“I have a strong belief that we don’t adopt our dogs, they adopt us.

Standing in the middle of the highway out of Mildura on a Sunday morning in 2002, as heavy loaded semis barrelled past, was a red kelpie, perfectly calm, looking up and down the highway.

Worried about his welfare, we stopped by the road. I ventured onto the road and he must have taken sympathy on this human about to get squished no his behalf so he followed me back to the car. He had a small piece of plastic rope around his neck that had frayed. Yep, he had literally fallen of the back of his truck.

There was no way we could leave him there to wander back onto the road. He had no i.d. and clearly had no interest in loping off to a farm nearby. So I opened the passenger door of the car. He looked at me, looked in through the door and must have thought we were trustworthy enough so he got in. And there he stayed, curled at my feet all the way back to Sydney. He was dusty and very lean being a working dog, so I named him Slim Dusty.

He’s lived with us for 13 years now, and apart from one attempt at catching a duck in Sydney Park soon after he arrived, he has never done another day’s work in his life.

When the Sydney Park Kiosk opened five or six years ago, Paul, the first barista, took to him and began giving him the odd bit of bacon or cooked chook when we stopped for a coffee. That ritual has developed now into Slim hosting the Breakfast Bacon Club every morning at 7a.m. with anywhere up to a dozen dogs joining in and various human companions getting more and more rounds of ‘doggie bacon’ to extend the session.

Our vet reckoned he was 2 when we got him so December 2015 we celebrate his 15th birthday. He ambles along his walk these days and doesn’t head off to scrounge for food so much anymore. He won’t admit he is pretty deaf and near sighted, and the bed is a bit high for him to jump onto these days.

Other than that, and his potent old man farts, he’s doing fine.” By Marilyn and Paul