Heart of the Nation: Ceduna 5690

LOUIE the Jack Russell is a bit of a legend around Ceduna.

dog

LOUIE the Jack Russell is a bit of a legend around Ceduna.

He's the adored pet of Mike Nicholls and his family, who farm 3600ha north of town. A few years ago, Louie went walkabout on a Thursday and didn't return. They searched in vain for days, and on the Tuesday there was bad news: a team patrolling the Dingo Fence, 60km away, had found a Jack Russell caught in the steel jaws of a dingo trap. They'd assumed he was a stray - he'd lost his collar - and smashed him over the head with a shovel, then tossed his body onto the heap of decomposing dingoes next to the trap.

Nicholls was devastated. "But I thought, I'll bring him home and at least we can give him a decent burial." So he drove out there and found Louie's stinking, emaciated frame, which had lain on that pile of dead dingoes for three days. He stood quietly for a minute, composing himself. Then suddenly Louie's tail gave a single, weary thump. "I blinked - I thought I was seeing things," says Nicholls, 44, pictured with Louie in an image from the new book Working Dogs. He raced to a nearby farmhouse for water. "I still didn't expect him to survive," he says. "I thought he'd die in my arms." But Louie did survive: he spent five months in his basket at home, barely moving, and slowly came back to life.

Then he got shot. It was an accident. Nicholls' son Monty, six, had been begging to try the shotgun, so they went into the yard with a .410 and Nicholls fired at a saltbush. As he reloaded, Louie wandered unseen into the bush, thinking he'd bagged a rabbit. Then Monty took aim at the bush and fired. Louie copped a dozen pellets and emerged "pissing blood and howling".

He survived that, too. In fact, he's survived to old age - he's 13 now, semi-retired, and basking in his reputation. To locals he's no longer plain old Louie. He's Lucky Louie.

Working Dogs by Andrew Chapman and Melanie Faith Dove is out now (The Five Mile Press, $39.95)