Sound planning for working dog purchases

The Queensland breeder highlighted the need to buy dogs young and to invest time in training, given demand was outstripping supply for older dogs.

Mr Austin runs Working Kelpies of Kirkcaldy, Crows Nest, and has been fielding five to 10 phone calls a week from farmers seeking two- and three-year-old dogs, as they were hard to find.

Some prospective buyers were still trying to find dogs more than six months after they started looking.

However, he suggested the time spent looking could be spent in training a young dog.

Mr Austin, who has been breeding Kelpies for nearly 40 years, said the best working dogs would always be those purchased at a younger age.

“When buying them from a younger age, they are going to learn your environment more easily,” he said.

Cowra breeder Steve Weyman, “Ideal Acres”, had also felt the shortage of trained dogs.

He said farmers would either have to be prepared to pay a lot of money for the best older dogs, or purchase them as a younger dog and train them.

“I find personally that the only way I get a very good worker is to train them up myself,” he said.

He said while a lot of time does need to be invested into training up a pup, the benefits for both the dog and the farmer were excellent.

Mr Weyman said most of buyers he knew of were looking for older, broken-in dogs which were not always available given the high demand, but also the length of time it took to train them up.