When Euroa farmer and renowned kelpie breeder James Fowler travels home from dog trials with his daughter, Lily, there is no shortage of topics to talk about in the ute.
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Like, how Lily, 17, sometimes is higher placed in the open competitions than her kelpie breeder and trainer father.
“Sometimes she’s ahead, and sometimes I am,” concedes James, who points out that she is one of the younger competitors at Victorian yard dog events.
Lily, a Goulburn Valley Grammar School student, loves working sheep with her favourite dog, Roxy; a kelpie with a laser-like focus on the sheep when she’s working the yard.
Lily’s farming family has always had sheep and kelpies so she feels like she was born into the business.
Roxy is a mature-aged black and tan bitch, but “a little bit crazy”.
“She likes barking at the sheep.”
“When she is really excited, she does this little bark. No-one else does it.
“And when she gets excited, she speaks to me.”
Roxy loves to work.
“After she’s been going all day, she sits down, has a bowl of water and then has this big smile on her face. It’s just the way she looks at you.”
Lily started competing in dog trials about two years ago.
“Dad has been doing it for a while, and I would often go out with him.”
Now Lily spends up to an hour every evening after school, practising with Roxy and her other kelpie dogs, Zena and Duke.
Lily and Roxy competed at the Bendigo Sheep and Wool Show Central Victorian Utility Yard Dog competition and she was placed in the top 20 in the open section.
Dad didn’t make the cut.
Roxy up close with the Merinos.
Lily is in Year 11 and intends to eventually find a job in agriculture, preferably working outside.
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