ABOUT TULLY WILLIAMS
About the dog trainer
Tully Williams has been training sheepdogs since he was 12 years old (over 35 years). His first dog was a free-to-good-home Border Collie x Kelpie pup named “Rascal” (named after a dog in an Enid Blyton story). Tully began competing in sheep dog trials when he was fifteen. Since that time, he has owned and trained many hundreds of working dogs (not counting pups he has bred), from various breeders and bloodlines, mostly border collies but including many kelpies.
Tully served 7 years on the council of the Victorian Working Sheep Dog Association (VWSDA), being the youngest member ever to be elected to the council as a teenager, and was on the Open Judging Panel.
More recently he was a founding member, Vice President, and Judge, of the AUSDS (Australian Utility Stock Dog Society), a society established with the aim of “fostering excellence in breeding practical utility stock dogs”, through the running of well-designed trials and a redesigned judging system (along the lines of discussed in Tully’s book “Working Sheep Dogs”). In 2020 he was made a Life Member of the AUSDS.
He taught his first obedience classes and private pet training lessons back in 1994. When has was 15, he won his first sheepdog trial. An article was featured in the Weekly Times (the states main agricultural newspaper), which was spotted by someone at Guide Dogs Victoria. A few weeks later, a letter arrived inviting Tully to visit the guide dogs, with a view to perhaps pursuing a career as a guide dog trainer. He spent a day learning about the training of guide dogs, but ultimately decided that sheep dogs and farming were where his passion lay.
Sheep dogs and farming was to be his main focus until a back injury sustained in a fall from a horse in 2005 put an end to his large scale farming career. (Tully is also an accomplished horse trainer.) Up until that point he had owned and trained hundreds of sheep dogs to varying levels (both his own and other clients dogs sent in to Tully for training), and he has continued breeding and training them since. You can see videos of some of these on his webpage www.campaspeworkingdogs.com.
More recently he has branched out into owning and training Livestock Guardian Dogs – Turkish Kangals and Mareemas.
Tully is also an accomplished ballroom dancer, and coach of ballroom dancers (his dog training skills come in handy training people also!). He and his wife Bronwyn have coached students to numerous Australian Championship wins and many other titles.
In 2007 he started his highly successful Bendigo Dog Training business, running puppy classes and obedience classes (with an entirely different flavour to the treat-based classes so common then and now). Classes also included trick training (clicker training) and agility training. He also conducts private training and behavioural problem solving consults for every behavioural problem imaginable. After a few years he discontinued the group classes to concentrate solely on one-on-one training, and that, plus teaching sheepdog training, has been his main focus over the past 17 years. Along with training and breeding his own highly sought after Campaspe Working Dogs (Tully generally has about 15 to 20 dogs in training at a time). He also started his Masterclass Working Sheepdog Training website, producing online instructional videos on the art and science of sheepdog training.
Around 2014, Tully successfully spear-headed the battle against the Victorian State Government and extreme animal liberation groups in their attempts to legislate all kinds of crazy laws. As thanks, he was presented with a trophy from four major working dog associations – the Victorian Working Sheep Dog Association, the Working Kelpie Council, the Victorian Yard Utility Farm Dog Association, and the Victorian Cattle Dog Trial Association.
Newspaper article – “Row erupts between breeders of working dogs and Victorian government”
Unlike many “professional” dog trainers, Tully has enormous personal experience training a very large number of dogs (and also a fair number of horses). This is combined with being an avid reader, and making a lifelong study of the subject through books, articles, and so on. In contrast, most so-called “professional dog trainers” have only owned a couple of pets in their life, and then set themselves up as an “expert” dog trainer. Veterinary Behaviourists are usually the same – big on theory, small on practice.
Tully has both – enormous experience and a wealth of knowledge.
In 2007 his comprehensive and ground-breaking book on sheep dogs – Working Sheep Dogs – A Practical Guide to Breeding, Training and Handling, was published.
In 2025 he published Real World Dog Training – Why Correction Succeeds and “Positive Training Fails.