Ken Connley and the dog he couldn’t bear to part with

HUSKY was “the best bloody dog I ever had”, says mountain cattleman Ken Connley.

Mountain man: Ken Connley - with Husky on the mantelpiece. Picture: David Darcy

HUSKY was “the best bloody dog I ever had”, says mountain cattleman Ken Connley.

Boy, did they have some good times together. When his four kids were little they’d ride the ever-obliging mongrel; and when it came to catching brumbies in Victoria’s High Country - Connley’s lifelong passion - there was no finer offsider. Husky had a sixth sense for the chase; he’d go miles ahead, sniff out the brumbies in the thick scrub, then lead your horse to the spot. “It was like he was talking to you,” Connley marvels. He loved that dog. He loved him so much that when he died he had him stuffed and put him on the mantelpiece.

It makes sense, the way he tells it. “I was so upset I couldn’t talk for days. I was going to bury him at a spot in the yard where he’d always sit in the sun. I got the shovel out - then I thought, ‘Bugger it, I can’t bury him. I’ll have him stuffed, and that way he can stay with me for the rest of my life’,” says Connley, pictured in a shot from David Darcy’s book Every Man & His Dog. (The horse’s head on the wall? That’s the much-missed Ace.)

Connley, who was Jack Thompson’s stunt double in The Man From Snowy River, is 67 and a grandfather now, but he still goes out catching brumbies whenever he can get away from his farms around Benambra. “It’s the best sport I know,” he says.

It’s been 16 years since Husky died, and in sentimental moments Connley still takes him out to that sunny spot in the yard, with a cup of tea, to sit and think. “I’ll give him a pat, show him the view,” says the tough mountain man, sounding a little choked. Death hasn’t stopped all the fun, though. “I took him to the Melbourne Cup a few years ago,” Connley continues. “They wouldn’t let him in at first - they said, “Sorry, no dogs”. But it turned out there wasn’t a rule against stuffed dogs...”