Janet Hubbard with Belle and Peach, who enjoy rounding up snakes in summer. “It's not what I expected.”
Versatility in a dog is always welcomed on a farm and usually found, but when Peach the cockalier landed at Flowerdale seven years ago, she possibly overstepped the mark for owner Janet Hubbard.
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Janet had Peach flown down from Queensland after a chance encounter with a puppy of the same crossbreed some time earlier, finding the attraction too irresistible.
“The only place my daughter could find a cockalier was in Queensland,” Janet said.
However, when Peach started adapting to the rural lifestyle, it caught Janet unaware, as the four-legged friend took to developing an expertise in catching snakes.
“The Cavalier King Charles spaniel is supposed to be a lap dog and the cocker spaniel is a retriever, and she is certainly now a farm dog.
“But I don’t know why she’s become a hunter.”
“She can be sudden death and we have a terrible problem because she has taken to snakes, and we have had her to the vets about three or four times.”
Peach loves sniffing around in Janet Hubbard's garden, being anything but an indoor dog.
Janet once encountered Peach cornering a brown snake which was coiled up, its head ready to strike, before husband Terry intervened.
“Once she gets on to one, there’s no stopping.
“It was not what I expected when I got her.”
The couple is leaving their 830 hectares and moving to Kilsyth while their son takes over the reins of the family’s grazing property.
Amongst all the packed boxes and dug-up iris bulbs, Peach is making the most of her final days there with Belle the kelpie, who is just as active.
However, when it comes to snakes, Belle is more of an accomplice.
“Oh, she sure joins in, but she never initiates it.”
Belle also arrived seven years ago through the couple’s daughter, from a dog trainer.
“She needed a home and was apparently halfway through her training,” Janet said.
“But she’s extremely well-trained.
“She follows Terry everywhere, she goes on the tractor, she loves going outside and when she’s in the garden she runs up and down.”
The move to a property less than two hectares in size at Kilsyth will hopefully still provide enough room for both dogs to run free. Janet has already bought a large cubby house for a luxury kennel.
Janet is hoping for less snakes and thinks the right distraction may well be at hand.
“In Kilsyth, there’s rabbits everywhere!”
Belle supposedly came 'half-trained' to the Hubbard's property but has produced the goods with obedience and enthusiasm.
