Even today, more than 80,000 working dogs are out in Australia’s farmlands, getting the mustering done at remarkably low cost. They will be ready for work today. They don’t need penalty rates.

Dogs are so integral to our cultural DNA that they seem to be inserted into every second advertisement on TV. So many households have dogs — about 40 per cent — that they appear in ads for products that have nothing to with them. Cars, toilet paper and insurance spring to mind.

To encapsulate why we have not just a bond with them but a debt to the dogs that helped build this country, I offer a passage from a book entitled Eminent Dogs, Dangerous Men (1991), by an American writer, Donald McCaig, who is also a sheepdog trainer: “Before I got in the car, I spoke to the judge. She said, ‘Yesterday, when that dog of yours seemed to be stopping short on the outrun, he wasn’t short. He was correct. The sheep were facing him, and if you hadn’t shouted him on, they would have lifted nice and easy’.

“Oh.

“It was raining pretty hard by the time we hit the interstate. Rain drummed on the roof of the car, and Pip lay on the front seat, his head turned to the door.

“Better luck next time,” I said.

“Pip was so mad he wouldn’t look at me. He wouldn’t meet my eyes for three days.”

If you’re going to have a dog, you have to be all in. Not neurotically so, not obsessively, but seriously. A dog is a member of the family. It sees itself as an integral part of the unit.

When you pack your bags, a dog never knows if you’re ever coming back. When you go out the front door, dogs can only guess if and when you will return. They do guess, and at a certain hour they are usually positioned, waiting, expectant.

I would vote for a border collie on the coat of arms. The greatest dog I ever met was Clyde, a border collie, like Pip. He won multiple sheepdog trial championships, one of the finest working dogs this country has produced. Clyde was raised and trained by Greg Prince, Australia’s most successful working dog trainer and breeder.

Greg and Clyde won their first national championship as a team in 1995, in dramatic style, when the sheep charged the dog on the bridge obstacle. Clyde did not flinch. He chested the first merino, then “snouted” her — bit the big ewe on the nose. He lost no points for that.

At British trials, dogs are not allowed to bite but, in Australia, merinos are bigger than European sheep and may not see a dog for weeks. So tougher measures are needed, and allowed, at trials.

“An Australian dog is allowed to stand up for itself,” Prince told me.

In 1998, at the national trials, I saw Clyde become the first and only dog to complete the treble of the NSW, Queensland and National Championships.

I wrote at the time: “Clyde was the most wolf-like of the final eight dogs, but also the most relaxed. Greg likes what he calls ‘kind dogs’ and Clyde was a mixture of kindness and presence. His great strength is his eye, which allows him to keep his distance from the sheep but lift them with his gaze ... “With the championship on the line, and the sheep immobile outside the final obstacle, Clyde sat down and waited ... (Then) he pushed them back by simply raising his body.”

After Clyde won the championship, I walked back to Greg’s camp with him. Clyde was still panting from the effort. He gulped water from his bowl, then boarded the truck for the long drive home to Dubbo. The next morning, the national champion would be ready to work.