Sheep-dog Trials?

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Courier Countryside Column  Friday 19^th April 2013 under headline:

Training your dog will pay ewe back...

Luckily Myrtle is good with sheep as there are usually a couple of hundred in the Orchard.

The other week I was having a coffee in the Land Rover while she lay on the ground hoping I’d toss her a doggie treat. A curious ewe approached.  Usually they get to within a few meters, decide discretion is the better part of valour where canines are concerned, and back off.

Not this one.  She just kept on coming. Myrtle looked up; they eyeballed each other; the woolly one continued cautiously until their noses were touching.  I’ve seen dogs rub noses.  I may even have seen sheep rub noses. I’d never before seen a dog allowing a sheep to do it.

Those weeks of early training Myrtle seem to have paid off.   And it can be pretty important as you’ll see.

It’s 8.30 on a Sunday morning and I’m just sitting down to breakfast and wondering when the paper will arrive when the phone rings.  It’s one of our neighbours at the orchard, clearly in distress.  Her dog has just come back covered in blood. Apparently it 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. Do I have a phone number for the sheep farmer? 

His 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, finally, 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 that 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 would be a real disaster.  As it is the owner of the dog has offered to pay.  She will be in for rather more than £100 for the pregnant ewe, £40 for disposal of the corpse, plus the farmer’s time and petrol.

Probably better than having your dog shot though.