DAD SPARKED MY interest in farming, but he also sparked something much deeper in me. It was his work, pioneering the Rare Breeds Trust and setting up Cotswold Farm Park that started my lifelong fascination with the history of the animals we see around us every day as we drive through the countryside, or even as we walk in city parks.
Dad loved animals of all sorts, and he cared particularly about preserving the breeds that are in danger of extinction. In his early farming days, when he and his partner were running a mainly arable farm because they didn’t have much money and arable was the most cost-effective way to establish themselves, Dad bought a couple of Gloucester Old Spot sows and two Gloucester cows, more or less as a hobby. He loved the idea of breeding pedigree livestock.
In 1969, when I was a lively little three-year-old, Dad was asked to join a working party set up by the Royal Agricultural Society and the Zoological Society of London to find a home for a collection of rare breed farm animals that had been kept at Whipsnade Zoo. The zoo needed the space for more exotic animals.
When he saw them, Dad knew he had to save them. That’s when he had the idea for Cotswold Farm Park, a safe place for the animals to live. By opening the park to the public he hoped to fund the cost of keeping the animals, but, more importantly, he wanted to educate people about the need to conserve these wonderful breeds.
Two years later, the first rare breeds farm park in Britain (possibly in the world) received its new residents: a small flock of Jacob, Soay and Portland sheep, with one lone Norfolk ram, plus five different breeds of cattle: Highland, longhorn, White Park, Belted Galloway and Dexter.
Cotswold Farm Park was, from the day it opened, a great success. As well as educating the public about the precarious survival of these beautiful animals, Dad always made time to talk about them to me and my sisters. We all had animals that we had to look after: mine were a couple of Exmoor ponies. We were in charge of buying and selling the stock for our breed, with half the profit going into our piggy banks. It was a brilliant way to motivate us, and I loved going to market with him to buy new animals.
A couple of years after Cotswold Farm Park opened its doors, Dad helped to found the Rare Breeds Survival Trust, and became its first chairman. The members of the Trust wanted to stop rare breeds disappearing: between 1900 and 1973, 26 native breeds of farm animals became extinct. Now they publish an annual watchlist of endangered breeds and encourage farmers and other enthusiasts to keep these heritage animals going. Today the Trust has 10,000 members, and Prince Charles is its patron.
At about the same time as he took on his work with the Trust, Dad’s TV career was launched properly, with a guest appearance on the very popular Animal Magic show on children’s television, presented by Johnny Morris. Dad was a natural, and from then on he appeared regularly on a variety of animal programmes. I was very proud, never dreaming that he was also sowing the seeds of my other career (I already knew I wanted to be a farmer – well, I quite liked the idea of being a cowboy in the Wild West, too …)
So, because of Dad’s work on Bemborough Farm and the farm park, from a very early age I developed a strong interest in the history of domesticated animals. It fascinates me how breeds have evolved – and how some have been completely discarded – to fit with modern farming methods.
For many animals you can easily see the origins: the wild boar is clearly recognisable in today’s pigs, even though wild boar became extinct in Britain by the twelfth century. Way back in time it originated in North Africa and Eurasia, and it was probably humans who spread it further, domesticating it more than three thousand years ago. A couple of efforts were made to reintroduce it, but it was not until the 1980s that boar were re-established here. At the farm park we have Iron Age pigs, the only animals we have which are not pure bred, but rather are a reconstruction of the type of pigs our ancestors first herded from the wild during the Iron Age. They were created for a BBC television programme where the producers wanted to see how people coped living like Iron Age people, with the same clothing, houses and livestock. We mated a Tamworth sow (the oldest of the existing British breeds) with a wild boar.
We also have Highland cattle, which are the closest descendants of the massive Auroch cattle that appear in Neolithic cave paintings. Attempts have been made, and are being made, to re-establish Aurochs by breeding for their characteristics, or by sequencing their DNA from remains and comparing the genome with existing breeds. As well as Highland cattle, we also have White Parks at the farm park – another breed that have these ancient genes.
Goats have claims to be the earliest animal to have been domesticated as there is evidence that Neolithic men had herds of primitive goats. The first evidence of them in Britain is 5,000 years ago, and there are still pockets of feral goats dotted around the country who are descended from these early goats. Among the breeds we have at the farm park is the Bagot, which legend says was brought to Britain when Richard the Lionheart returned from the Crusades.
Naturally we have rare breed sheep: 14 different old breeds, with at least a couple who still have the genes of the earliest known sheep in the world, the wild mouflon. Sheep are in contention with goats for the position of oldest domesticated animals, and their value was recognised more than 10,000 years ago in Asia as producers of meat, milk and wool – all valuable commodities. When I look at our small herd of Castlemilk Moorits or our Soays, which are unchanged from Viking times, the history of sheep is right there in front of me: I can see the way our modern breeds are descended from these hardy pioneers. The Merino sheep I became so familiar with in Australia are another breed with genes from the wild mouflon, although there have been centuries of refining the breed since.
But the animal whose history intrigues me even more, and who is not represented in our rare breeds park, is the animal I work with every day: the sheepdog.
Experts are agreed that dogs are descended from wolves, and the process of domestication was more the choice of the dog than of the humans who took them into their camps. Towards the end of the last Ice Age, men survived by hunting and gathering. They had no domesticated animals and they grew no crops. The wolves who learnt to forage around the human camps for bones and left-over food became useful as guard dogs, warning of predators and enemy incursions, and there soon developed a symbiotic relationship: the wolves/dogs stayed around for food and warmth at the fires, the men encouraged them for protection and also, after some time, to help with hunting. I expect, by taking in young wolf cubs, they managed to befriend them even more. The wolf gradually evolved physically but, more importantly, in its characteristics, to accept that hunting with a pack included a human pack.
Eventually, individual dogs became attached to families or groups of humans, even to one specific man. The ‘ownership’ of dogs by man had begun and has continued down the millennia. With the domestication of other animals – goats and sheep mainly – the dogs had another vital function, to guard and preserve the flock on which their human masters relied for food and skins. I’ve heard it argued that, given that man is the most successful animal on the planet, the dog is the second most successful, because it has learnt to have all its needs catered for simply by being useful to its masters.
As we all know, dogs have evolved into all sorts of different shapes and sizes, and have now been subdivided into breeds. There are dogs to sit on laps, dogs to race round tracks, dogs to guard our homes and premises, dogs to help us in specific ways, and even more dogs whose sole role in life is to be a good companion to its human owners. Despite how different they look – a St Bernard is one hundred times bigger than a Chihuahua, for example – they have a lot more in common than their appearance sometimes suggests.
All the different breeds of dog we know today evolved over centuries of selective breeding from the dogs who did the kind of work I still do with my dogs. If dogs had not become ‘sheep’ dogs, it is possible that no other domesticated breeds would exist. When I look at Peg or Pearl, I can see the history of all dogs before me, as they are where it all began. Their body shape may have changed, but the job they do is still principally the same as it was when Bronze Age men ran flocks of sheep, goats and pigs to feed their communities, using dogs to herd, guard and drive their livestock. Although today’s sheepdogs do look different in some ways from the remains that have been found of their ancient predecessors, they are much closer in appearance to their forebears than any of the ornamental breeds. Farmers and shepherds have always wanted functional dogs: we don’t judge them on their looks but on how well they can do the job. So there have been no excesses of interbreeding, and a sheepdog is about as close as we can get today to an ancient breed.
There are, though, different types of livestock working dogs that have evolved. As we’ve seen, there are sheepdogs like Peg, who work rounding up and moving sheep, using all the attributes I described in the last chapter, and will tell you more about in the next. There are droving dogs, like the Welsh collie, who were used to take cattle and other livestock long distances. And there are pastoral dogs, who lived with the herd to guard it from predators and are still used in some parts of the world.
First, let’s look at droving dogs.
For centuries, before railways and long-distance travel became normal, the people who moved around the countryside for miles and miles at a time were mainly drovers, taking cattle, pigs and sheep to market. Great cavalcades of drovers with their flocks would block the routes of the stagecoaches and horseback travellers for hours on end – not too different to being stuck in a motorway jam today.
To farmers like me, used to loading our livestock onto trailers and lorries, it’s difficult to imagine how important drovers were. But in days gone by I wouldn’t have been able to leave my farm for weeks at a time and so would have relied on a drover to take my flock to market and bring the money he got for selling my livestock back to me. It was a vital job, and every drover had at least one dog. Flocks of sheep as big as 6,000 strong, collected from different farms, would be taken to markets all over the country, even making journeys from the Pennines to the famous Smithfield market in London. The drovers would team up on the road, working together and using their dogs as a pack. For days, weeks and occasionally even months, the drovers, who were sometimes mounted on hardy horses used to rough terrain, but would often travel on foot, would steadily move their charges onwards, settling them at night in fields specially reserved for them. The dogs were vital for keeping the sheep together, keeping them going, and separating the different flocks when they got to market. Usually the flock or herd would wait for a few days before making the final few miles to market, to allow the sheep or cattle to rest and fatten up. At this point the drover’s dog turned into a guard dog, fighting off any predators, including thieves and village dogs. Sometimes the enormous trains of animals in a drove would be accompanied by hunting dogs, which were used by the drovers to provide hares and rabbits for food on the journey: these dogs are the ancestors of today’s lurchers. The droving dogs were fed on anything left over when the men had been fed.
A description from a book published in 1800, Cynographia Britannica (a very early description of different dog breeds), says about these remarkable droving dogs:
‘He is sagacious, fond of employment and active; if a drove is huddled together so as to retard their progress, he dashes amongst and separates them till they form a line and travel more commodiously; if a sheep is refractory and runs wild, he soon overtakes and seizes him by the foreleg or ear, pulls him to the ground. The bull or ox he forces into obedience by keen bites on the heels or tail, and most dexterously avoids their kicks. He knows his master’s grounds and is a rigid sentinel on duty, never suffering them to break their bounds, or strangers to enter. He shakes the intruding hog by the ear, and obliges him to quit the territories. He bears blows and kicks with much philosophy.’
What a dog! He was loyal and hard-working, and when he and his master finally delivered their charges to the market he was often turned loose to find his own way home, even if this was a journey of a hundred miles or more. He would scavenge for his own food on the way, saving the drover from having to feed him. If he never made it, the drover would simply acquire another dog, or use one from the small pack he bred especially for the job.
The drovers (like shepherds) were not concerned with how their dogs looked; they were breeding them for working qualities, not to win beauty contests. As Iris Combe, a renowned historian of herding dogs, wrote:
‘To define a droving dog would be impossible, for they were a collection of canines of every shape and size, make and colour, each selected by the drover for its natural instincts and to deal with the specific type of livestock to be transported. The requirements for a drover’s dog were a stout heart, good lungs, rock-hard feet, great physical courage and a strongly-developed instinct for self-preservation. The framework which housed these qualities was of relatively little importance.’
Sadly, not all the drovers were kind to their dogs, which usually lived short lives, due to exhaustion, accidents, ill-treatment and neglect. If a bitch gave birth to pups on the journey, the pups were often left to die, although there are heartening stories of bitch and pups being left at the nearest farmhouse and collected when the drover returned.
The routes the drovers used formed a criss-cross network across the countryside, which can still be seen today as the old droving roads are rediscovered and preserved as routes for walkers. They did not necessarily go in a straight line: the main roads had toll gates, and the cost of taking a whole herd through was too high for the drover who was paid a flat amount by the farmer. So routes were devised that bypassed the tolls.
Even when railways spread across the country in the mid-nineteenth century, droving dogs were still in demand. They no longer had to make the weeks-long droves all the way to the markets, but they were still needed to get livestock from the farms to the holding sheds at the railway stations, which could be journeys of many miles.
It wasn’t only sheep and cattle who were escorted across the country by the drovers: flocks of geese and turkeys were also driven, with dogs urging them on and keeping them in line, often for several days at a time, to get to market. Just as cattle were usually shod like horses to protect their feet on long journeys, turkeys wore leather boots and geese were first herded through wet tar, followed by sand, to give their feet a protective coating. The dogs had to drive them through the tar – not something the geese were very willing to do – and the dogs hated the job because they ended up with tar on their own feet.
To illustrate the hard life the drovers led, I followed an old drover’s road for three long days for Countryfile, taking 40 geese across the Brecon Beacons to the market town of Llandovery. We couldn’t use sheep because of the strict movement licences that are now in place when you transport these animals from farm to farm, but geese are free from these restrictions. Nor could we walk them through tar – the RSPCA would not have approved. Before we set off, and at regular intervals along the route, my little flock were checked out by Peter Laing, a vet who caught up with me whenever we stopped for long.
My adventure was shown over three episodes of Countryfile, leading up to Christmas: geese were very popular in the Christmas markets in Victorian times. I dressed for the part, in a long drover’s coat and a wide-brimmed hat, which I was very glad of when the rain swept across the open heathland.
We weighed a sample three geese before I set off, because, as a good drover, my employers would expect me to get the geese to market in good condition. An important part of my job, as well as covering the distance, was to take care that my charges were well fed, got plenty of rest, and plenty of access to water. Every couple of miles we stopped for 20 minutes, which was all the geese seemed to need to feel refreshed and ready to go.
My sheepdog at the time was Maud, and she was very happy to switch her attention from sheep to geese, having already herded geese and ducks in front of visitors at Cotswold Farm Park. She wasn’t fazed by them, and understood the slow pace they needed to waddle along at. I was nervous that one of my flock would get lost or hurt, but Maud was vigilant.
As well as Peter the vet, I was also joined along my route by Richard Moore Colyer, a historian who has studied the ancient droving routes and the men who travelled along them.
‘There is evidence of drovers moving animals in Saxon times, and probably earlier,’ he told me. ‘But the heyday was from the sixteenth century to the end of the nineteenth century. Wales had poor quality pasture, so the cattle the farmers bred were taken to lusher pasture in England. Lots of animals, including geese, were taken to the markets at Llandovery.’
The whole area I was walking was honeycombed with drovers’ roads, and in days gone by I would have met up with many other men in charge of flocks and herds of animals, but I’m pretty sure I was the first drover to walk this way in the past hundred years or so. Halfway through the first day the rain came down, the geese looked muddy and bedraggled, and I could feel trickles of cold water running down my neck. But if I was feeling sorry for myself I only had to remember that at least my coat and hat were made of waterproof material: the old drovers, with their heavy woollen coats, would have been a lot wetter than I was.
The first night we stopped at the village of Caio, which was an important droving centre in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, when the population was three times larger than it is today. Richard told me about a famous drover, Dafydd Jones of Caio, who lived between 1711 and 1777, who didn’t fit the usual image of drovers, who were known as hard-drinking, hard-womanising, wild men. Dafydd Jones spent his hours on the road composing hymns and translating English hymns into Welsh. In one of his hymns, Richard said, he compares souls going to heaven with all the cattle and sheep converging on Caio.
Our first night was spent in a tent, while the geese were corralled in a sheep pen lined with a generous amount of straw. Because of the rain, we built a tarpaulin shelter to keep them dry. I was exhausted and also worried about the safety of the geese, as there were foxes about. We’d travelled across some difficult open country, and it was a bit disappointing at the end of a hard day to find that my drover’s rations were a hunk of bread, a piece of cheese and a raw onion. The geese, on the other hand, got a generous helping of barley for their supper. I tried not to think about the luxury of a warm dry bed as I settled down for the night, cold and wet.
Maud loved the luxury of sleeping in my tent with me and I was glad of her company, but I know the original droving dogs would have been expected to live in the pen with the geese. The drovers in fact would not have had tents – they slept in barns and haylofts, and, if the weather was reasonable, underneath hedges, with nothing more than blankets to protect them. The drovers faced many dangers. On their way to market there were rustlers intent on stealing their livestock, and on the way back the risks were even higher, because they were now carrying money, often gold sovereigns, for the farmers whose stock they had transported. Highwaymen, sometimes operating in armed gangs, would target them, which was another reason that the best drovers did not release their dogs but kept them alongside to alert to danger and to attack human predators just as enthusiastically as they saw off foxes.
The next morning I was relieved to count all my 40 geese present and correct, and almost all looking fit and healthy. There was one goose I was worried about. She was struggling a bit the day before, always lagging behind. This morning, while the others had preened their feathers and were now pure white again, Jemima (I called her after Jemima Puddleduck, the Beatrix Potter character) was still muddy and wet. I caught her and dried her with a towel. Peter had a good look at her, because I was worried about whether she could continue.
‘She’s not got such good feathers as the others, but she’s healthy, her eyes are bright,’ he said.
Thankfully, the weather was dry, so I was able to light a fire, brew some tea, and have a good breakfast of fatty bacon cooked over the fire. I’d hoped for some eggs from my flock, but Peter explained that they would not lay in the bad weather we had overnight.
We set off again over open moorland and I asked Richard why the drovers didn’t follow the roads.
‘Most of the roads had turnpikes, which meant that you had to pay twopence for every animal that went through. If you had a large herd or flock, that represented a lot of money. The drovers had to balance the cost against getting the animals to market quicker and probably in better condition.
‘The drovers also had to avoid mixing their sheep, cattle and geese with other animals also being driven to market. If a drover had a very large number of animals he may have had to hire other men to help him.’
As I strode out, I carried poor old Jemima for some of the way. She was so valliant, trying to keep up with the others when it was obviously hard work for her. Without Peter or Richard to accompany me I felt isolated on the big wide open hillside. But I didn’t feel lonely: hundreds of drovers and millions of animals had trodden this path, and somehow their spirits felt alive to me.
Maud really came into her own as she had to drive the geese down some hazardous, narrow hill tracks. She was ducking and darting, keeping them safe. I was worried one would disappear over the edge, but I should have had more faith in her: she brought them all through brilliantly.
It was late when we stopped for a lunch break, because we had to keep moving down the dangerous track. We were all exhausted, and once again I was on bread, cheese and raw onion, and beginning to fantasise about a good hot meal. The geese enjoyed a swim on the next leg of the route, with only Jemima needing a helping hand to get in and out of the river.
We stopped that night in the village of Cilycwm, another droving centre in the old days. There used to be five pubs catering for these wild men who drove their animals through, but today there is only one left. Luckily, I was staying there, so a warm bed, a pint and a hot meal were in sight.
Lots of villagers came out to see me and my flock arrive – I’m sure they thought I was a harmless eccentric. But Richard explained that in times past when the drovers came through, locals would ‘lock up their daughters, their mistresses, their sisters and everybody else. They definitely had an eye for the ladies.’
While we were happy to relax over a pint, the drovers were known for kicking up a fuss, with records of them appearing at Quarter Sessions and being bound over to keep the peace, or fined for being drunk and disorderly.
Still worried about foxes, I arranged for my geese to spend the night in a stable. When he checked them the next morning Peter said they looked so fit and relaxed ‘they could be on a holiday cruise’.
On our final day we covered most of the distance by road, and I admit we cheated a little bit by loading the geese into a trailer because we were causing such a tailback of traffic. But only for a short distance: we faithfully walked the rest. Richard broke the journey for me by walking with me to explain that geese were not just a valuable foodstuff, they also provided feathers for pillows and mattresses, goose grease for mothers to rub on their children’s chests to ward off the cold, and even fuel for lamplighting.
When we arrived in Llandovery I was fascinated to see a plaque outside Lloyds Bank, commemorating one of the first banks established in Wales. Not only did the drovers have money on them from selling animals, they were also used to transport deeds and documents. For example, on the journey from Wales to London with the cattle and sheep, they often carried rents from Welsh farmers for their English landlords and taxes levied by the government. So in both directions they were targets for villains. If, instead of gold, they were given credit by banks, they were no longer such a target, and that’s why the banks were established.
Enterprising men like David Jones, a farmer’s son who worked as a drover, set up the Black Ox Bank in Llandovery in 1799, using his own savings and the substantial sum of £10,000 (£800,000 in today’s money) which he acquired when he married his wealthy wife. The name ‘Black Ox’ came from the depiction of the Welsh Black cattle, the local breed, on the bank notes. In one year, 1800, the Black Ox bank lent over £6,000 without any security for the purchase of cattle, sheep and geese. That’s about half a million in today’s money. In 1909 Lloyds Bank acquired all the branches of the Black Ox bank, ending the existence of the last and largest of the independent banks in Wales, and one that made life so much safer for so many drovers.
We were given a great reception as we arrived in the town, and, to keep up the spirit of droving, I delivered a letter from the satchel I was wearing to the mayor, a scroll commemorating our historical trip and thanking the town for welcoming us. Despite the crowd that turned out to greet us, and all the cameras being aimed at them, my geese remained calm and dignified and Maud kept them in check. When we retired to a quiet field to feed and rest them, Peter reweighed the same three we weighed at the beginning, and to my astonishment they had all put on weight, one of them even putting on three pounds.
It was an amazing three days for me. I felt I had stepped back in time, and got a real taste of what it was like to be a drover centuries ago. My life today, and the life of all farmers and shepherds, is very different from the life they lived. But one role hasn’t changed in all that time: the job of the sheepdog. Maud worked brilliantly, doing exactly what her predecessors would have done. During the filming, as we went from farm to farm, one shepherd who saw her working was so impressed he wanted to buy her. Of course, it didn’t matter how much money he offered, she was definitely not for sale …
Now to another type of sheepdog, the ones who lived with the herd to protect the livestock from predators. They’re sometimes called pastoral dogs, although that definition strictly means all breeds working with animals, so it is more accurate to refer to them as guardian dogs. There are many different breeds, developed in different countries, and with different names – sheepdogs, mountain dogs, mastiffs – but all with the same job.
When I was little we had, for a short time, a lovely Old English sheepdog called Guinevere. She was huge, especially to me as I was only five or six at the time, and I still remember her massive paws and the density of her thick coat. Because of Dad’s interest in old breeds, he liked the idea of having an Old English sheepdog and so he bought one for Mum as a present, getting her from a local breeder at Rissington. She was a beautiful puppy, just like the one in the Dulux adverts, but in a muddy farmyard she was constantly filthy. When she was fully grown we clipped her a few times to keep her cool in summer and cleaner in winter. Unfortunately, she hated being separated from Mum, and whenever Mum was down at the farm park, Guinevere, who was left behind in the farmhouse, became a brilliant escapologist, nipping out of the back door at any opportunity. Then she would bound a quarter of a mile over the fields to be reunited with Mum. The problem was solved eventually when the breeder lost her own dog and offered to have Guinevere back, giving her a lovely home where she lived to a ripe old age.
The thing is, although her name includes ‘sheepdog’, Guinevere no longer had a working role on a farm like ours. Back in time, she and all the other huge breeds were vital to farmers and shepherds. They lived outside with the sheep, and any predators who turned up during the night were given short shrift by these large, tough dogs. In some parts of the world, close relatives of the Old English sheepdog are still working as flock guardians, sleeping and eating alongside the livestock, spending all their time guarding them, but it’s a dwindling number.
The flock-guarding dogs developed alongside their smaller, more agile cousins, the collies, who could herd and move animals. The guardians needed to be big and fierce, as thousands of years ago and in different parts of the world they had to be prepared to fight lynx, lions, wolves, jackals, tigers, leopards, cheetahs, foxes and huge eagles. They needed to be brave and strong, and they had to have a well-developed instinct to protect. They did not need to be able to hunt, or to herd. Their sole job was to live with the flock of sheep or goats and see off any predators. Often they simply needed to bark, from the centre of a flock, for a predator to turn tail; a bit like a pet dog’s barking can make a burglar go elsewhere. Their size also meant that they could carry large fat reserves, which helped them survive the worst weather and protected them from bitter cold, which a smaller dog couldn’t survive.
Although we no longer use them – in England today there are few natural predators of sheep – there are times when I feel they could still be useful, especially when I hear of rogue dogs worrying sheep, or even of rustlers stealing them. Luckily I farm in an area of the country that has not been badly affected by rustling, but I really feel for the farmers and shepherds in the north of the country and in Northern Ireland, where rustling offences are up by nearly 200 per cent in the last five years, with about 90,000 animals stolen each year, probably to be illegally butchered and eaten. The word ‘rustling’ can sound amusing and even romantic, with connotations of the Wild West, but for a farmer who has spent decades building up the bloodlines in his flock and investing money and time in his animals, it is devastating to lose them.
Unlike my working dogs, the collies, these flock guardians did not work to commands, and often did not have or know their own name. In some parts of the world they lived with the flock from birth: pups were put among the sheep before their eyes were open. Charles Darwin, the most famous naturalist ever, noted when he was in South America that shepherds would teach pups to be suckled by ewes and the dogs slept in a bed of sheep’s wool. They were trained to go to a set place every day for meat, but the rest of their life was spent exclusively with the flock, and when sheep were sold it was usual for the dog to be sold with them.
The breeds of dog developed differently according to the parts of the world where they were used, so in the harsh climate of northern Europe, where they often worked on mountainsides and open steppes, they developed thick, waterproof coats. In more temperate areas they had smoother coats. But common to all was the thickset body and powerful legs that Guinevere had. They lived tough lives, sleeping outside in snow and icy winds, giving birth to pups in a hole in the ground.
Many different breeds still exist, but many more have sadly been allowed to become extinct. Some have found other uses, like the St Bernards used in mountain rescue and the German shepherd dogs and related breeds which have become excellent guard dogs in a completely different context, working with police and security firms.
Nowadays, some of these ancient breeds are reared for their appearance and for showing. Old English sheepdogs are endearing to look at and in personality, and as a result they have their own niche in books, films and, famously, advertising the Dulux brand of paint. Nana, the dog who looks after the children in the story of Peter Pan, is sometimes depicted as an Old English Sheepdog, as is the Colonel in the film and book One Hundred and One Dalmatians. Yet a couple of years ago these magnificent animals were on the endangered list, but now I’m happy to say there has been a surge in popularity, and they have been taken off the list.
Several breeds of guardian dog are white, selectively bred over centuries to camouflage them in a flock of sheep. One of these is the Maremma sheepdog, originally bred in central Italy, and still used to this day to protect the dwindling number of sheep that are overwintered by shepherds in the Maremma marshlands. They’ve spread across the globe, having been used as livestock guardians in the USA, Canada and Australia.
I’ve been lucky enough to meet some of these huge, friendly dogs, which from a distance look like small polar bears. A group of owners arranged to meet up at Cotswold Farm Park for a most unusual fund raiser, which really fascinated me. So with Charlie, Ella and Alfie I took a stroll across to the farm park to chat to them, and we were enthusiastically greeted by about 12 boisterous, adorable dogs, probably averaging about 40 kilos in weight each (for comparison, Boo, our wire-haired Vizsla, is probably about 20 kilos, and Peg the border collie only about 14).
The Maremma Sheepdog Club of Great Britain had organised the money raiser to give support to a touching initiative in Australia, where these woolly giants of dogs have been protecting an endangered species – a subject close to my heart, of course.
The smallest penguin breed, known originally as the Fairy penguin and now as the Little penguin, colonises an uninhabited island, Middle Island, off the coast near the town of Warrnambool, in South Victoria. The penguins are only 30 to 40 centimetres tall, so definitely little.
There used to be hundreds of them on Middle Island, until an enterprising fox discovered that at low tide it was possible to cross to the island, only a matter of a 150 metres off the mainland, without even needing to swim, just getting his paws a bit wet. He told all his mates and in a very short space of time the population of penguins was almost completely wiped out. The problem started in about 2000, when the sea’s natural current shifted and there was an increased build-up of sand, and it rapidly got worse as the fox population escalated with this free and easy source of food. Foxes also kill for the thrill of it, not necessarily just to eat, and in the space of two nights in 2005 around 360 corpses were found on the island by the Penguin Preservation Project monitors.
Patrols were set up to shoot the foxes and poisoned bait was laid for them. Sadly nothing was very effective, and it looked as though these delightful little birds were not going to survive in this spot. It wasn’t going to be the end of the Little penguin species, as there are other colonies around the coast of Australia and New Zealand, but it was desperately sad for local conservationists. Finally, only four Little penguins were surviving on the island.
Step forward local free range chicken farmer Alan ‘Swampy’ Marsh. Alan was using a Maremma to protect his chickens, having successfully trained her to regard them as her ‘flock’. He suggested his dog, Oddball, might be able to see off the foxes on Middle Island. There was a lot of scepticism, and even downright opposition (some people suggested the dog would attack the penguins), but as nobody had a better idea and the penguins were almost wiped out, Oddball was dispatched to the island.
She stayed there for three weeks before swimming back to the mainland to be reunited with her master. But her presence had done the trick: the foxes had been scared off by her barking and her scent. The Preservation Project monitors saw no more fox pawprints on the island.
Two more Maremmas were trained up to take over from Oddball, and since 2006 there have been a succession of dogs. They stay on the island during the warmer months when the sandbar appears, and volunteers feed and check on them each day. They are trained to regard the penguins as their friends and the island as their own territory, barking if anything suspicious happens. They have never had to kill a fox because, since their arrival on Middle Island, the foxes have beaten a hasty retreat. But their trainers have no doubt they could and would kill a fox if they had to, just as their ancestors did to protect sheep. The population of penguins has increased to 200, and not one has been killed by a fox since the project began.
Oddball sadly died recently, but she’d reached the grand old age of 15, well above normal life expectancy for such a large breed. A children’s film was even made about her and Swampy, her owner: it was called Oddball and was popular in Australia, sparking an influx of tourists to the area. They go to meet the Maremmas that are in training and to do a tour of the island.
Buying and training dogs is expensive, and that was why the Maremma owners who met at Cotswold Farm Park were raising money. I’m pleased to say they were able to send £200 to the project as a result. It was a lovely day, with the sun shining, and the dogs and owners were able to go on the farm wildlife trail, which is where we caught up with them. A sudden shower drove us all into the café where these lovable dogs, who seemed mischievous while we were outside, settled down obediently.
I know that guardian dogs like Maremmas are used not just for sheep and goats, but for turkeys, chickens, deer and even alpacas in areas of the world where there are still predators, but I had never heard of them being used to protect penguins before. The local council, which had to be convinced reluctantly to give Oddball a chance to protect the penguins, is now talking about erecting a statue in her memory.
So that’s two types of sheepdog: the droving dogs and the guardian dogs. In the next chapter I will look at the history of the ones I am very familiar with, herding dogs.