Toft East Publishing

Imagine sitting around in a pub with a bunch of old fellows, many of them with fifty years of experience or more working on the sheep stations of Australia. During the evening, everyone tells a yarn or two about the dogs they have known during their working days. Some of the stories are funny, some nearly bring tears, some illustrate an idea about training or breeding dogs. All of the stories are true, except for those told by one or two fellows who let you know they are doing a little leg-pulling. It´s a great way to spend an evening.

A few years ago, the Australian Broadcasting Company offered a prize for the best true working dog story from their listeners. Angela Goode and Mike Hayes put some of the entries together in a book, Great Working Dog Stories and added a few of their own. (Mike produced a couple of the funniest, if slightly embroidered, stories.)

It was so successful that Angela Goode put together two more collections. She also met some of the people who wrote the stories and described her visits to them very entertainingly. Most of the stories are about stock dogs (although not every one involves working stock.) Australians use border collies, kelpies, and dingo crosses, but a few of the stock dogs are less familiar breeds, including fox terriers and pointers. And there are the dogs they use for catching wild bulls and hunting ´roos - generally with a bull terrier ancestor. The tales range in length from just a couple of paragraphs to about six pages. Reading them is great - you feel you´ve met some of the real folks of Australia, and along the way learned how life is different there - mustering paddocks of 16,000 acres, pushing thousands of sheep into the wool shed for shearing, rounding up dangerous wild bullocks from thick brush.

Great Working Dog Stories (1990) compiled by Angela Goode and Mike Hayes. The first of the series, this one includes, not so much tall tales, as ones that were a little stretched by Mike Hayes. They are extremely funny, and as he says, if they didn´t happen quite that way, they should have. However, most of the stories are true and were either experienced by their authors or were told to the authors by their neighbors or relatives.

More Great Working Dog Stories (1992) complied by Angela Goode. This book has 145 stories by nearly that many different authors. Stories are arranged in sections, including "Tributes," "Mind-readers," "All in A Day´s Work," and "At the End of Their Lives." Together they give an idea of how tough life can be, and how much a good dog can make things better.

Working Dogs, Stories from all round Australia (1993) compiled by Angela Goode. Australia has mountainous regions, dry areas, crop country - all with different jobs for the working dogs. This book is divided by locality and type of work, with two sections given over to stories by Ron Kerr in the Northern Territory and Geoffrey Blight in Western Australia. Both have worked and trained dogs for many years and write about it with style. Other sections include "Cropping Country," "Cattle Country," and "Fleece Country."

We were in Australia this spring, and got a limited number of copies of the books from the ABC. Each book is $14, plus $1.50 S&H. If you order one and like it, there´s no S&H for another ordered within a year.

Toft East Publishing
188 Flat Hill Road
Lunenburg, MA 01462-1404
USA