Our Beaconsfield Boy …

We’ve got a border collie on trial at the moment. His name’s Max.

He’s a big streak of a dog with one ear up and one ear down, and at four years of age, there’s a whole lot of puppishness in there still.

You can see it in the way he gangles about. But put him around sheep and there’s an elegance in his genetics that money can’t buy. I reckon we’ll buy him … not just because of his work-ablity.

The very special thing about Max is he’s from Beaconsfield and bred by Lee Jamison, president of the three-sheep trial dog asssociation in Tasmania.

I feel a surge of pride in having a Beaconsfield-bred dog in our kennels after the world-wide media frenzy of the trapped miners … we’ve toyed with the idea of changing his name to Todd and I felt really bad housing him in a wire cage (which the kennels are made out of).

But, at least he has a proper water bowl and not a miner’s hat for a drinking vessel. Some smart-arse made the joke that he’d work well in the dark, being from Beaconsfield and all. But I can see our Max has all the qualities those amazing miner boys had … he might look like an average Joe-blow on the outside, but inside he’s one tough, smart cookie. And we love him already.