BEEF farmer Adrian Hobbs has been living in the Tallangatta Valley for two years and has only seen a couple of wild dogs in that time.
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But the killing of a prized working dog will make him more vigilant around the property, particularly with his two young daughters.
His dog, Neville, was killed just 400 to 500 metres from his family home, near the carcass of a dead cow.
“It is a bit concerning when they are coming down that far,” Mr Hobbs said yesterday.
“You hear them howling at night all the time.”
Mr Hobbs runs 2000 wagyu cattle on the property he manages 30 kilometres up the valley.
He has had few problems with wild dogs, unlike sheep farmers in the valley.
Electric fencing on the property is mainly internal and there is little on the bush boundary to deter the entry of the savage killers.
Mr Hobbs made the gruesome discovery of his prized working dog, dead after a savage attack, on Monday.
He had moved a group of cattle on Friday and found a dead beast in the paddock where they had been grazing.
He had decided to shift it on Monday because he was away at the weekend.
When he got home on Sunday afternoon, Mr Hobbs let his three dogs off for a run and they slept in a shed overnight.
They barked during the night but he told them to quieten down and there was no more noise.
When Mr Hobbs went out in the morning, Neville was missing.
When he hadn’t returned after a couple of hours, Mr Hobbs decided to go looking, and found Neville just 30 metres from the carcass.
The dog had been badly mauled and was dead.
Mr Hobbs said the carcass had been almost completely eaten and there were dog prints “everywhere”.
A neighbour had reported that he saw a big, yellow dog eating the carcass on Saturday afternoon.
Mr Hobbs said there were some nights when his dogs “go off” with their barking when there is something around.
“I just put it down to foxes,” he said.
But he now realises it may be wild dogs.
“At the moment, I have cattle calving. Only last week I brought them down closer to the house,” he said.
A report on the killing of his dog will be made to the Department of Environment and Primary Industries.