“It was pretty clear he wasn't an inside dog,” offers Hayden in one of the great understatements of all time. “Doug lived outside with Scoobs, with the flies and the snakes and everything else. I remember one day he had this giant king brown snake bailed up outside – a seven-foot-long king brown as thick as a Coke can. I've whacked it, but it's still hissing at Doug, and Doug bloody wants to have a go at it. The other dogs used to always kill snakes out on the farm, and when Doug was young, he'd always dance around the edges, barking, trying to make out he was doing something. What was Scooby Doo’s little mate in the cartoon? Scrappy Doo. Yeah, that was Doug.”
It didn’t take long for Doug to be top dog on the farm. “I looked out over the hills one day,” recalls Hayden, “and I just caught a silhouette of Doug, our pet roo and our two emus up on the hill, just taking it all in. It looked like the Coat of Arms.”
In his spare time, Hayden was a surf photographer who’d travel the length of the Bight chasing swells. Doug would ride shotgun, and his domain was about to get much bigger than the farm. “He loved his adventures,” remembers Richo. “We were running the caravan park in town at Elliston for a while, and I’d be locked into work during the day. Doug used to just sit in the back of the Landcruiser with the tailgate open and just wait for me to finish. I’d walk out with my gear, and he’d know we were off somewhere and start running in circles until I put him in the car.”
When Richo would take off on extended surfing or photo missions, Doug would always tag along. While Richo was in the water, Doug would post up on the beach and explore. “He’d always get a spot where he could see me, either on the beach or up on the clifftop. He loved being up on the cliffs and looking around.”
Although not built for the water, Doug loved the ocean. “That’s how we’d wash him; just throw him into the sea and give him a good old scrub. But he loved swimming. He had that much bloody fur on him that he’d just float. All his fur would be floating on the surface about a foot around him in all directions. He was like a floating carpet. Then he’d come in and look for something dead on the beach to roll in.”
But while his territory stretched the length of the Bight from Lincoln west to the border, it was the sand dunes of Sheringa that were Doug’s favourite realm. “Freedom. Those dunes were freedom for him. He wasn’t really built for sand dunes, but he’d just take off. And you know how sheep always walk into the wind? So did Doug. All of a sudden, he’d appear up the top of the dune with the wind just blowing into his face. That was the feeling he was after.”
While Richo’s photography of the Bight coast opened a new world to people from around the world who’d never ventured down there, it was his photos of Doug in the dunes that would become iconic. Doug became famous on social media and soon started hanging with celebrities. “Kelly Slater loved him,” recalls Richo. “We were up surfing Conies one day and every time I'd look over, Kelly would just be holding him or patting him. He loved his cuddles with the little fella. My Instagram account went berserk because of Doug.”
