Spaniel Eyes Part 2
It was clearly important to get Myrtle (see Spaniel Eyes part 1) used to sheep as quickly as possible.
After all there are usually two or three hundred of them in the Orchard (see By Hand or by Brain) where she was going to spend a good deal of her time. And every dog’s natural inclination seems to be chase sheep. Every dog that is except Myrtle.
Last week I was sitting having a cup of coffee in the Land Rover while Myrtie was lying on the ground by the open door hoping for a doggie treat to be thrown. Out of the corner of my eye I could see a curious sheep approaching. Usually they get to within a few meters and then decide discretion is the better part of valour where canines are concerned and back off back to their friends.
Not this one. She just kept on coming. Once she was within about a meter Myrtle looked up and they eyeballed each other hard. But the woolly one continued cautiously on until they were within touching distance. And on yet further until their noses actually met. I’ve seen a pair of dogs rub noses. I may even have seen a pair of sheep rub noses. I’d never before seen a sheep and a dog doing it.
Myrtle seemed to think it was all perfectly natural and waited until the sheep got bored and walked away. Which I took to be A Result. Those first few weeks of training her, walking regularly together among the sheep, insisting she concentrated completely on me and didn’t even so much look at the sheep, seem to have paid off. And it’s pretty important as you’ll see.
It’s 8.30 am on a Sunday morning and I’m just sitting down to breakfast and wondering when the papers will arrive (this IS the country and newspaper deliveries can be a bit erratic) when the phone rings. It’s a woman who’s a neighbour at the orchard, clearly in some distress. Do I have a phone number for the sheep farmer? Yes, Why? Her dog has just come back covered in blood. Apparently it has jumped a fence and savaged a sheep. It was a rescue German Shepherd. Where is it now? The sheep’s dying in a ditch, the dog, securely back inside the house.
The farmer’s landline is on answerphone and he doesn’t like anything as intrusive as a mobile so I leave a message and get back to breakfast and the Observer which has, by now, arrived. Later I’m up at the orchard putting in an hour’s pruning when I bump into the farmer. I’m surprised he’s so calm. No, it could have been much worse, he tells me. The rest of the flock didn’t seem at all agitated so the dog almost certainly hadn’t chased them, but had just gone straight for the throat of the one ewe and then returned home. And that’s good? You’re right it is. A dog chasing an entire flock of pregnant ewes can cause multiple miscarriages which can be a real disaster. As it is the owner has offered to pay and will be in for rather over £100 for the pregnant ewe, £40 for disposal of the corpse, plus the farmer’s time and petrol.
Unpleasant as that experience was, it wasn’t as bad as the ‘blood in the boot’ episode I witnessed a month or so later. I’d gone to buy some apple bins from a farm up near the M20. I was just returning to my car and its little trailer, trying to work out how to secure two bins on such a conveyance, when I noticed a reddish liquid seeping – no, flowing – out of the back of the Farmer’s 4X4. “You’re losing diesel” I told him. “No,” he said mater-of-factly, “it’s not diesel it’s blood.”
Perhaps my raised eyebrows suggested that further explanation was required. After all he probably didn’t want me phoning the police with tales of dead bodies in backs of cars up at “Tom’s place”.
“Yes, a dog got in among the flock and killed five ewes. Just ripped their throats out. For fun.”
“God, how awful. Did you find its owner?”
“No”, he said, “didn’t need to. The dog won’t be doing it again, if you catch my meaning”.
So you can understand why farmers don’t much care for dogs, or even dog walkers traipsing over their land – even if they are on a public footpath. But sometimes they can take it to extremes.
Myrtie and I have followed the stream along from our house across half a dozen ploughed fields and come upon a footpath leading towards the road that goes up to the orchard. We’ve not used the path before and we follow it across two open fields. There is a notice from the footpath authority requesting that dogs be kept on a lead, but since there’s no livestock in either meadow there seems no reason to. We’re half way up to the road when I hear a faint bellow “put that dog on a lead”. I look round. There’s nobody in sight. I’m clearly on a public footpath. There are no sheep. Myrtle’s sticking to within half a dozen meters of me.
“PUT THAT F****ING DOG ON A LEAD.” This time I don’t look round. I can hear the shouting is coming from a rather ugly bungalow some distance away. We reach the road and I consider whether to go to the bungalow and confront the rude man. But it’s a nice day and we ought to be getting on and I don’t really want any more aggro, so I leave it.
Couple of days later I mention it to someone who lives just along the lane from the bungalow. Be careful, she says, he’ll shoot first and worry about the consequences later. I’ve lost one dog and had two cats wounded by shotgun pellets. I’ve complained to the police and he’s on a final warning, but it won’t stop him. Another neighbour confirms her story. I check the law. It an offence for a dog to “be at large (that is to say not on a lead or otherwise under close control) in a field or enclosure in which there are sheep.” But under close control is not defined. And Section 9 of the Animals Act 1971 provides that the owner of livestock, the landowner or anyone acting on their behalf, is entitled to shoot any dog if they believe it is the only reasonable way of stopping it worrying livestock.
So, I tell Myrtie, we were perfectly in the right. But later I reflect you might feel that was little consolation as you carried your dead dog home having been unable to convince Mr Angry of such legal niceties.
