EXTRAORDINARY PEOPLE: The Life of Reilly

WILMINGTON, NC (WWAY) — You may have seen him at Airlie Gardens. Maybe y’all crossed paths at a fundraising event or maaaaaaaaybe you even gave him a nice scratch behind the ears. This week’s Extraordinary Person of the Week is a first of its kind for the series. Here is the extraordinary Life of Reilly.

The breeze blows and the blossoms begin to bloom at Airlie Gardens. It’s a Wilmington attraction that all walks of life fancy, even some that overstay their welcome.

“We used to have a really bad problem with geese out here,” Scott Childs told Daniel Seamans.

They had a dirty problem. “We had one person,” Childs said. “Everyday their job was to follow the geese and hose off the hardscape, the sidewalks, and when he was done, he started over where he started at.”

Scott Childs, the grounds supervisor at Airlie Gardens, admits that the method was just not really working. It wasn’t efficient.

(SEE VIDEO FOR 2013 VIDEO OF REILLY TRAINING WITH SHEEP)

“He went to school and he was trained to herd sheep,” Childs said. “So he’s trying to take that training and herd the geese. He’s not trying to catch them, or harm them in any way. He’s trying to organize them into a tiny group and whenever he does that, of course, the geese don’t see it that way.”

Enter an extraordinary dog named Reilly, adopted from Carolina Border Collie Rescue.

“I think the best part of Reilly is that he’s so eager to please,” Allison Childs, Reilly’s manager, told Daniel.

Scott and Allison Childs are the duo behind this long haired sheep and geese herding personality who now lives a new life of a community ambassador.

“By promoting his appearances on Facebook,” Allison said, “it brings people out to certain events like food drives and the people see that Reilly is there and they go and drop off food.”

Reilly helped WWAY with our Salvation Army food drive.
He’s been featured with the Weather Channel.
And the tale of an unwanted dog who found his true calling even made an issue of Garden and Gun magazine.

“So are you missing your friends, the geese?,” a passerby asked Reilly while we were shooting the video at Airlie Gardens.
“They are some of his friends(the geese) around here,” Scott joked.

You see, to Reilly, it’s not work but rather playtime when it comes to rounding up the geese.

Reilly sure did find his true calling. Airlie Garden’s walkways are more….walkable.

“We’ll take our morning rounds, rounds throughout the day,” Scott said, “and if he sees geese, he tries to herd them and they fly away.”

But here to stay is the extraordinary Life of Reilly and his extraordinary view.

Here’s Reilly’s Facebook page—> https://www.facebook.com/reillyairlie
Here’s the website to Carolina Border Collie Rescue—> http://cbcr.org/

-Daniel