A Farmer And His Dog

In his latest book, Cotswold farmer and TV personality Adam Henson explores the relationship between farmers and their dogs. In this exclusive extract, we hear how his father Joe relied on his dogs’ ability to know instinctively what was expected of them.

Dad was a brilliant farmer. He understood livestock, and could assess an animal at a quick glance. He had a great eye for a good animal to buy and was equally good at spotting, from a distance of 200 yards or more, if one of our animals was sick and needed help. I miss his guiding hand, and I always will.

However there was one aspect of farming where Dad was not perfect, or anywhere near it. And that was working a sheepdog. He loved his dogs and they adored him, and they worked well enough for him, but he was not a natural at training them. He’d probably never really been shown. My dad didn’t come from a farming background. Dad’s father was a famous actor and comedian, Leslie Henson, and his mother was a chorus girl and dancer. His younger brother, Nicky Henson, followed them on to the stage, but as a young man Dad turned his back on his family’s showbusiness traditions and followed his own dream, to live on the land and to run a farm. So I think he simply devised his own way of training a sheepdog, which wasn’t orthodox or, I’m forced to admit, particularly good. His success as a shepherd owed a lot to the dogs’ enthusiasm to work and their instinctive grasp of what they had to do.