Ewe wouldn't believe it! - MY SHEEP THINKS HE'S A DOG

No, we’re not pulling the wool over your eyes! Lucky is truly baa-rilliant!

- Fleur Guthrie

Every evening Caroline Thomson takes her six-year-old pet sheep Lucky for a walk along the Heathcote River in Christchurch. He happily trots along, poses for selfies with other passersby, enjoys children giving him a pat and obediently walks on the road when asked.

Caroline jokes he’s a bit “world famous” in their local area, but what others don’t realise, she says, is Lucky is no ordinary sheep.

If you look beneath his shaggy 120kg exterior, you’ll find this animal is full of tricks and can follow more than 30 commands – dispelling the popular belief that sheep are, well, hare-brained.

“Lucky responds to ‘bow’, ‘turn’, ‘back’, ‘shake’, ‘stay’, ‘jump’, ‘pose’, ‘through’, ‘wait’, ‘go to bed’,” Caroline laughs as she lists just a few of his skills.

The pair met in October 2015, when Caroline was visiting her sister and brother-in-law, who run a farm let at Burkes Pass, in South Canterbury. They had a ewe that birthed triplets but only managed to feed two of her lambs and kept bunting the third one away.

“So, my sister asked if I wanted to feed it and I said yes, even though I hadn’t really planned to take a lamb home,” she tells. “But he was very cute and wasn’t going to survive otherwise.”