Two South East neighbours have come up with a paw-some idea to tackle one of the scourges of the sheep industry - footrot.
Four-month-old labrador pup Leroy will be trained to sniff out the disease, first identifying the scent of the organism from laboratory samples and then progress to recognising it in sheep.
The ultimate aim is for many more dogs to be trained up to detect the disease on-farm and in the saleyards where the sheep may not be showing any clinical signs.
Struan sheep breeder and former researcher Colin Earl is excited that sniffer dogs- working on the same principle as drug detection or COVID detection dogs -could be a gamechanger for the industry.
"As an industry we are spending $800,000 a year on footrot eradication without a lot of success," he said.
"To eradicate any disease you need a reliable tool, a dog will be able to do a far better job of identifying those footrot carriers than putting every sheep in a cradle and tipping them up where there are always a few that could be missed."
Dr Earl - who was the developer of the Multimeat sheep breed and JIVET technologies- says his latest idea came together one day while having a discussion with his neighbour Joanne Griffiths, an experienced dog trainer.
Earlier this year they received a Small Projects Fund grant from the SA Sheep Industry Fund for the Footrot Detection Dog Project.
Ms Griffiths has already been undertaking foundation training with Leroy and socialising him around other dogs and places to ensure he won't be easily distracted from his future job.
She is confident Leroy will be up to the task and says dogs' heightened sense of smell are under utilised.
"Teaching him to find a scent is relatively easy, maintaining the behaviour over time is where the real skill comes in and overcoming any hurdles," she said.
"It wouldn't even need to be in the saleyards, the dog could also detect footrot in the paddock."
Ms Griffiths says they chose a labrador for the project due to the breed naturally being motivated by food.
"Obviously it was going to have to be a dog that was able to do the work around sheep, you can train any dog to detect a scent but if that dog is more interested in the sheep than finding a scent you are on a loser," she said.
"Everything came back to a lab."
Dr Earl says if the concept is proven the next step will be scaling up the numbers of dogs and also training handlers.
"There are many people who go out on farms treating, tipping and trimming sheep so these same people could be the ones to have teams of trained dogs," he said.
PIRSA manager field operations (animal health) Chris van-Dissel says a sniffer dog could be a useful early warning tool on sheep properties.
"As an active infection with footrot has a quite distinctive smell, even to the human nose, I anticipate that it is feasible to train dogs to smell an active footrot infection," he said.
"While active virulent infections of footrot are quite easy to detect, particularly during a warm wet spring, with lame sheep, the sniffer dogs could possibly be of most value in detecting potential footrot infections early, through either pointing to an infection emerging in a mob during a non-spread period or if an infection across a mob is at a very low level.
"In alerting producers to an impending issue, it can assist them to plan and act accordingly, usually through isolating sheep, to minimise the impact of footrot on their flock."
According to PIRSA there have been 41 confirmed cases of footrot in SA since January- which is higher than usual- but these cases have been mainly carry over infections from spring 2021 where good falls were recorded in the wetter more footrot prone areas of the state.