People's Pilot, Volume 6, Number 35, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 18 February 1897 — A Dog Story. [ARTICLE]

A Dog Story.

Our annual sheep and cattle show has lately been held here. It is the biggest gathering of the kind in New Zealand, and this year a record was established, there being over 20,000 visitors. In this crowd a friend of mine missed his dog, a Scotch collie, named Mike, with whose help some prize sheep from the “Meadowbank” estate had been brought to the show grounds and penned there. Not being able to find the dog, my friend concluded that he had gone to the house where he had been the night before, but upon inquiry found that Mike had not done so. Upon returning to the show grounds he found the dog watching one of the Meadowbank sheep that had jumped out of the pen; he took no notice whatever of other sheep which were being moved about the grounds, but stuck faithfully to the one truant, which he evidently considered under his care, until relieved of his self-imposed charge by the welcome arrival of his master, who, with Mike’s help, soon had the wanderer back in the fold again. I afterward heard that some one had tried to help Mike recapture the sheep, but the dog resented his interference and drove the sheep away from the pens in order to show that he took no orders from any one but his own master —London Spectator.