Why don't you go Q ? you never know - you might surprise yourself & enjoy it !

Let him entertain you.

Weird day.

Guess who I found ?

Boy.

Not only that because you would expect the body to turn up sometime.

Alive.

Went for a walk down to the river to try & escape the wind.

Have never been there before, a complete one-off.

Took Don & Chum with me.

Found a very steep hill I couldn't safely climb down, me & Chum took the easy route
but Don was determined to get down the slope.

I couldn't understand why but with ewes in lamb all over the farm I couldn't
trust him to come & find me later on. I started to climb down the slope & saw him
sniffing another dog.

I literally rubbed my eyes & thought I had seen a k9 ghost.

There he was, looking a bit confused bless him, but apart from that right as rain.

Turned out he has been living next to the offal pit for 6 weeks.
There is a small pond about 300 yards away, he must have been drinking from that.

I couldn't climb down the slope to get him without dislodging huge boulders which
I thought would be an ironic way to kill a dog I had just found so I went to find Mike.

We came back with the truck & some rope.

This is the sort of country he has been living in for 6 weeks.
I am now covered in gorse scratches.




Mike made short work of the slope down, attached some string to his collar
& began the slow process of getting him up the hill.
There were lots of breaks & encouragement.







The final result, a very healthy-looking Boy.



He actually looks better now than he did when he went missing.
His coat is beautifully shiny & lush & apart from being a bit smelly
he seems none the worse for his ordeal.

An odd thought crossed my mind after I found him only a mile
or so away from the house.
As he had lasted that long & looked in such good nick I did
wonder about leaving him there. I wasn't sure that a dog which
had found it's way there couldn't find his way back again if he wanted to.

I wonder if Mike thought the same thing because he said to me that Boy must have thought he had died & gone to doggy heaven being that close to all that 'fresh' meat.

When I offered him his usual tea of biscuits he turned his nose up at them so
possibly Mike was right.

I couldn't honestly have left him there though, I wouldn't have slept at night wondering if his food supply had run out or if he wanted to come home. I tied him to a gas cannister this evening as I thought he might take it into his head to wander off again.

An aminal story with a happy ending - now there's a change.

Zoe, Innes & Lizzie came back from Kowhai late last night.

Back to picking up & putting away for me,
cannot believe how quickly they decimated the house.

Time for bed,

Cx