Chapter 8: Baits, roos and guns…and other ways Schultzy might die.

On guard. For anything - anytime, anywhere.

I was still concerned about the dingo fence, but less so after ringing the council. Craig, the Invasive Pests guy I spoke to, said they no longer did aerial drops of 1080 baits in our area. Instead they encouraged landowners to come in and pick up baited meat chunks from the council when they periodically had a baiting campaign. I had a vision of pop-up 1080 stalls, customers lined up to collect their poisoned meat, smiling and chatting with The Evil Butcher about the weather…and death. It seemed a primitive practice and I knew I wouldn’t be joining the queue. I asked Craig if he could assure me that no baits would be dropped along our fence line without our knowledge. I really wanted him to say, ‘I promise, Kate’. He didn’t, but he did suggest I keep an eye out for any notices about baiting.

I wasn’t so much worried about our Kelpie, Goose. She’s never more than a few metres away from me, partly because she has Rescue Dog Devotion Syndrome, and partly because I do most of the cooking and like most Kelpies – she is obsessed with food. Schultzy the Schnauzer, however, is a different story.

Having only ever owned Kelpies before getting Schultz, I thought all dogs were trainable. I used to look at yappy, disobedient dogs with disdain and think: That dog needs training; why doesn’t the owner do something about it? I don’t think that way anymore because I now think there are some dogs that are untrainable. (And Jen, if you’re reading this, I know you are going to say there are no untrainable dogs, only slack owners…or something like that.)

I remember the breeder saying to me when we picked Schultzy up: ‘Boy oh boy, are you guys in for some times, ja?’. I’d smiled dreamily and nuzzled my face into Schultzy’s adorable puppy neck. By ‘times’, I’d assumed she meant ‘good’ and of course there have been many, many good times and we love him to bits, but I have never met a dog so determinedly disobedient and unrepentant. He has caused more tears, more frustration, more embarrassment, more fury than all of the dogs I’ve owned put together. Despite what some think, he’s not stupid. He learnt how to fetch the Saturday paper from the front lawn within seconds, but do you think he’ll come when he’s called? Even when treats are involved, if he doesn’t want to do something, he just doesn’t. Sometimes he doesn’t comply, even when he does want to do something, out of sheer bloody-mindedness, like getting in the car to go for a walk. He’ll stand a few metres away from the car and give a penetrating stare and (I’m sure) be thinking: When she’s juuuuust about to snap, I’ll jump in.

He’s also very impulsive, and once he gets an idea into his head, he is deaf and blind to any command. He quickly discovered the joy of chasing kangaroos. Usually, he loses them pretty quickly but one time, he bailed up a large male kangaroo along the dingo fence. I don’t know what he thought he was going to do with this clearly antagonised and much larger animal. As soon as I realised my yelling was having no effect, I grabbed the broom and ran down after him. The kangaroo was bouncing on his back legs, paws (fists) up at muscly chest height, eyes fixed on Schultzy, nostrils flared. (He also had the most enormous erection which was a bit distracting.)

Schultzy kept barking, barking, barking. I tried pushing him away with the broom, but he kept dodging me and I didn’t want to get too close to the kangaroo. Smash came running over too and threw a rock at Schultzy which distracted him for a nanosecond, then he was back to barking. The kangaroo started moving towards us, bounce bounce, edging closer. I envisaged Schultzy’s belly ripped open, never hearing him bark again. Smash was frantic – he adores that dog – he was screaming at Schultzy, chucking anything he could find on the ground at him. I swung the broom and whacked Schultz on his chest; he moved back a bit, circled the kangaroo, made a dash to the left. Smash lunged for him, tripped over another bloody rock and went down, hard. He yelled out an obscenity that echoed off the granite boulders, then rolled over, clutching his chest, saying, ‘Jesus’ in a wheezy, tortured way. Schultzy, finely tuned to his beloved master’s distress, took off after the kangaroo along the fence line, yaps getting fainter as he got further away. I gave up on worrying about the dog’s disembowelment and concentrated on Smash.

He was in a lot of pain. His face looked grey; he couldn’t speak, couldn’t move. I wondered if he’d had a heart attack. We were stuck out in the middle of a field about one hundred metres from the car. I did some ineffectual back patting and asked if there was any pain in his chest?

He nodded, and swore again.

I suggested I take him to the Stanthorpe Hospital, as a precautionary measure.

Smash hates hospitals. No one really loves them, but he can’t stand even visiting someone in a hospital. He spent a lot of his childhood in one due to falling into a vat of boiling water as a kiddy, plus there were the motorbike accidents. He’d also worked as a nurse’s aide for a while in his youth and one or all of these things has embedded a tremendous aversion.

I suggested I get the car, more as something to do other than stand around watching him writhe in pain. Smash stopped writhing and said he’d be right, just to give him a minute to get his breath. When he was able to stand, I helped him back to the camp and got him a stiff drink. He was worried about Schultzy, wanted to go and search for him in the car, then when he couldn’t stand, he wanted me to go and search for him. Seriously, the dog does not deserve him. I got Smash some Panadol and headed off in the same direction Schultzy and the kangaroo had taken. After a few minutes I saw him trotting jauntily along the track towards me, ears up, tail wagging – very pleased with himself. I opened the door and he jumped up across my lap to take up his usual spot at the passenger seat window. He’d had a marvellous time and showed no sign of remorse, even when I told him he was a dickhead.

Turned out, Smash had a fractured rib – very painful. As painful as kidney stones and childbirth his doctor told him. Smash seemed quite proud of this comparison, despite never having experienced either.  

So anyway, the point of all this is, Schultzy is a handful. That is just one instance of his disobedience and stubborn wilfulness and there have been many – thousands of times when he has brought forth that exhausting combination of fear and anger in us. It’s who he is, and I honestly believe nothing will change him. Which is why I worried about the dingo fence and the possibility of baits. Even if we didn’t lay baits, our neighbour, a sheep farmer might. I didn’t trust Schultzy not to take himself off exploring, following his nose to something stinky. On top of that, he also liked chasing sheep. There is a section of fence missing between us and our neighbour, Jim. Flocks of twenty or thirty sheep are regular visitors to our dams along with the five or so resident rogue sheep that rustle around in the undergrowth on the hill. The sheep were on our land, so technically, we could do what we liked with them, but I didn’t want them harassed. Schultzy would pick out a particular sheep and chase it until it was exhausted and fell over. He never bit the sheep, just stood next to it, barking, barking, barking. I don’t like tying a dog up, but in this instance I did. It seemed like he knew he was in trouble. He sulked, chin resting on front paws, eyebrows twitching when we walked past. He cried, he whined, he made sad, repentant noises. We kept him on the lead for an hour, then let him off, with a stern lecture to never, ever, ever, ever chase the sheep again. He took off in a flash toward the flock.

I got in the car and followed him. Apart from the welfare of the sheep, I was worried Jim might take it into his head to shoot Schultzy. No one likes a dog that chases sheep for the fun of it. I followed the sound of barking and found Schultzy over on the western side of the block, this time, with a lamb, standing over it and barking. I caught him and put him in the car then went back to the lamb which had given up and lain down, cloven hooves neatly tucked to one side. It allowed me to pick it up, so I carried it to the fence line and pushed it off toward the rest of the flock, hoping it would find its mother. When I got back to the car, Schultzy was exhausted, worn out from all his chasing. I stared into his dark little eyes, wondering if he had any idea how irritating he was. He blinked twice, then lowered his lids for a nap.

So, the system we have devised is to give Schultzy a big walk in the morning, then if we see kangaroos or wallabies by the dam, we distract him until they move on. If the flock of sheep wander in, we tie him up until they’ve all passed. If he heads off into the bush with a determined skip in his step, we call him and if he comes back, he gets a treat. It’s not ideal, and it definitely isn’t the ‘roaming wild and free’ vibe we were going for, but so far, it has stopped him from getting himself killed.

Our good girl Goosie. Keeping an eye on me while everyone else sleeps.