BEING crowned the new ‘Wool and Rural Monarch’ for Sheepvention for the next two years was a great surprise for legendary local dog trainer, Ian O’Connell, who’s still coming to terms with even being considered for the title.

“It was (an) absolute shock when they (The Spectator) contacted me,” he said.

“I didn’t believe it, I thought, ‘somebody’s playing a prank’.

“I was totally shocked, I never expected that – I’ve known all the other monarchs over the years.

“I’ve seen Daffy (David) Ryan in the first one all those years ago and I’ve seen everyone who’s won them since. I was in awe of those people and what they have done for rural Australia.”

Although better known for his kelpie training expertise, an honour such as this at a sheep show is not out of place for him, given that is what dogs are trained to work with.

“I started off as a shearer – I’ve done a lot of shearing and wool classing,” Ian said.

“I’ve done a lot of stock contract work – I’ve been around sheep my whole life.

“It’s nothing new to me, and working dogs is such an important part of it.”

Ian said he grew up on a farm south of Casterton and the difficult bush terrain that was part of the property often meant working on horseback and a heavy reliance on dogs to help with livestock.

“It wasn’t as if you had a motorbike or a ute (where) if the dog let you down or wasn’t in the right place, you could go and fix the mistakes up with a machine,” he said.

“You just relied on your dogs and right from an early stage when I was a child, I just thought - one, I was fascinated by them, but two, I just always thought that they never got the recognition that they deserve.

“What they do … the amount they help us out, and what they’ve done to the nation, and people have just taken them for granted. To me, they’ve never been treated as they should’ve been treated.”

A key motivation for Ian has been a widespread lack of knowledge on how to get the best out of dogs and years ago, he was instrumental in the formation of Casterton’s iconic Premier Australian Working Dog Auction and the Australian Kelpie Muster.

“We started that off in ’97 and it was just a one-day auction,” he said.

“I was in Apex at the time and I just came up with this idea … I thought we need to do this modern-day trade.

“You train your dogs up … it’s like kids going to school - they go to school, they go to university, and they graduate, and they go out into the big, wide world.

“We sort of did that with the dogs, and it was only a one-day event for the year.”

But within a few years, he realised “the town wasn’t getting much out of it … the people would just come there Sunday morning and leave Sunday afternoon”.

“I thought, well, we need to introduce some more days to it,” Ian said.

“So we introduced the festival on Saturday and dog schools on the Monday and Tuesday and it’s so rewarding to see the whole thing still going.”

Ian said he never wanted to see it as just a dog sale but a recognition of the kelpie “because that’s where the kelpie originated”.

“For me it should be a celebration of the kelpies – an acknowledgement of what they’ve done and also the young Irish stockman, Jack Gleeson (19th Century), that actually created the breed,” he said.

The suitability of the breed now in large areas of Victoria was evidenced recently in a report from Central Animal Records that showed it as the most popular breed in most farmland areas; even when taking into account metropolitan areas of Melbourne, the breed is the fifth most popular in the state.

“Even in the last 25 years, the kelpie has really taken over as the number one working dog,” Ian said.

“They’re a very popular breed, but that wasn’t always the case. When I was a child it would have been more border collies and cross-bred dogs than kelpies – I think now you’d be looking at more than 70 per cent.”

However, Ian said the success of the kelpie had brought him to worry less about breeding them himself and instead, on a mission to help owners get the best out of their dogs as he feared a “lack of knowledge” could undermine their training.

“I’ve travelled so far and seen so many dogs … I just want as much as I can to just help people,” he said.

He said he believed “training and working dogs is very easy” and it was more often about the handling rather than the dog.

“If it wasn’t (very easy) I wouldn’t be able to do it,” Ian said.

“We’ve got to get people to change their attitudes – it happened in horses years ago. So you’re not so much breaking horses now as working with what’s going on between the horse’s ears.

“Unfortunately, with the dogs, we’re still two centuries ago. We’re still on about breaking dogs in and getting them to submit and all about discipline, and there’s just no need.”

He said a great positive was a new generation of breeders, owners and trainers coming through that were keen to learn.

“There is a lot of young people out there now that have gone and done dog schools and got the knowledge and they are really kicking goals,” Ian said.

“They are really strong with the genetics and they are breeding terrific dogs, and they’re trying to spread the message about working in partnership with the dog – (they) don’t dominate it.

“A lot of people don’t even know what the natural instinct is in a working dog.”

A prime example Ian gave was farmers being too quick to discipline a pup for taking off after stock.

“Their natural instinct is to go to the head of an animal or go to the head of the mob to try and stop them,” he said.

“They see animals as food and because they’re a pack animal and they see you as part of their pack, they want to stop the food from escaping and bring it back to you.

“But farmers, as soon as they see a pup take off and rush out and cause havoc with their stock, they usually discipline them and right from when that happens to a young pup, the damage is starting to be done.

“People have got to expect, if they let a pup get out things aren’t going to be good, but that’s not the pup’s fault, it’s the person’s fault for letting it get out there.

“All the training and introduction to livestock should be done in a contained area, where you’ve got some control of everything. You should be trying to build that little pup’s confidence up.”

Ian has demonstrated his understanding of guiding a young kelpie’s natural instincts many times, letting an inexperienced pup have a run, even in front of a larger audience.

“I actually had one yesterday - I had a school north of Beaufort and someone came there with a pup that had not seen stock yet,” he said.

“It was about three months old – the woman that had it said, ‘no, I didn’t let it see stock until I was there’.

“We just dropped it into a small yard - like a 10-metre diameter yard with a small mob of small sheep and we just observed it. Straight away that little dog just went out around those five or six sheep, and just kept wanting to herd them back to the human within the yard.

“It was incredible and … as long as the human doesn’t do something wrong and silly to that young pup like introduce pain or fear, it’s an absolute champion in the making.

“My motto I’ve had for probably 40 years is the working dog is the most misunderstood and underutilised resource available for the livestock industry in Australia and it’s no one’s fault - it’s just that people haven’t had the knowledge.

“To have a good dog – one, we need the genetics to suit our enterprise. So work out what we’re doing: Are we working cattle? Are we working in sheds? Are working in yards? Are we working in paddocks? Then find the dog with the genetics that suits that enterprise, because they’re all different.

“And two, we’ve got to have the knowledge to know how to look after them, to know how to train them, and to know how to work them.”

With Sheepvention, Ian was thrilled with the installation of permanent yards last year for the dog trials, and explained they needed to be a specific set-up with various tests in mind.

“Every year we just had portable yards there,” he said.

“But the one at Sheepvention is a very big event … (with) its location right in the centre of the showgrounds … quite often you’ll see three or four or five hundred people watching.

“I thought we needed to do a bit better job of the yards or just improve things a bit and I approached ProWay.

“They said ‘yes’ because they wanted to get their product out there as well – they donated probably a $50,000 set of sheepyards for use at Sheepvention. So that’s amazing – this year coming up is the second year we get to use those.

“Normally when they design yards, they probably design them so you hardly even need the dogs because they understand stock flow and there’s a lot of science behind it.

“But they understood we need a set of yards where the dog has actually got to do the work to get the stock to go round (and) through them.

“They worked magnificently.”

With his new honour as Wool and Rural Monarch, Ian said his emphasis on dogs wasn’t an issue for Sheepvention.

“We talk so much about sheep and wool and beef and cattle and everything but behind the scenes, there’s working dogs that make it happen,” he said.

“It’s an amazing event. I remember when it first started, and I’ve probably been to just about every one, I think.

“When I moved to Hamilton 18 or 19 years ago, I got involved on the executive for the showgrounds and involved with Sheepvention and the trials.

“You see all these young ones that are coming through now - there’s a lot of young people from the area that are involved at the pointy end with Sheepvention and organising good things, so I’ve had my day in the sun. I’m sort of stepping back a bit, but I’ll still be involved.

“I think Sheepvention as an event is a great event – it just really depicts everything Western Victoria is known for.”

On the lighter side, Ian said he expected to cop a little bit of ribbing from friends for getting a ‘royalty’ title - something not entirely aligned with his own views on the nation’s governance.

“I will absolutely cop a lot of flak over this,” he laughed.

“I’ve been known to be a republican – I’m going to stay quiet about it (wool and rural monarch). I’m going to cop it even from my own family.”

But Ian was keen to give due credit to the personal support he’s received over the years.

“In amongst it all, I wouldn’t have achieved any of this without the huge support I’ve had from my family,” he said.

“Even with Casterton and all the trialling that I’ve done and I was state president of the Australian Yard Dog Association and all that sort of thing … and behind the scenes, my wife Kay has just been an amazing support. I wouldn’t have done any of it without her.

“She should be wearing this crown!”