Howling Gales

The wind is howling outside and flurries of snow and hail keep drifting past the window. No training for us today, I called Peter, our trainer, and he said that it's pointless when the even the dogs can hardly hear the commands over the wind.

Quite a change from the weekend when Fox was playing out with our friend's kids Sara and Syd in the sunny back field.

This morning I woke to find the garden in disarray. The wind was so strong that it had lifted the spare fish tank that was sitting in a corner and smashed it in the middle of the yard! 9 lorries have overturned on the M6 and one driver killed. It's simply not worth leaving the house.

Yesterday I finally started having physio on my joints; I'm hoping to get back to running fitness eventually, I miss my fell runs and orienteering. However, it was all undone when a cable from a computer at work got twisted around my foot sending me sprawling and spraining my knee in the process. Knee is now swollen and rather black :o(

On the plus side, the sheep are all doing very well, if not terribly well trained. I tried Fox on them earlier this week. The good news is that he listened too me, took his correct commands and called off easily. The bad news is that the sheep still split into 3 and 5 and starburst all over the field at the slightest provocation. Work to be done I think.

Ruth and Hilary moved their fell ponies Briar and Roasanna to the land with the sheep on Monday, much to Fox's disgust! He's not a big fan of horses, although he prefers them when they don't have people sitting on them: that's just wrong as far as Fox is concerned.


Briar is the same age as Fox and is growing into a handsome young man now. Ruth took him to a show in the summer and we were all delighted when he went home with plenty of rosettes, much to Ruth's astonishment. Briar was rescued from a farm when he was 5 months old and Ruth bought him for less than I paid for Fox!


The sheep seemed similarly unimpressed and gathered to meet their new field mates with some suspicion.

It was soon forgotten when I produced a food bucket though. Rosy is quite determined when it comes to her feed and even attempted a little rock climbing in oder to get to it first.



Those hardly little Shetlands are looking very well despite the foul weather conditions, but then they do have plenty of grass to go at and plenty of shelter in their field. They looked very peaceful as they pottered about grazing.