Getawayback & Southridge Working Border Collies

Welcome to the home of Getawayback & Southridge Border Collies in the Clutha District of Otago, New Zealand.

 

We are a small, select and ethical kennel striving to produce a well structured, sound, well tempered border collie with natural working instinct suited to NZ terrain that will transition through any of the many disciplines on offer these days.

 

Our chosen discipline is working stock and encouraging those natural herding instincts of the border collie. All of our dogs except my companion Possum are trained for stock work.

 

Jason and I (Victoria) have a long history in dog training having successfully trained numerous working dogs, duck dogs, tracking dogs and certified deer indicator dogs as well as domestic dog training and a foray into training hand signals with deaf dogs, a skill I have carried over into many facets of both training working dogs and general obedience.

 

We believe in a natural and force free approach to training working dogs which can look very different to standard training methods. While it does take slightly longer and often looks a lot messier, we find it builds an enviable relationship with the dog which many people over the years have commented on. Our focus is on a happy working dog who wants to work.

 

Jason and I both come from farming and agricultural backgrounds. I grew up in the Flaxbourne on the 2 family farms where we ran cattle, sheep and mixed cropping and Jason graduated from the Telford Agriculture programme. After several years in Conservation we both moved on to Landcorp and from there ran a small farm in the Te Anau Basin for several years before moving onto our block at Lake Holm. Farming is in the blood and with that comes the passion for working dogs.

 

Our goal with our breeding programme is to develop a pedigree border collie suitable for NZ terrain and mob sizes whilst retaining those traits the kiwi farmer desires in his working dogs. To continue a pedigree bloodline we are using imported semen from International Sheep Dog Society lineage. Understanding the strengths and weaknesses of both NZ working border collies, heading dogs and ISDS dogs has been an interesting journey over many years.

 

In order to select suitable semen you must first understand that ISDS dogs are to the most part amazingly stylish dogs and some of the best trial dogs in the world, however few that are advertised have the strength and traits that we require of a dog here in NZ for general shepherding so a fair bit of research in to any dog and its immediate pedigree is necessary. For this reason we tend to look to Welsh line border collies as the starting point.

 

We understand how difficult the process of selecting a suitable sire offshore can be so are happy to help any farmers looking at the idea of using ISDS semen, but caution that many of the commercially available collected dogs through private sellers may very well be wholly inappropriate here.

 

While our focus is on stock work, a large number of our progeny in the past 15 years have gone into performance sports home where they have done very well. Under the prefix Southridge we have bred Champions and Grand Champions in agility, jumpers, obedience, rally-o, working trial, tracking, encore and flyball which is something very few kennels have achieved. We are very proud of all our owners and the work they have put into making them the dogs they are whether that be working, sport or pet.

 

For 15 years we were registered as Southridge Kennels under which we produced many fantastic sport dogs and working dogs with Champions in all the available dog sports in New Zealand. In 2021 we decided to take on a 2nd kennel name to more closely reflect us and what we do. It was fairly simple really, my outrun call is Get Away Back and so GetAwayBack was born.

 

GetAwayBack & Southridge Kennels is independently run by your hosts Victoria and Jason Russell-Hodge. We welcome visitors to view our dogs working and would love to see more border collies as working dogs New Zealand.

​

You are welcome to either email us on southridgeborders@xtra.co.nz, complete the web form under contact or give us a call on 021 025 75723.