A desire to work on the land and love of the farm lifestyle has produced a new local business on the Monaro.

Spotty Dog Rural Services is a family contracting team made up of father and son, Mick and Dempsey Woolf.

The business is predominantly rural/farm focused.

Together Mick and Dempsey build all types of fences including standard, exclusion and Weston fences; they are licensed weed spray contractors; build stock yards and horse yards; install stock grids and build decorative front entrances.

Spotty Dog also offers excavations and dam building, paddock clearing and crop preparation using the 15 tonne excavator and three tonne skid steer; shearing shed fit outs and small carpentry projects, as well as welding and metal fabrication projects.

There’s actually a double meaning to the name Spotty Dog - many years ago while studying to be a teacher at uni, Mick said he worked as a concrete pool labourer.

“When we would build something that was perfect and to be proud of, instead of saying ‘spot on’, we started saying ‘Spotty Dog,” Mick said.

“This has stayed with me ever since. We also had a family favourite dog called Grub. He was a real character with all sorts of spots and specks who died just before we started the business and the name ‘Spotty Dog’ is a tribute to him as well.”

Spotty Dog was established nine months ago.

Having lived on farms most of his life, a resident of the Monaro for 13 years and a teacher for 21 years, Mick wanted to move into something where his family could work and build a business together.

“We have brought the skills and training from our home lives into the business arena as we love the farm lifestyle and love working on the land,” Mick said.

“As well as a Bachelor of Education, I have a Certificate II in Agriculture; skid steer and excavator ticket; heavy rigid truck licence; Chem Cert and pesticide licences; and many years experience as a labourer for builders including welding tasks.

“We have been pretty busy locally so far but have travelled to far western NSW for a goat mustering contract, as well as Giru [near Townsville] to help with a house building project.”

Mick said he and Dempsey are ready and waiting for any task - no matter where it is.

“Distance doesn’t worry us,” he said.

The business has been running smoothly despite a few snake encounters and other usual ‘dramas’ that come with running a business.

“We’ve had our truck lock us out while still running with the keys inside (ghost maybe),” he said.

“We couldn’t turn it off even by disconnecting the batteries so had got to the point of disconnecting the fuel lines when we discovered a spare key deep in our shed’s key collection. Never found the ghost and it hasn’t happened since.

“We also got out of a black soil bog by the skin of our teeth at Rock Flat just before Christmas after a sudden storm. We had done a month’s fencing there and were bringing all of our gear home for the Christmas break.

“The skid steer was out in a black soil flat when we noticed a storm coming in. We left the truck on the road luckily because by the time I reached the skid steer it was bucketing down.”

Mick said the skid steer slipped and skidded its way eventually out of the paddock but it was close to spending the Christmas break out there.