of delight and self-congratulation, also oblivious to my yelling.
Pearl and Jax, her daughter, are above such mean-spirited pursuits.
Once I got hold of the kangaroo, and lifted him above the fray, I was faced with the dilemma of how to get him to safety. My top yards were not far away, so I scrambled into the Polaris side-by-side, cradling the wriggling, outraged kangaroo in my lap and struggling to steer hands-free, as I didn’t dare let go of any of his appendages! We finally made it to the yards, whose gates are swung right to the ground (a feature in this case rather than the bug I usually find it to be), and let the fellow go. Fly did her best to get under the gate, but couldn’t.
Fly and Pearl near the top yards a few days earlier, having just moved sheep through
None of my working dogs over the years have ever been willing or able to take down a fly-struck sheep or a ewe with a choked lamb for me. However, kangaroos are a whole different story, especially now that they have young Fly to do the gathering part!