In my previous post, it was 2:30pm and the heat was relentless. I still had to go to work. Readying myself to suffer through another scorching shift, I headed for the work ute. And then, at 3pm, the weather changed.
The sky turned dark. The wind picked up even more and turned cold, the rain close behind. Heavy drops splattered across my back. I ran for the ute, Sparkie behind me. The first roll of thunder came just after I closed the door.
The rain poured down. The windscreen wipers were barely able to keep up as we drove to the cowshed. Five minutes later, though, the rain stopped. The sky lightened. Daddy got on the motorbike, Sparkie and me on behind, and headed down to the paddock to bring the cows in. The rain had forced the temperature down, and both Sparkie and me were keen to work. And then the next band of rain arrived. I wasn’t even wearing a jacket, and my jeans and t-shirt were quickly soaked through. Water dripped off the peak of my cap – a hat better suited to the hot weather I was expecting. Thunder rumbled in front of us, and then rolled around the back, spooking Sparkie. She’s better about storms than she used to be, but the unpredictable movement of the sound made her nervous. The cows weren’t moving towards the gate anymore, too interested in staying dry under the trees. I deployed Sparkie from the back of the motorbike, giving her the command to chase the cows. To my surprise, once on the ground, she ignored the pouring rain and the thunder, going straight into chase mode. The cows moved fast once they saw her approaching.
Sparkie’s a heading dog – she has no interest in nipping their heels. She goes straight for the head. At Beerajondo, when Sparkie was about 18 months old, she would pick out one slow moving cow and go for the head constantly, barking, cutting the cow off whichever direction it tried to move in. Now, she’s six years old and her brain’s matured. She uses a combination of eye and heading to control the herd. If a cow stops, looking back at her, Sparkie will lower her head, stepping slowly forward, her gaze fixed on the cow. On my command, she’ll run in, straight for the nose, skidding and turning aside when the cow looks away. She doesn’t bark so often now. Just the sudden lunge is usually enough to get the cows moving. Tess is a heeler, going in low on the ankle to nip. She’d rush in, low, snap quick and then duck as she scooted back to avoid the resulting kick. Sparkie only tried it once, back at Beerajondo, but her instinct only drove her to bite, not where or how. So she rushed in and nipped the udder. I quickly put an end to that, so now Sparkie doesn’t bite the cows at all. These cows are a mix of Jersey and Friesian – not the cranky beef types of Beerajondo – so the rough approach isn’t needed. Tess has to be muzzled to protect the cows.
So by the time we got the cows in, both Sparkie and me were soaked. It was alright for Daddy, he was wearing a waterproof jacket and waterproof pants. At least the wind had dropped between the showers. I stopped off at the house on the way back to the cowshed and changed into dry clothes before we went to milk. I also grabbed a jacket. At the shed, Sparkie got towel dried and sent to her mat. “That’s Victoria for you,” said Les, one of the other farm workers, “If you don’t like the weather, just wait five minutes. It’ll change.”
Today is a much cooler day, sunny and breezy.