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A dog fight had erupted on the farm.
Not unusual in itself when you have a number of bored dogs lying about waiting for work.
But my interest was drawn to the cause of this latest kerfuffle.
Dad had worked up a winter sweat and had laid his jumper on the ground.
One dog was apparently guarding it.
His best mate and litter sibling had gotten a little too close.
It hit me so hard, this incredible love for their master, that I have remembered it all these years later.
Dogs are often under-rated outside farms.
But on the farms they are prized.
In fact, if they figure out how to open gates, I reckon I could have been left at home and no-one would have given a fig.
I found this undying love hard to fathom when I was young, not so much now.
The farm dogs were never invited inside the house - they stank of rolling in dead sheep much too much for that.
Most often they slept in the garage, the shed, or many times under the farm ute.
We fed them at night near the ute.
They staked out the place.
It was their chariot, the transport which took them to the fray, gave them purpose.
They were close again to their master.
Well I remember the farm utes parked near the footy shed at footy training on Tuesday and Thursday nights.
The dogs peeking out from the back, walking up and back in the back, keeping guard.
Each daring the other to make the first move, they rarely did. There was an almighty blue which brought the farmers out of the footy sheds if they did.
Then the farmers discussed the fighting qualities of this or that dog, who was coming into season, which bloodlines were the best?
None of our dogs were particularly good at this sheep herding business.
At least that's what the young me thought - they were obviously quite good.
All I could hear was Dad yelling at the top of his lungs.
"Get back," "get behind", "get around".
I was confused, I am not sure how they made sense of it all.
They never seemed to get annoyed.
I thought it was wonderful how they help press a mob of sheep into a corner of the paddock and keep them tight when Dad raced in to pluck one out for flystrike, or for the dinner table or whatever.
They kept them all the corner tight as you could be while he was in the middle of them trying to grab one. Marvellous stuff.
My thoughts have turned to the farm dogs while I have been following the Cobber Challenge.
A dozen dogs from around Australia and New Zealand who are competing over three weeks in a mighty endurance challenge.
How many K's, how fast, that sort of thing.
A GPS transmitter is fitted to their collars and off they go.
Our dogs wouldn't have rated.
They were like soldiers preparing for battle, a lot of waiting around before moments of sheer panic.
Or sheer bliss, in the case of the dogs
Our guys spent as much time running to the dams for a drink and a cool down as chasing sheep.
The leading dog this week in the Cobber Challenge had run 345km - all in just a week.
I am sure I never ran that far in a year on the farm, two years.
I figured out Ben Jeffery's kelpie Jack could have run all the way from the farm in Victoria's Western District to Melbourne, because of the distance travelled.
Of course, these entrants are professionals, real stock dogs, not the part-timers of my youth.
They love their owners, but their owners sure love them as well.
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