Muster Dogs was Courtney’s comfort show. Then it changed her life

The first season of ABC hit Muster Dogs had a life-changing effect on mother-of-two and emerging grazier Courtney Moir.

She had been a bank teller living a much more urban life in Albany, Western Australia, when she met the man who would become her husband, a sixth-generation farmer on a remote 2000-hectare property on the WA coast. In 2018, one month before the birth of their first child, she moved to the rural property.

“I ended up with postnatal anxiety after having my son,” says Moir, 33. “You’re just sitting at home. He became my whole identity. That was all I had. I was watching the first season of Muster Dogs and going through quite a hard time. I remember my therapist had been like, ‘You need a hobby, you need something’, and while watching I was like, I could probably do that.”

Motivated by the show, Moir got a dog and started doing sheepdog trialling, a decision she says greatly helped her transition to farming life and also boosted her confidence.

It’s a full-circle moment that she is now one of the six participants chosen for the fourth season of Muster Dogs. The twist this time around is that all the contestants have relatively limited dog training and stock handling experience. Moir comes to the show with just one year of sheepdog trialling under her belt.

The participants are paired with either border collies or kelpies as their working dogs, and Moir was hoping for a border collie pup.

“I’ve met kelpies that were a lot of energy,” she says. “My son struggles a bit with busier dogs and my other border collie is quite calm. It was just what would fit with my family and wouldn’t upset things.”

She was lucky enough to get her wish and be paired with a female border collie, Blossom. So what is the new dog’s personality like?

“She’s exactly like a kelpie!” Moir says, laughing. “She’s so busy and so excitable. She always wants to be working. I’ve taken her down the beach, and we saw dolphins, and she’s running up and down the side trying to round them up. She’s very intense. But she’s incredibly loveable at the same time.”

As mother to a two-year-old daughter and a seven-year-old son, Moir managed the remarkable feat of training Blossom over a 12-month period for the series, with her youngest often strapped to her chest. Her daughter loved being amongst it, but there was one rather cute, unintended side effect.

“There was a certain point where I was like, ‘Maybe I’m doing too much training with my toddler.’ I’d say, ‘Honey, just wait, I’ll put your shoes on.’ But ‘wait’ is the same as what I say to the dogs. Then I’d go, off you go, and she’d yell, ‘free’, which is my release command for the dog.”

Moir feels that her parental knowledge came in handy when teaching Blossom too.

“I definitely think it is a secret weapon: you know when to push and when to pull back. That’s something that you learn as a mother. I applied that with Blossom and I think it helped her [avoid becoming] overwhelmed. There’s a lot of training for a dog in a year. She’s still a puppy. Having that more gentle approach and knowing when she was ready for things helped.”

With the six participants taking part in challenges throughout the series to see which pooch will be crowned champion muster dog, Moir says she already felt like a winner no matter the outcome.

“Being on the show was already like you’ve won it. You’ve got all this incredible knowledge that you’re going to gain. You’ve got this incredible working dog. So I wasn’t stressed too much about what was going to happen in the final.

“I hope I can inspire somebody the way I was inspired by season one. That would be really cool.”