I can jump fences

Ah, Mudhoney… He might be getting older and gimpier by the day, one hip is dysplastic, the other is prone to dislocation, and his dicky knee keeps seizing up. He was unceremoniously dumped from 3 sheep trialling when I started running Queani, and he only gets to yard trial because Bill doesn’t. He still can’t comprehend that he’s cute, but not cute enough that every visitor wants his dirty paw prints on their pants and his tongue down their throat. About the first phrase both my kids have learned to speak is “Get OUT OF IT Muddy!”. He’s quite a handy farm dog, though, and by God, he can jump stuff.

This comes in handy for Muddy, because quite regularly during the year, people try to do sheepwork in the yards up the hill, and forget to invite him. An ordinary dog might realise they’re in a fenced yard and restrict themselves to wistful sighs and doing a bolt the moment the gate is opened. That’s not the kelpie way...

What to do if people try to leave you behind in the house yard

We usually ascribe Muddy’s sproinging ability to just being a kelpie, because they are notorious for being disrespectful of fences, from baby puppyhood onwards. But occasionally we do speculate on Muddy’s parentage (not always in the heat of the moment), and since his natural talent for barking seems as effortless as his ability to spring over stuff, the idea has been raised that he might be related to Angus.

Spanky Angy in action

Both Angus and Muddy just go over fences with as little thought as effort, which is how Muddy’s hip came to dislocate in the first place. Threatened castration from a barbed wire fence or snapped hocks from a weldmesh yard? Pffft. They sail over things other dogs are sensible and obedient enough to avoid. But we won’t believe either dog has died until we’ve tied their stiffened corpse up at the sheepyards while other dogs work, and not heard a woof. Apparently for some dogs, barking is a more vital function than breathing. Anyway, hopefully that won’t be for a long, long time in either case. Although if they keep hurling themselves over the wrong fences, maybe it will be sooner than we think.

Here, Queani and Muddy demonstrate the two techniques for negotiating farm fences: the sensible, safe, sustainable, low impact way, and the kelpie way…

“Sayonara, suckers! We have sheep to move!”