Training a dog to detect footrot

Australia Broadcast Center

14-05-2025

Andy Park: A legal loophole that could prevent the Catholic Church from being taken to court over historic child sex crimes should be closed. That's according to victim survivors. A high court decision last year found the Catholic Church wasn't liable for the actions of one paedophile priest because he wasn't an employee. Victoria's State Parliament reporter Richard Willingham has the story.
Richard Willingham: Victorian woman Bernie was abused by a Catholic priest 50 years ago. She hasn't felt safe since.
Bernie: This has never left you for a day. You don't sleep afterwards like a normal human sleeps. You don't, you're not ever carefree again.
Richard Willingham: It wasn't until later in life that Bernie, her sister Trish and two other siblings realised they were all abused in the 1970s by notorious pedophile priest Bryan Coffey. Coffey is long dead and was never convicted of the women's abuse. But after making a formal complaint to the Catholic Church and police, Trish received a letter of apology from the Ballarat Bishop's office in 2015.
Bernie: We wanted someone to say this happened, I suppose.
Richard Willingham: The sisters are finally ready to seek justice through the courts. But a high court decision last year has thrown their legal case and dozens of others into doubt. In November, the court found that the couldn't be held vicariously liable for Coffey's actions in relation to another of his victims because he wasn't an employee.
Bernie: You know, like we've been, we've felt insignificant for most of our lives. They're just doing everything they can to reassure us that we aren't, we're not significant at all. Like, we know that, we've lived like that, but it's really, really shit to do it when they have knowledge that he did this to us.
Richard Willingham: The high court's decision has triggered urgent calls for law reform, with states under pressure to retrospectively legislate for vicarious liability. Victoria's Parliament will debate a private members bill today, put forward by Victorian Legalised Cannabis Party MP Rachel Payne.
Rachel Payne: This is about victims and survivors having opportunity to tell their story, to have their day in court, and an opportunity to heal.
Richard Willingham: There's similar legislation before the New South Wales Parliament.
Judy Courtin: The requirement for legislative reform is urgent.
Richard Willingham: Judy Courtin is Bernie and Trish's lawyer and long-time victim survivor advocate.
Judy Courtin: A lot of our clients and others around the country already have a matter in the courts. We've got trial dates coming up, and if that legislation doesn't come through soon, they're going to lose their trial date and lose their case. Their cases are currently dead in the water.
Richard Willingham: Victorian Attorney-General Sonya Kilkenny has met with victim groups and is considering options for reform, but she says it's a complex area and the state's preference is for a national approach.
Sonya Kilkenny: The last thing we want to do is deliver unintended consequences that might do more harm than good.
Richard Willingham: For those most affected, like Bernie and Trish, time is of the essence.
Bernie: It's unfair that every time they find and have a new of, I don't know, a new lawyer finds a new way of doing things, we're the ones that... We're that. We're the consequence of that.
Richard Willingham: The issue has been taken to the Standing Council of Attorneys-General, but no plan of action has been developed.
Andy Park: Richard Willingham, and if you've experienced childhood trauma or abuse, you can call the Blue Knot Helpline on 1300 657 380. Dogs and farms have always gone together, but sniffer dogs are different to sheep dogs. Sniffer dogs patrol airports, police music festivals and even search for lost hikers. But now their noses are being directed to sniff out a problem costing the sheep industry $82 million a year. And it all started with a South Australian Labrador cross called Leeroy, who likes treats. Elsie Adamo prepared this report.
Elsie Adamo: If you're not from a sheep farm, chances are the only thing you know about foot rot is the classic New Zealand comic strip Foot Rot Flats. But while the adventures of Woll and the Dog entertain millions, the disease the comic is named after is a lot less fun.
Chris van Dissel: It basically invades the feet of sheep and goats, starts in the skin in between the toes and then eats away under the hoof. If you imagine a bacteria that eats away under your fingernails.
Elsie Adamo: Chris Van Dissel is the manager of field operations at the South Australian Department of Primary Industries. He is very familiar with how difficult foot rot is to control.
Chris van Dissel: If you think about flocks of 1000 plus sheep, if you miss one, that will carry the infection over to the next year and reinfect all the sheep on your property. So it's not hard to eradicate from one animal. But if you multiply that by thousands, it becomes a pretty difficult process to get rid of it on a property.
Elsie Adamo: The biggest issue with foot rot isn't treating it. It's actually finding it. You can identify by a visual inspection or laboratory testing, but both are labour intensive because you have to manually check every single sheep. What you need is an easy way of sorting through the sheep. South Australian farmer and researcher Dr Colin Earl had an idea.
Dr Colin Earl: Speaking with Jo who's an avid dog trainer and discussing with her, we came up with the idea collectively to try and develop a dog which would be able to identify those few remaining sheep within a flock.
Elsie Adamo: Jo in this case is Joanne Griffiths, a dog trainer who lives near Narracourt in South Eastern South Australia. She's set to work with her Labrador cross Leroy.
Joanne Griffiths: I put my clipping of a rotten foot into a tin that then goes into a sock and I tie that sock to one of the sheep's legs. So it's down by the foot and I then tie a clean sock onto all the other sheep so that he's not going out there just looking for the sock.
Elsie Adamo: You might wonder why use a Labrador instead of a Kelpie or even a Border Collie like the dog from Footrot Flats. Jo Griffiths says it all comes down to motivation.
Joanne Griffiths: People often ask me why didn't you use a Kelpie because the way I teach, I teach with reinforcement. So I teach the dog what I want it to do and when it does it or at least part of it, I reinforce. And eLeroy loves food because he's a Lab or mostly Lab, whereas a Kelpie would want to work the sheep.
Elsie Adamo: With the initial training out of the way, Leeroy's performance has been impressive. So much so that the state's peak body, Livestock SA, has even jumped on board. Jo Griffiths says now that they've proven Leroy can do it, the next step is to get him out on a real farm.
Joanne Griffiths: The next sort of stage is, as I say, getting him used to actually going on to different properties, being around different people. He's not too bad at that so far. And then I think I'll probably be going out with some of the vets that are working on eradication programs so that he's around all of that stuff going on. And then we'll start sort of trialling him out there and see how he goes.
Elsie Adamo: Leeroy's on the road to proving once more why dogs are man's best friend.
Andy Park: That report by Elsie Adamo.