Miss White lives and works on Lone Star Farms’ 4700ha sheep and beef property Barewood Station in Hindon, between Outram and Middlemarch.
She has been working at Barewood for six months and knows the area well, as she was born and raised on a farm in Hindon.
After leaving Otago Girls’ High School, she attended training farm Tinwald near Cromwell and then worked as a shepherd on Auchterless Station in Millers Flat and Parwa Station in Athol.
Southern Rural Life spoke to Miss White at the Taieri Collie Club’s 80th annual trials, where she was helping the liberators on the straight hunt course.
Her grandfather Graham White is a life member of the Taieri club and the New Zealand Sheep Dog Trials Association.
Miss White said she had never competed in a dog trial before but would debut soon, now her dog Millie had recovered from having a bone removed from her intestine.
"I’d like to give it a crack at some point this year," she said.
Her grandfather had helped her train her own dogs since she was 16.
"You’re not born with it — you have to get someone to teach you how to do it."
He was a top teacher and now she had a team of up to eight dogs.
The most valuable advice her grandfather had given her was to not to yell at her dogs and to rely on her whistle and a calm voice.
"If you yell at them too much, you put them off," she said.
