What more can we say!
Belgian Shepherds are a Herding breed and like all herding dogs, even those born and bred in the city, they have an innate instinct for working sheep, cattle and even ducks.
Nestled in the pretty rolling hills of Welshpool, South Gippsland, Victoria is Beloka Kelpie Stud. A working farm owned and run by Paul Macphail and his partner. Paul has been breeding and training dogs since 1992 and Beloka kelpies are well known in Australia and have been sold all over the world.
In addition to training serious, on-the-farm working dogs, Beloka offers herding training for what they fondly refer to as "city slickers" or in our case "the fluffies". We have attended a few City Slicker weekends and boy do Eski and Mojo love it! It is the most amazing thing to see your dog thinking and then 'click' into knowing what they need to do. Of course there's some training involved (mostly for us humans!!) but for Eski who was a shy girl initially, the independence of "working" and tapping into her natural drive to chase....oh I mean herd the sheep was the best thing we've ever done for her.
It's a bit of a drive to Welshpool from Melbourne but Beloka offer the option of camping on their property if you are attending a workshop. So that's what we did. When I say camp, well I slept in the back of my SUV with both dogs. Let's just say that after running around a paddock with sheep it was a little smelly being squashed in the car with 2 dogs, but at least it was warm and all that fresh air and fun quickly helped me nod off to sleep.
If you want to see some real working dogs in action there's plenty of kelpies around to show the city slickers how it is all done. Even tiny puppies! Beloka also hold Working Dog Trials over the Easter and Melbourne Cup weekends - both wonderful events. Check them out if you can.
After a hard days herding the dogs adore a cool down at the beach in Port Welshpool. It's a lovely dog-friendly beach and only a 5 minute drive from the farm. All in all a top weekend away for working dogs, even 'the fluffies'.
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