Submitted by Erin Jackson on the 2018 winter session program in New Zealand sponsored by the Department of Animal and Food Sciences…
As a group of mostly animal science and pre-vet majors, it is not surprising that we are a dog-loving bunch. When we heard we were visiting a farm with sheepdogs, we quickly grew very excited. However, as we were warned in class, these dogs would be very different from the ones we know and love in our homes and our veterinarians’ offices. New Zealand sheepdogs are working dogs. As such, we learned they would have no interest in our attention, but only that of Peter Kidd, the owner of Kidd sheep farm and the dogs’ trainer. We were also told that the relationship between Peter and his dogs was not going to match our typical view of a companion animal and his or her owner. Nevertheless, we needed to withhold our judgements and view this aspect of the New Zealand lifestyle with an open mind and a new perspective in order to fully understand and appreciate the value of the dogs on these farms that could not function without them.
When we visited the farm, we got to see for ourselves the relationship between Peter and his working dogs. The four working dogs we saw in action were Pip and Lara, the quieter heading dogs responsible for herding sheep back to Peter, and Tuff and Punch, the louder huntaways who barked constantly to move the sheep wherever Peter asked them to. Seeing these dogs respond to Peter’s voice and whistle was astounding; they recognized different whistle sequences designed specifically for them and ran the same poor three sheep up and down the mountain, left and right, across fields, and into pens so that we could begin to appreciate the important role these animals serve on a large farm. Peter’s wife, Marie, told us that “you cannot physically really work on a farm without dogs, when you have sheep and cattle.” I don’t think that anyone on our program would doubt her after seeing what those dogs were capable of.
Another dog we got to meet on our visit was Chief, the retired champion of the New Zealand National Dog Trials. One girl asked what made Chief a champion, and Peter was very quickly able to list the traits that made Chief so impressive. This made me think of something Marie had said earlier in the day: “dogs are different because people are different.” This is something I have seen in my own experience working with dogs in the United States and something that was also constantly reinforced throughout the day as we listened to Peter and Marie describe their different dogs. Even though Marie told us that “a terrific lot” of these dogs’ abilities come from instinct, they are still so incredibly, inevitably unique. They may serve a different and vital purpose as sheepdogs on a vast New Zealand farm, and they may not care for our belly rubs and kisses as much as they do for Peter’s whistle calling them to action, but these dogs are not so different from our own in every way. They’re still happy; they live for working, exercising, and running behind sheep – anything to make Peter happy and to make his job and life easier.
