This, is as some of you will already know, is the wonderfully handsome and gentle old doggie Thorn. He is a red Kelpie; although most of us in Australia are used to the fine featured kelpies the big reds were used in Australia for sheep herding up until the 1920's...

I think it was the extreme heat here which made it so that the thinner and finer kelpies were then favoured for sheepherding and these big red ones just got to live the life of Riley which they thoroughly deserved.

Thorn showed his true gentlemanly nature the other day when the plumber was here for a day (you do not want to know why!) and bought his little fine featured female - and young - red kelpie called "Wuss" with him.

For you furriners to be called a 'wuss' here is a bit of a putdown but done in an affectionate way. Wuss means to be a big sook but a tolerable sook.

So Thorn and Wuss gambolled round our paddock. he even let her eat his dried food!!!

When I threw the tennis ball he wasn't even in the race to catch it, so finally I just gave it to him while she danced around him like a sweet young thing.

You know what he did when he finally got the ball?


No he didn't chew it to bits. No he didn't bring it back as he should have. No he didn;t stand on top of it, look me in the eye and piss all over it!


He took it over to her and put it down between her paws reverentially. She just picked it up without a backwards glance and skipped lightly away with it.

He sure is a lovely doggie but I think she broke his big old heart.