Sheepmen and their dogs

Press, Volume CXII, Issue 32880, 1 April 1972, Page 10

Sheepmen and their dogs

Ten Thousand -Dogs. By Peter Newton. Reed. 167 pp. Index. Glossary. To the man of the New Zealand highcountry there is only one sort of dog worth considering—a working dog. Heading dog or huntaway, beardy or smooth-coated, strong-eyed or plaineyed; if he goes when his master says “Go!” and stays when his master says “Stay” (often the directives are more highly-coloured ones), then he is in the team, bound to his master and his fellow team-members for the term of his working life. Queen, Roy, Rowdy, Rogue, Smoke, Speed, Fleet, Cloud, Gleam, Laddie, Tip, Jet, Joy; a working dog's name may stem from a characteristic or an incident, from his appearance or some memory in his master’s past—perhaps another dog—and it is often the one fanciful note in the dog’s unrelentingly rigorous life. It is of this mountain mystique, the closed world of sheepmen and their treasured dogs, that Peter Newton writes in this, his seventh book, bringing to life musters of long ago and the men and dogs that ran them. In his 50 years as a sheepman, dogtrial competitor and judge, the author has known literally thousands of dogs and through his strong no-nonsense prose we meet some of them. There is Bill Hardie's huntaway bitch Smut, who worked all day on the Ss above the Rahgitata, and own to anyone, dropped a litter as she went; Doon, a little yellow huntaway owned by Bob Mackay, head shepherd at St James station, who was never among the greats but who had one good attribute, he could go—- " Almost howling with eagerness, he went like a bat out of hell, regardless of the going ... he’d do 50 yards over the sheeps’ backs before Bob could get his breath again.” And Newton’s own dog Cloud, who with the help of a sly sandwich or two and an unexpected pat, put in such an uncharacteristically good day's work that Newton was able to exchange the unsuspecting dog for a better one called Queen. The book has been written for “dog men,” In their idiom, but for the benefit of laymen the author provides a glossary that goes part of the way towards decoding the dog men’s private language, and a summary of dog trial classes and categories supported by diagrams. It is obvious that dog trials play an important part in the lives of sheepmen and proof of their popularity is the fact that there are 180 dog trial dubs in this country; at last year's Methven trials for example there were 390 entries in the four standard events. Newton points out that the plaudits at a trial come only for a good performance—“ Every man, regardless of his station in life, is as good as the dog he has trained, and the men we meet in this book, dedicated enthusiasts to a num, are as colourful as their dogs, and we owe a debt of gratitude to Peter Newton, now living in semi-retirement in Rangiora, for mustering them all together.

In 1970, the University of Amsterdam took the lead over the rest of Western Europe in establishing a chair of minor sexology. The Winter 1971-72 issue of fVo]. 14, No. 4), the "review of arts, life, and thought in the Netherlands,” devotes a considerable amount of space to a highly interesting article by the first incumbent of the chair, entitled "Medicine and Morality: The Doctor in the Shadow of Taboos.” Other articles of particular interest are “Radical Criticism of Contemporary Society: Its Nature and Possibilities,” and "Substance and Shadow: The Painter Hannes Postma.”