With the weather warming up it is now time to shear the sheep to help them keep cool. I have two lots of sheep, friendly ones that come when I call them and the outsiders that run away every time they see me. I am going to get all of the outsiders in, get them shorn then send them away to the sale yards. I had arranged for Troy Mcevedy to come and shear the sheep for me as it would take me too long on my own. Troy has been in to train a dog before and mentioned that he could come back and shear the sheep for me if I had no one else. By the time Troy arrived I had managed to get 25 of the friendly sheep into the yards on my own so Troy sorted them out in good time. Next day we managed to get 16 of the outsiders in with a bit of effort. Because these sheep had done a little bit of running to get in Troy said they would be easier to shear. He made it look pretty easy as he had said that he can shear a sheep in under 40 seconds. When Troy was shearing I could tell how calm he was with the animals, he knew which ways to hold them so they did not try and kick around. He explained that the most important thing is to have your feet in the right place and everything flows from there. Get that wrong and that is why people struggle with animals. When he put the hand piece into the wool it was so effortless that his hand seemed to follow the hand piece. I was very impressed.
Troy reminded me of the last time he came up, we were sitting at the hut at night having a beer when a possum started making its cackling sound in the plum tree about ten meters away. The only dog I had with me at the time was Fog. The only light we had was a 3 watt push light that I leave on the table. So we walked up to this tree and I told Fog I wanted him to grab the possum for me and with the little light in my hand I could just make out the possum about two meters out of my reach so I shook the little tree it took a couple of shakes in which time Troy’s laughter had become infectious. I don’t think the possum was having as much fun as us, as soon as he hit the ground Fog jumped on him so I could grab its tail spin it around straight onto the gate post to the hut, the possum did not know what happened. I only had to walk a couple of meters back to the chairs under the lean-to on the side of the hut. While we sat back down to have another beer I plucked the possum then gave it to Fog for his tea. The possum fur is worth about $10 per possum and I just gave my dog the cheapest best meal he would enjoy.