166. Tony Whitehead

<p>Tony Whitehead is 90 years old, still on the block he&#39;s held since he was a child, and still letting sheep out at trials across NSW and Victoria. This one&#39;s a sit-down with a bloke who&#39;s seen more of the working dog world from the yards than most of us will ever see from the arena.</p><p>Tony grew up at Urana in the NSW Riverina, was a jackaroo on Tubbo Station on the Murrumbidgee during the 1956 floods, spent four years as a ringer north of Winton in Western Queensland, and tossed a coin to decide between coming home and getting his pilot&#39;s licence in Cairns. He&#39;s carted grain, built tunnels at the Williamstown naval dockyard, owned a £35 racehorse that won 22 races, and came to sheepdog trials in his sixties because his wife reckoned he&#39;d work himself to death on the farm otherwise.</p><p>What you&#39;ll hear:</p><ul><li>Life on a Riverina station in the 1950s, with two full-time rabbiters running 30 dogs each</li><li>How Tony went from helping in the yards at the Supremes to trialling his own dogs, and the dogs that got him there: Hamish, Horace and Bear</li><li>The put-away dog he refused to sell, no matter the money</li><li>Tony&#39;s let-out method: ropes, a white rock at 20 metres, proper side barriers, and why &quot;prevention is better than cure&quot; in the yards</li><li>The best run he&#39;s ever seen: a small white bitch of Greg Prince&#39;s that got attacked 23 times by sick sheep and still penned</li><li>Why he thinks more women in the sport has been good for stock handling</li><li>Narrandera, Koroit, and what makes a well-run trial</li><li>His advice to a 20-year-old: never be in a hurry, do it right, do it once</li></ul>