Wild Dogs in the Australian Bush.

Since I have been living on my wilderness farm I have discovered some amazing facts about our Australian Dingo and the wild domestic dogs that we expect the Dingo to live with nowadays. Deer shooters from the big cities over the years have lost a lot of dogs whilst hunting. They have jobs to return to in the cities and if the dog does not return to the camp on time or gets lost, well he is left in the bush to fend for himself for the rest of his miserable life. These wild domestic dogs are Alsations, Ridgebacks, Dobermans etc, so my potato/ pumpkin farm is surrounded by some pretty savage canines after dark. I certainly dont venture out very often. My wilderness farm is 11 acres of river flat, surrounded by National park and bordered by a river. These dogs have a fantastic "Pack" and "territorial" mentality, if I leave any piece of equipment anywhere on the property other than outside my home the dogs set up a great noise and howl for a lot of the night. I can leave anything within about 50 meters of my house and sheds and they stay silent but if it is anywhere else on the property I have to put up with a noisy night. They have a strange respect for my territory and I respect theirs after dark, even if it is my property ! You see this situation only exists after dark, you rarely see a dog during daylight, a matter of fact you rarely see them anyway. There are two distinct types of wild dog, what we call the purebred, which is the true Aussie Dingo, and the feral domestic dogs, (they are the ones to worry about). Big animals with lots of black in the coat and brave enough to stand their ground and eyeball you if you are unlucky enough to meet one. When hungry and in a small pack these dogs have put many tough bushman up in trees before today. Around the house I have very skinny halfbreeds I suppose you would call them. Miserable looking animals, starving and with Dingo shaped heads. I can only feel sorry for them but I admire the pack mentality and the honour amongst them all. I can only say that I wish someone would do a study of the Australian Dingo and the problems with the cross breeding as a lot more needs to be learnt and understood about these animals. I just thought that I would leave this for all those dog and animal lovers out there in hyperspace.

Bonny and the Wombat.

Bonny was a Kelpie/ Collie cross, a real Australian cattle dog. We got her just as a little pup. She was just a "new to the world" puppy when this incident that I am about to relate took place. The type of pup that would still wee with excitement when you patted her and too young to have learnt to come when she was called. Anyway this is the story. At the time we were living in the bush, (The bush is an Australian description of out of town with no close neighbors). We lived in what was called a "Miners Cottage", a small square house with the front door in the middle and very basic. The house had been moved on to the block of land in the bush and it was still sitting on the stumps without any surrounding dog boards. (in otherwords the foundations had not yet been covered in.)
A wombat had decided too come and dig a bit of a hole underneath the house, not a deep hole as they usually do but just enough for him to dissapear and not be seen. The gap under the house was about 18 inches or so in height. Crawling in there was OK but there was not much room. Now this particular morning Bonny was running around on the front lawn at about 6 am. I had put her outside early, trying to teach her what all pups must learn and the sooner the better. The wombat happened to still be out on the lawn somewhere as well. Wombats are very nocturnal and usually stay out of sight during the day. When the wombat saw me it bolted towards the house, heading for the hole underneath. Poor little Bonny saw the wombat running towards her and started to run towards the house as well. Little Bonny, all confused and scared raced in under the house ahead of the wombat, and skidded down into the wombat hole. The wombat raced in as well and jammed little Bonny down in the hole. (It is common knowledge in Australia that the wombats main tool of defence is to crush anything that enters its abode up against the top of its burrow. Many a dog has died this way as the wombat has immense strength. The Australian Aboriginees used to send their small children down holes to try to dislodge wombats and many of their children died for the same reason). Well I quickly crawled in under the house and all I could hear were very muffled squeaks and gasps from little Bonny. She actually sounded very bad, no barking or yapping just slow growns. I knew that the situation was very grim. I couldnt even see the wombat, and Bonny was down underneath the wombat anyway. I quickly climbed out and ran in to get my wife Carol. She was still in bed and she hurried out to help me. Now I have to explain here what we were wearing so that the reader can put their imagination to work as the story unfolds. Carol had a small, short nightie on, I had nothing but a dressing gown (without a cord to tie it up !) Well we both crawled in under the house to the wombat hole. By now Bonny was hardly making any sound, just a sort of agonising high pitch choking sound and getting softer by the second. No matter what we did we could not make any impression on the wombat. I could reach in and touch it but this made it push down even harder. I felt around and by scratching some of the soil away with my fingers I could feel the wombat's back legs. I said to Carol, this is my plan, its all we can do. I will reach in and get a good grip with each hand on to the wombats back legs. When I get into position, on the count of three, I will heave and hopefully pull the wombat out, if I do, you will have to reach down and grab Bonny from the hole. I explained that she would have to move like lightning as the wombat may return to the hole and could injure her badly if she had any part of her body in the hole. I hoped that the element of surprise may enable me to pull the wombat out momentarily. Normally no-one could expect to possibly be able to hold a wombat back if its feet were on the ground. They are very very powerful. Carol got herself into position, we were both completely covered in dirt and with what we were both wearing, or NOT wearing really, we were very lucky that no-one visits at 6am in the morning ! I reached down and dug with my fingers around the wombats back feet. I could feel the legs quite well then and managed to get a real good grip on both legs. By now I must add, Bonny had fallen silent, there were no more signs of life. I said to Carol, on the count of three, I will heave on the wombat and pull it out of the hole. As any good Aussie bushman will tell you, just about an impossible task. Well I counted to three and gave a huge pull, I shot backwards and the wombat, taken completely by surprise came out of the hole and landed on top of me. On top of my naked body with the dressing gown out behind me like Superman's cape. The timing was superb, Carol reached into the hole, grabbed little Bonny, or should I say little Bonny's now limp and motionless body. Carol pulled out Bonny and straight back into the hole shot the wombat, there was no way that I could have stopped it. Well we ran inside with Bonny and we laid her on the floor in front of our kerosene heater. Her little brown body was still, no sign of breathing or any response of any sort. We were both very upset and we assumed that she was dead and I suppose we could not have expected any other outcome. We dried her little body and cleaned away the mud and dirt and we noticed a little twinge and saw that he lungs had moved a little bit. We gently squeezed her small chest back and forth for a time and very gradually she started to breathe again. After about an hour she re-gained consiosness and to our amazement looked around and sat up. She could not walk anywhere however for a long while but after a few days made a full recovery. We had Bonny for a further 12 years and some of my previous stories relate good times we spent with her. But, as this story explains, we were all very very lucky that day. Nowadays my wife quite often laughs when she decribes to our friends what I looked like wearing nothing but a dressing gown, strung out like a Superperman cape, covered in mud and dirt. I then remind her just how she looked as well on that exciting morning. A morning that I will never forget.

Bonnies Big Swim

One day I was called to rescue a broken down boat drifting about 150 metres from the boat ramp in our small seaside village. It was only a small open boat and I could see a man in some sort of uniform on board. I launched my rescue boat and with Bonnie, my faithful old Kelpie/ Collie dog on board I motored out to rescue this unknown character. As I approached I could see that he was a Government Fisheries and Wildlife officer. He had a boat full of documents and papers including some maps and he must have been doing some sort of inspections of shoreline etc. The starter rope had broken on the outboard and he was gradually drifting away from the shore. I pulled up alongside and he threw me a rope and I started heading back to shore. The lake was quite calm and Bonnie took up her usual position standing up right on the tip of the bow of the boat. (The front or pointy end !). We were about 100 metres from shore and some bloke in a speedboat cut through between our boats and the shore. This created quite a large wake (wave) and I could see the wave rapidly approaching us. Being a small boat such a wave was perfectly safe but they always chucked the boat around a bit as you broke through them. Well there are some things that you cannot tell a dog and warning Bonnie of a wave was out of the question. I steered the boat as well as I could through the wave but the sudden bump knocked Bonnie clean into the water. She disappeared under the waves and appeared suddenly swimming madly. There was no danger as she was an excellent swimmer so I changed course a little bit and tried to grab her as I drifted past. She was a bit far out of reach so the smartly uniformed man in the boat under tow called out that he would grab her as he went past. He managed to grab her collar and hauled her into his boat. Well any dog lover reading this will well know what the first thing that a dog does when it has been for a swim. Well Bonnie shook with all her might, she then proceeded to race around his boat, to my horror she raced all over his maps and documents while continually shaking water everywhere. It was only a small boat and I could see the now very wet Fisheries officer madly grasping at and trying to save all his papers from the water. When we arrived back at the little jetty I could see that the man was furious. His previously neat grey suit was all wet and his papers all stuck together. I grabbed Bonnie and put her in my van, water everywhere, The fisheries man had his boat trailer there so I made some excuse to escape and certainly did not mention any payment for the rescue. I quickly tied my small boat to the jetty and drove off. I have to confess to laughing then and giving Bonnie a pat, I told her that she was a good dog and that she had brightened up an otherwise rather dull day.

Bonnie Misses out on a VIP Ride.

I used to work at a shipyard in a small seaside village repairing boat motors and attending various breakdowns for which I had a service van equipped with all my tools. I kept the van brightly sign written for all the tourists on the holidays. I was usually kept very busy and to supplement our income my wife operated four holiday cottages which she managed to keep occupied week to week over most of the year. On this particular hot summer Saturday afternoon I had collected all the gar bags of rubbish from the four cottages which had accumulated over the past week and I was on my way to our local tip. The bags were pretty rotten, full of fish heads, old bait etc. and the service van was pretty stinky inside to say the least. Along side me on the passenger seat was Bonnie, my old kelpie dog, and she stunk a bit as well. So with several gar bags sharing the front cabin and lots more in the back of the van I was headed for the tip. Because of the heat and the fact that some of the bags were about a week old by now (I usually went to the tip each Saturday) the stink was as bad as it gets, nearly to the "dry reach" stage ! Anyway I had called in to the workshop at the shipyard on the way to the tip to pick something up. I parked the van and was about to walk over to the workshop building when I heard a call from the high wire security fence. It was our local storekeeper standing at the fence and beside him stood our Victorian State Premier Sir Rupert Hamer.(Our head of State). Sir Rupert was known for summer holidaying at our small town but as our current premier, he kept a very low profile and really only we locals were aware of his visits. I walked across to the fence and said hello to the storekeeper and a "good afternoon Sir" to our Premier. The storekeeper went on to explain that Sir Rupert's car would not start and he had walked down to the town seeking assistance. He thought that he may have left the lights on and needed a jump start to get the car going. The storekeeper left the Premier with me and disappeared back to his shop. Well I knew that I was in a pretty interesting situation ! I had the Premier behind the fence waiting for a ride back to start his car, I had a foul smelling van full of stinking bags of rubbish which I would have to move from the front seat to even make room for the Premier, and to top it all off I had Bonnie my smelly dog who would straight away want to sit on his knee !!! I had visions of the Premier with Bonnie on his knee, feet straddled over the gar bags on the floor, I knew that I had a serious situation. My wife has always said that I was the worlds fastest inventor of "on the spot" lies. My mind raced and I suddenly thought of a plan. I said to the Premier, "I will have to go back to my workshop at home and get my jumper leads", little did the Premier know that they were in the back of my van. I explained that of course I normally carried them but had used them that morning but I had not put them back. My plan worked perfectly ! The premier, (our head of state) said, "The walk will do me good, I will walk back to the car and meet you there in, say, about 10 minutes ?" Of course I agreed and off walked the Premier on his way home. I kissed the ground and jumped in the van and drove off home. I ran inside and exclaimed to my wife, "Guess what, I am about to start the Premiers car". Our town was a pretty quiet and very un-interesting town in those days and this rated as a top notch activity by my everyday standards. I then ran out and got back into my stinking rubbish truck complete with smelly dog "Bonnie" and drove to the Premiers place. He had just arrived back there and looked a bit puffed after his walk. I said hello to his lovely wife April, we started the car and he was very happy. I was very happy too as I had avoided a very embarrassing situation. Bonnie had missed out on a ride on the Premiers knee that day, but somehow I didn't care at all.

Bonnie The Dog Mechanic

Way back in the 70's we had a small property a bit out of town where all the local kids used to come on weekends and ride their mini bikes. On the property there was a large shed just near our house and I spent each day repairing various small engines. We had two small children so we decided to get a little pup to teach them responsible pet handling. I managed to obtain a little Kelpie/ Collie pup from a nearby farm and we named her Bonnie. Because I spent every day with small engines and repairing fire pumps, chainsaws, lawnmowers etc. Bonnie grew up with, and became very used to, all the noise and smoke. She used to get all excited whenever I would attempt to start any sort of engine, she would skid off and race in circles around our small home barking madly until the engine burst into life. She seemed to calm down then, it was the starting of the engine that intrigued her so much. Well some years later we moved to a small seaside village and I started repairing boat motors. I operated a service van and I was often called to the waterfront to do emergency repairs for broken down tourists and fisherman. One day I was called to help start a rather large boat at a small jetty in the town. Of course Bonnie was with me, she loved sitting up on the wide front passenger seat in the van and she would hang her head out of the window, carefully watching all my repair activity. On this particular day I arrived at the jetty to find four very dejected fisherman. They had spent most of the morning trying to start their boat without success. They had given up and abandoned the boat and each were sitting on the boards and leaning against a jetty post all feeling very miserable. So miserable in fact that they didn't even bother getting up when I arrived. They just told me to help myself, I think they thought that a "Country Bumkin" mechanic would not be able to get their engine going. Well as they sat there I climbed into the boat and had a good look at the engine. It was actually an automotive type V8 so I removed the distributor cap to check the ignition points and noticed that they were not opening at all. This made it impossible for the engine to start. As everything else was in very good condition I reasoned that if I adjusted the point gap the engine would start straight away. After I had adjusted the distributor I checked for a spark which required rotating the engine with the starter. When I turned the key and cranked the engine to test for spark Bonnie stuck her head out of the van window and started barking furiously. Her barking seemed much louder than usual due to the beautiful calm and peaceful day. The noise of the cranking engine had got her all excited. The four blokes sitting on the jetty brightened up and asked me what was my dog going so crazy about. Well I carefully replaced the distributor cap on the engine, collected my tools and climbed out of the boat and walked past the four blokes still sitting on the jetty back to my van. I turned and called to the four fisherman, "The dog is actually telepathic you know and you blokes are very lucky because when my dog barks like that and gets all excited it means that your engine is about to go ! " Well unconvinced the four fisherman remained seated on the jetty. I placed my tools in the back of my van and called out to them. "Go on, try it out, it will go now, the dog was barking". One of the blokes slowly dragged himself up and climbed into the boat, he turned the key and Vrroooom, away went the engine. The other three leapt up and cheered and they all were elated after having spent all morning trying to start the engine. They came across and patted Bonnie and asked where I had got such a fantastic dog. They just could not believe how Bonnie knew that the engine would go like that. As I drove off I laughed to myself as they were all firmly convinced that I had this special unique telepathic dog, she certainly was unique alright and of course special, but telepathic ? not really.

How Stanley Became Molly

A lot of years ago we were shopping one day in our nearby town and I was suffering from a very painful knee and we were walking on a rather crowded footpath, (I was hobbling), when suddenly through the crowd ran a miniature Jack Russell. I think that it had the shortest legs of any dog I had seen to that day and it was complete with a same length stubby tail to match. Believe it or not this little cute dog wore a bright red "studded" collar ! Being dog lovers ourselves with two of our own at home we instantly "noticed" this dear little dog. I have never been a fan of Jack Russell's but this was the cutest little dog. Anyway my wife calls out to me that it must be lost and takes off after the little dog in the crowd. There were cars whizzing past and just as a 26 wheel prime mover stopped at the nearby traffic lights the little dog races out onto the road and runs through under the bogie's of this monster truck. My wife races across and manages to get the little fellow to change direction and back on to the footpath went the dog and continued to run through the crowd once again. I was left behind to hobble along as fast as I could and when I arrived at the next corner here is my wife standing on a traffic island in the centre of all the traffic clutching the little dog in her arms. Well we took the small dog to the local council office where we were asked to see the pound officer. We waited with several other people there also on council business and shortly a man in a uniform arrived and announced that he was the dog pound operator. Still clutching the small dog my wife explained where and how we had found the dog. The pound officer pulled out some paperwork and proceeded to obtain all our details and where the dog was found etc. etc. noting it all as he went. Finally when the paperwork was complete he held his arms out over the counter and said to my wife, "I will take the dog then". Well gee my wife spins around, jumps back, hugs the dog and calls out, "Your not getting her" ! (By this stage we had established that it was a little girl). Well the pound officer was a little taken back and rather red faced and embarrassed in front of the other customers. He then said, "Well I guess you can keep the dog and we will refer to you any enquiries we may get". We left for home with me grinning at the look on the pound officers face. "Gee you sure told him in no uncertain manner that he was not getting the dog" I laughed to my wife. For the next couple of weeks we placed several adverts in our local newspaper telling about the "found" dog and we tried hard to locate her owner. My wife also named her Molly and removed the studded red collar which seemed so out of place on such a sweet little girl. We really were getting to like little Molly, she had a lovely little nature and we all adored her. We had a small mini bike on which we used to give our grandchildren rides, neither of our other two dogs were very fond of the mini bike . They would sit on it and ride on it but were not very thrilled about it and rather nervous. We noticed that every time we started the mini bike Molly would get all excited and she loved it, if we sat her on the petrol tank she would put her stumpy little feet up on the handlebars and she loved tearing along with the wind in her face. I told my wife, this dog knows and has ridden motorbikes before ! One day, some time later, my wife received a phone call from a lady enquiring if we still had the little Jack Russell that we had found. My wife arranged for the lady to call and look at Molly and see if it was their lost dog. The lady arrived and inspected Molly and she and my wife sat and had a cup of tea while Molly sat on my wife's knee. My wife explained all about Molly and the fun that we all had with her since we had found her. Finally the lady explained that Molly was definitely their dog, it actually belonged to her teenage son, the dogs name was "Stanley" !!!!! She then went on to explain that her son did not look after "Stanley" very well, the dog was frequently lost and generally a vagrant around the town hanging around the schools, (which would explain why Molly loved children), and sooner or later was going to be run over by a car. The lady then said to my wife. "I would like you to keep Stanley yourself, I will return home and tell my son that this was not his Stanley." The lady could also see how much my wife loved the little dog and how she had settled in to our dog loving home. The lady left then and we never saw her again. Years later we were at a farm field day, Molly was with us and we had sat down to have a cuppa and this young fellow walked past staring at Molly. He then walked past once again still staring. He never did approach us but I often wonder if he was the previous teenage owner whom his mother had spoken of. Well little, tough, motorbike riding Stanley, complete with studded collar, finally transformed into a dear sweet little girl called Molly. She still enjoyed her occasional mini bike ride and every now and then I would call her "Stanley" ! and she would answer by wagging her little stumpy tail. Molly has long gone to Doggy heaven now but we had many years of fun with her and will never forget her and how she just fitted straight in with our other two little dogs and ourselves.

Getting Sucked in to Dog Adoption

We have always had a dog, or dogs as additional members of our family, why God didn't make the life span of a dog similar to a human life span I will never know as the heartbreak when your furry family member finally leaves is something that stays with you for always. Well this is the story of how we ended up adopting one of our present family. We already had two small dogs,a cute little Maltese/ Poodle called Mickey and a miniature Jack Russell called Molly and really, two dogs was by far enough for us to deal with. My sister, who lives in a nearby town, decided that she would adopt another small dog as she had recently lost one and she felt that her other little dog was missing the company. She went to the local RSPCA dog pound and picked a lovely small terrier that needed to find a home very quickly if he was to survive. She paid all the fees etc. and she was going to town on the coming Friday to pick him up. She already had his name worked out, Toby. Well having our own little Mickey and Molly we were all excited too, so we decided to go with my sister on Friday to help pick up Toby from the pound. We arrive there all excited and the lady tells my sister that Toby is still away at the local vet centre having all his injections and my sister would have to come back later that day. While we are waiting at the counter I spotted the cutest little head and ears peering at us from a cage some distance away. "look at that cute face", I say to my wife !!! My wife straight away rushes and checks out this "cute" dog which is a small Jack Russell.. "Whats the story with the little Jack Russell" ? asks my wife, Oh says the lady, he has only a few days left and he will be put to sleep !! Of course what could we do ? we were trapped, my wife paid all the money and signed all the papers, (this dog had current vaccinations as it had belonged to an old lady who could no longer look after him), so we ended up leaving with "Jack", our new dog, my sister leaves also without her dog !! , she had to come back later ! As we drove away I thought to myself how easy it is to get sucked in to loving a poor little fellow with no future. Here I am driving away with a new dog which I needed like a hole in the head, my sister, the whole reason for the trip, leaving with us without her new dog, he was coming later. Well "Jack" and "Mickey" remain with us to this day, "Molly" sadly has gone up to Doggy Heaven and it was in fact my wife placing flowers on her grave today that prompted this blog. "Jack" is a lovely dog and he really did fall on his feet that day and he was about the last thing that we needed at that time but he is so important to our family now I don't know what we would do without him. Toby did very well that day too and fell on his feet and he lives in a loving home as well.