utterly astonished (6)

Astonished, today here on a 1000-acre farm near Ensay in Victoria, both one-year-old Maremma Sheepdogs guarding a flock of sheep turned up at the wool shed barking and barking. So I thought oh something is wrong and got my Ute and drove over to them and they ran off alongside the Ute down the track from whence they had come.

I had grabbed a bag of dog biscuits to top up their food bin, however on opening the third gate I noticed nearby a fence a sick looking ewe standing alone. I noted that and then drove on to top up the dogs tucker box, and noted one dog had stopped and stayed behind by the sick ewe, while the other trailed along following the Ute.
After emptying a bag of biscuits into the bin I drove back over to the sick ewe, which had received cuts to both hind legs from recent shearing. Oh she had a lot of dags, and appears the shearer had a problem cutting them off. (sh.t happens)

What astonished me was that two Maremma Sheepdogs (both neutered males) would come and communicate that a sheep had a problem.
The dogs are just one year old, they arrived here at eight weeks old, for nine weeks they remained in the wool shed to bond with seven lambs, they then spent around three days with rest the lambs outside the wool shed, a mob of 40 odd young sheep, that we hoped they would bond with. Then they were shifted to a quite large paddock that wild-dogs had been killing sheep in, (around sixty acres) and left to it…and no, no sheep have been killed since.
Every week or so there biscuit bin was topped up, and on a few occasions John tossed them dog bones. They have had no other interrelationship with humans. They never have been patted or at any time touched by a human, in essence they are completely wild dogs.
Approximately four weeks ago I checked on them and found one of the sheep in their mob had got out into the neighbours property. One Maremma Sheepdog stayed with the mob and the other stayed with the sheep over the fence in the neighbours place, best as I could tell both had been next door a few days, all the time whatever it was, one dog had stayed with the one next door.
It took me a while to get that single sheep back into the paddock, often while trying, the two Maremma Sheepdogs ran ahead and stopped the sheep running away, and had repeatedly got it to follow them back towards me. So I knew the dogs were watching, but what we saw today was to my mind really remarkable.
Anybody interested in checking wiki for Maremma Sheepdog