But mark the dog! Despatched by a wave of the hand, he races off at full speed. He flies round the scattered sheep, keeping wide, however, and so consolidating them, until he reaches the leaders, which, directly they see him, scurry back to the centre of the flock. Returning, he walks dutifully behind, with the air of one who has fulfilled his mission. In half an hour perhaps the same performance is repeated. In the middle of the day, if warm, the flock indulges in a 'camp' by a water-hole or other suitable locality. As it feeds home to the yard, very little of the morning activity is observed. Our collie, while watchful and ready for a lightning dash at a moment's notice, walks soberly behind, evidently contented with the day's work.
As the New Zealand shepherd, a man in his best years of strength and activity, is a different man from the elderly and often feeble shepherd of Australia, so the collie of Maoriland, having to climb rock-strewn defiles, and search amid glacier plateaux and savage solitudes, for the scattered, half-wild flocks, has an air of seriousness and responsibility. There is but little frolic and gamesomeness about him. The dogs of Ettrick and Yarrow, accustomed to snow and the blasts of an iron winter, claim kinship with him. Compelled to act on his own discretion, he tracks outliers, finds and collects his flock in all weathers.
'Sirrah, ma mon, they're awa!' says James Hogg to his wonderful collie, the 'dark-grey puppy' that he bought for a pound, if I mistake not. The dog, in the drear darkness of a snowstorm, goes forth, and hours afterwards is found guarding the four hundred lost lambs, not one being missing.
So when muster-day comes, the New Zealand collie makes for the mountain peaks: on the lonely plain far above the snow-line, where in severe seasons a hundred sheep may be found dead and frozen, he beats and quarters his country, till he finds and brings down to the appointed place all the straggling lots that may have summered there.
Independently of the qualities necessary for the successful mobilisation of sheep, the collie is, perhaps, of all the sub-varieties of the canine race, the most faithful and sympathetic. Time after time has one observed the tramping shepherd or swagman and his dog. Poor and despised, 'remote, unfriended, melancholy, slow,' the forlorn wayfarer had one staunch friend—one faithful ally—that regarded not his poverty, his lowly condition, his lack of self-denial. Who has not marked the tramp asleep sub Jove at daylight, with scant shelter or covering, his watchful dog sitting near, prepared to show his teeth, or indeed do something more, at the nearer approach of the stranger? The dog of the imprisoned shepherd, immured by Sir Hugo de Pentonville for inebriety, lies stretched disconsolately before the prison gate, howling at intervals, apparently in deepest despair, betraying on the other hand the most frantic joy at his release. The railway favourite goes heavily, mourning as unmistakably as a Christian—more sincerely than some—in abstracted gloom, melancholy gait, and aimless daily search for his master, untimely slain by the remorseless Juggernaut. A hundred times has one caught the watchful eye of affection with which the collie regards his ragged owner, as if fearing to lose the least word or gesture.
And though the recipients of this unstinted devotion rarely appear to appreciate the gift so lavishly bestowed, it must be recorded, for the honour of human nature, that instances of the contrary do occur. But the other day, a lonely pilgrim, who had been ailing few weeks past, was found by the good Samaritan, cold in death, with his arm round his dog's neck. A shepherd will carry the young family of his (female) collie, born during a journey, tied in a handkerchief, at much expenditure of toil and trouble. In many an instance blood feuds, savage conflicts ending in manslaughter—suicides even—have occurred, connected with injustice, real or fancied, to the 'dawg.' 'Love me, love my dog,' is an ancient adage by no means without force in Australia. But recently a farmer deliberately shot a neighbour whom he accused, wrongfully or otherwise, of killing his dog. Prior to that occurrence a shepherd, noticed to be despondent for days past, telling one inquirer that some one had poisoned his dog, hanged himself.
Touching the price of a really good dog, it may range from two pounds to twenty—an owner often declaring that he would not part with his dog for the last-named sum. Within the present month, indeed, two legal processes, to the writer's knowledge, have been put in force in the collie interest. In one case £10 was sued for as being the value of a cattle dog, alleged to have been illegally poisoned. The other was nothing less than a 'Search-warrant for stolen goods and chattels,' commanding the Sergeant of Police and all constables of Bundabah to make diligent search, in the daytime, at the residence of the man referred to, whose name is not known, but who can be identified, for the said black collie slut, named in the information as 'feloniously stolen, taken, and carried away as aforesaid, and if you find the same, that you secure the said black collie slut, and bring the person in whose custody you find the same before me, or some other justice of the peace.—(Signed) John Jones, J.P.'
At the annual pastoral and agricultural shows, the trial of sheep dogs has never-failing interest for the spectators. Most curious is it to note the gravity with which each competing collie essays to drive three wildish paddocked sheep into a very small fold of hurdles.
The free exhibition of strychnine, rendered necessary by the incursions of the dingo, and, 'sorrow it were and shame to tell,' by the increase of foxes, has led to the death of many a valued collie. But good animals are now carefully looked after. Greater attention is paid to breeding. Dogs of the best strains are annually imported. And as the ranks of Australian collies are thus recruited with pure blood and high-class animals, it is not too much to assert, that as a stock dog, our Australian collie is not inferior to his British ancestors, while he may claim even a wider range of accomplishments and experience.