Yalyalup dog named finalist in prestigious National working dog competition

A Yalyalup working dog has been named as Western Australia’s sole finalist in the 2024 Cobber Challenge — a search for the hardest working pups in the nation. Cruiser, a six-year-old Kelpie, works on James Carr’s property helping managing sheep and other farms around the area. For the competition, he will be tracked by a GPS for the next two weeks to record the distance, speed and duration he works at. Cruiser is in for some ruff competition, however, as he will be compared to seven other work dogs from around the country. Mr Carr said he was thrilled to see Cruiser on the big stage and believed his dog’s talent shone early. “I got him at eight weeks old and the first time he ever saw sheep he was just a very switched on pup and extremely easy to work with from a young age,” he said. “You can see his natural ability was higher than a lot of other dogs, so he really was an easy dog to train for me. “Probably by the time he was six months old he was doing everything on command.” The Cobber Challenge is an annual contest which sees a selection of working dogs go head-to-head to celebrate their contribution to Australia’s agriculture and farming communities. It hasn’t been a simple journey for Cruiser, who broke his leg when he was two and had to go through an almost year-long rehabilitation before he could get back to work. Mr Carr said his life and work has been made easier since Cruiser joined the team. “He’s smart in everything he does, you only have to teach him things once and he remembers it,” he said. “You can put him in any scenario ... from sheep on the side of the road from someone else’s property, he puts them back into a hold that he’s never seen before ... to swimming sheep across creeks. “I call him a freak, he’s made my life very easy for the last six years.” Mr Carr also works as a kelpie stud trainer at his Shimmy Downs Kelpies business, available to all working dog breeds including “city dogs”. Cruiser helps show people how their dogs can behave, and how well working breeds with an eye of pleasing their owners respond to structure, training and letting off sheep-chasing steam.