THE owner of Queensland's top working dog says his team of canines are invaluable to the successful running of his family's Mackay region cattle operation.
Sam Wright runs about 2500 to 3000 Brahman cross breeders and replacement cattle on his family's 32,375 hectare breeder block, Mount Spencer, out of Nebo.
They also lease a block on the Mount Coolon Road about an hour from Nebo, where they run a couple of thousand steers.
The cattle are now predominantly bred for the live export market and feedlots, the family having made the shift from finishing them locally and sending to the meatworks about five or six years ago.
Mr Wright, who manages the cattle side of his family's beef and cropping enterprise, said good working dogs were critical to the business.
His four-year-old kelpie Bonnie, has more than proven her worth after being named runner up in the 2019 Cobber Challenge, a national working dog contest.
Mr Wright has a team of about 16 working dogs and has had Bonnie since she was five months old.
He said she didn't immediately show the skills that earned her the title as Queensland's best, but started hitting her straps at about 18 months.
"They are very critical, we don't have anywhere near as many staff to look after the cattle side of things," Mr Wright said.
"We used to have about three to four stock people, including myself. At the moment it is only me, and we use casuals when we need to but the dogs do the work of three or four other people.
"We have 16 dogs and I treat it like a rugby team almost, we always have a spare dog or someone on the bench if a dog gets tired or sore footed, or a pup needs more work, we rotate around a bit."
But Bonnie is always right in the thick of the action.
"She really started hitting her straps after about 18 months, she goes to work nearly every day, is never tired or sore, she's durable and goes pretty much all day every day."
Mr Wright decided to enter Bonnie in the challenge as it came during a month of intense work.
The challenge involved the dog being fitted with a tracking collar and monitored for its work on the land.
Despite being up against dogs working in cooler climates, Bonnie finished up in second position out of 11, having covered 580.1 km in 78h 34m 47s active hours spread across 21 days.
Bonnie was only eclipsed by South Australian border collie Jed, who ran further than any other dog in the competition's history covering 717km, the equivalent to 17 full marathons, over the three weeks.
However, Bonnie edged Jed out with her speed, averaging 7.38km/h to his 6.85km/h.
Mr Wright said he knew Bonnie was a hard worker but he was surprised at how she went.
"She went 21 days without a break and was as keen to go on the last day as she was one day one, so I think she does pretty well.
"I was really surprised to see the kilometres Bonnie did on the days we were drafting and shifting mobs around the smaller holding paddocks compared to the longer days mustering in the larger paddocks."
