Pair ruff and ready for titles

THE two Tasmanian contenders in a national working dog competition have been announced.

This year’s state representatives in the Cobber Working Dog Challenge will be Brendon Johnson and his dog Lady and Jack Febey and his dog Monty.

The pair are hoping their dogs’ performances in the onfarm challenge will be good enough to bring the trophy back to Tasmania.

Mr Febey, who works on a mixed farm at Hagley, has had Monty for about 12 months.

He said the two-and-a-halfyear-old kelpie is a real character and loves to work. “He just goes crazy all the time,” he said. “When we’re in the yards he’ll just go and jump up on the backs of the sheep and sit there and bark at me.”

Mr Febey said the competition will be a good way to find out exactly how much work Monty does.

“I just love working my dogs, so I saw it as another excuse to do that,” he said.

Mr Johnson works as a stockman on the Fairfield property at Epping Forest and says his dog Lady is a complete natural. Mr Johnson said once when Lady was bringing in a mob of sheep with some other dogs, she managed to bring back 18 deer too.

All up there will be 12 dogs competing in this year’s challenge. Each of them will be fitted with a GPS collar during the three-week competition, to track their movements.

The results will be uploaded to the competition website every night.

This year’s competition will start on August 12 and run through until September 1.

To find out more go to www.cobberchallenge.com.au.