The stockman behind "Campaspe Working Dogs" - Tully Williams
Tully Williams has been training dogs since he was twelve years old (over 30 years), and competing in sheep dog trials since he was fifteen. He has owned and trained many hundreds of dogs (not counting litters of pups), from various breeders and bloodlines, mostly border collies but including many kelpies.
He studied for the Advanced Diploma of Applied Science (Farm Management) at Glenormiston Agricultural College, and has spent many years working on large station properties handling sheep and cattle, before a back injury sustained in a fall from a horse while mustering in steep, rocky country put an end to his large scale farming career, but he retains a strong comittment to breeding the “real genius back into the all-round working dog”.
His main interests are dogs, horses, stock, and farming, and his great passion is working stock off a horse in rough hill country, with a good dog or two. The rougher and more broken the country, the bigger the paddocks, the more timber and rocks, the more hills and gullys and creeks, the wilder the stock, and the better the dogs, the more he likes it.
Tully served 7 years on the council of the Victorian Working Sheep Dog Association (VWSDA), being the youngest member ever to be elected to the council as a teenager, and was on the Open Judging Panel, before retiring in disgust at the direction sheep dog trials were taking (and it has continued to worsen since).
More recently he was a founding member, Vice President, and Judge, of the AUSDS (the Australian Utility Stock Dog Society), a society established with the aim of “fostering excellence in breeding practical utility stock dogs”, through the running of well-designed trials and a redesigned judging system (along the lines of discussed in Tully’s book “Working Sheep Dogs”).
In 2020 he was made a Life Member of the AUSDS.
He considers most sheep dog trials to be detrimental to the breeding of good dogs.
He is the author of a comprehensive and ground-breaking book on sheep dogs – ‘Working Sheep Dogs – A practical guide to breeding, training and handling’, published by Landlinks Publishing (CSIRO).
He has also published a book titled “Ultimate Farming – For maximum productivity and profit naturally”.
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