She really looks like a dog in the wild here in the morning mist, keeping an eye on what else is going on (cyclists coming past on the road….?)

As I have only little patience, I decided to whack the head to make it a bit easier for the dogs to get into it. This then gave Tippex the incentive to work at it and when she had exhausted herself by chewing on it, the others had a go, in turn. Only Alice, who is the self confessed absolute bottom of the pack, did not take part. She is the one, who might, when EVERYONE else have lost interest in a bone, grab one and take it into her kennel to chew on it a little bit.

This is the stag’s head 24 hours later: Tippex had renewed her interest in it after a nights sleep, but by now there was just the horns, the skin and some of the bone left:

Two days later, this is all that was left. Someone ate the skin off it and they certainly seem to enjoy the bone for all the minerals etc.

It is wonderful to see them get really tired from all this chewing. Their teeth get all cleaned up and they are having a brilliant time. The Raw Food diet is great. I also give them cabbage and carrots, but I tend to boil the carrots as they otherwise go straight through them. If I chop up cabbage in the kitchen, they all scramble to get in to check if anything falls off the table top.
My dogs eat loads of raw bone and have access to grass in the garden all day to keep their stomachs right.

This Saturday I took Gollum to a working test, where we do not work the dogs on game, but instead there are tests set out using dummies. For example, a dummy is thrown with a shot, but you have to send your dog in a different direction to find a “blind” and handle him about 100 meters out to find it. The dogs also have to cross the water for a blind and finally they should be hunted over ground just to show that they will cover the area systematically. There is no game where we do this as we can’t disturb any birds now. There were three classes: Puppy, novice and open. Guess what….. Gollum won the open.

That same evening, I was driving home from visiting friends and came across a road killed roe deer. I whipped it in the back of the car and gralloched it at 1am. This was to be dog food, but I have to say the fillets went in the freezer for our selves. There was hardly anything left at the end: some intestines and the skin. All the rest was in the freezer and given to the dogs as special treats. The stomach seems to be of the highest order of delicacy. It’s basically fresh deer tripe with chewed grass. The effect was smelled that night in the living room…….

Gollum got the head

The bottom half of the back legs also went in the dog garden and were much appreciated. Here is Tippex with one, feeling rather smug.

It takes all day to “deal” with these bones. They chewed off the hooves quickly, there must be something in them that is particularly attractive. Finally there is the whole fun of digging them down in some secret place….. then go and dig them up again and move them to an even better place. I think those bones have been buried 10 times each during Sunday.

Today it’s pouring with rain instead and everyone is fast asleep in their kennels on their Tuffie beds.

Anne and I have been counting a few places so far this year and it looks very good. Lots of healthy grouse pairs all round. Perhaps the mild winter has been kind to the birds. This spring is, of course, exceptional in being SO hot. The lack of rain is threatening some areas to become unattractive to the grouse as they rely on watering holes for the production of protein-rich insects for their chicks. However, this is still Scotland, and we should surely see some rain soon.

This year we were blessed with a day in the company of Peter O’driscoll and his beautiful pointers.

As you can see, it’s sunshine all the time and we have been finding it difficult to find water for the dogs, which is why we carry liters in our back packs. Amazing how fast two, relatively small dogs can demolish a two-liter bottle of water. As dogs don’t sweat through the skin it is amazing how much water they are able to get rid off by panting.

As always, I was pursuing “the photo” and managed to get a reasonably good one of Anne’s dog, Dipper, just as he flushed a grouse. Maybe some of you remember Dipper from our Facebook page: he did his cruciate ligament last August and the full operation. Now he is absolutely sound again and is worked, with some precaution, on the moor again.

We have a few more days on the hill before it will be time to leave the birds alone to bring up their families. That’s when the pointers get a chance to do some other trianing like retriever training and, frankly, to lie in the sun on their Tuffie beds, soaking in the warmth. Not much happens now till July, but we should hopefully squeeze in the odd competition.

And off he goes through the house:

It’s a great party trick and he loves it. He will sometimes come back with nothing and needs reminding that he was looking for the slippers. Then he is off and finds them. One by one, they are delivered with great excitement. He feels SOOOO proud of himself:

I wonder if he can learn to find my car keys too……?

Here he is with the prize. Next hurdle will be the open stakes. Can’t wait.

Maybe it’s the good nights sleep on the Tuffies dog beds that has improved matters. They do say that your brain gets sorted during the sleep…. lol!!!

Here it is:

Hi Luise

We took our original medium size labrador cross from the RSPCA centre in central Leeds, England, in January 2003 when she was a 5 month old abandoned puppy. Our primary motivation was to help our then 12 year old son, who is autistic and was at the time very withdrawn and isolated. He was at home full time due to lack of appropriate educational services, and my partner, his Dad, had given up work to look after him. We were, in fact, complete novices as far as dogs were concerned, and read a lot about how to best look after her. One of the best things was that the agreement with our son was that he would go with his Dad every single day, rain or shine, to walk and exercise Honey in the park. This was very first step towards his future – and to cut a long story short, we moved to France (a very remote mountain village in the Pyrenees) in 2004, and since then our son has had very specialised help and is now 21, living independently in an apartment nearby and working as a bike mechanic in the summer, and ski technicien in the winter.

All the above is relevant to the story of Réglisse, as Honey is still our son’s adored dog, and as he has become more open and capable, he has become more able to look after his dog himself. She has been such a big part of helping him in his journey. So much so, that after a few trial over night and weekend stays, she is now living with him pretty much full-time and they are blissfully happy together – we only have her occasionally when our son is away biking or snowboarding.

So we found ourselves, rather unexpectedly, and rather suddenly, not only with a boy-shaped hole in our lives, but with a dog-shaped hole. We had often thought about a big dog, and had thought about taking an old dog who needed love and care – in a fantasy sort of way, but we suddenly realised that we could do as we wished and make it a reality.

I joined two french dog forums – one a german shepherd rescue and one just ‘big dog’ rescue. We made several approaches which didn’t work out for a variety of reasons – I still have a huge long haired german shepherd cross in my sites – she was found lost after the earthquake in Spain and hasn’t found a home because of her size and health issues. Unfortunately she does not yet have the paperwork to travel. So one rainy Sunday (I only have one day off a week, and it is a Sunday), I spent pretty much the whole day at the computer searching and contacting people, then just towards the end of the day, I looked on the local Dog’s Home site (equivalent of RSPCA in France) and saw Réglisse ‘en sauvetage’ which means dogs that are so hard to home they are given away free. There was no way to contact them on the Sunday, so had to wait until I got home from work on Monday afternoon. Phoned straightaway, she was still there, so we set of immediately and got there after a 2 hour drive down from the mountains, to arrive just before closing (although they said they would wait for us!). Unlike the UK, the procedure was very simple – the dogs were all in outside grassed areas, about 3 or 4 dogs to a good sized enclosure, with little kennel/sheds for them to shelter. Réglisse was brought for us to see, we loved her on first sight, we showed our identity documents, filled in a questionnaire, and she was handed over! We paid the fee for a ‘normal’ rescue even though we didn’t need to – we were so impressed with the work the centre was doing. The only information they could give us was that Réglisse had been found back in March (we took her on the 18th July) wandering alone, very thin and bedraggled, and despite big efforts to find her owners, no-one had come forward. The centre staff were so delighted for her to be going to a new home – they had thought that she never would – and they even put a message from her beside her photo on their website telling other old dogs not to give up hope!


We brought our enormous, smelly, dirty dog home in the back of my tiny Twingo, she was so calm, but looked so funny with her big head looking around. The evening we brought her back is the photo of her lying exhausted on the quilt – she absolutely stunk!

Our other dog Honey as here at the time, but left again the next day. She has been here a few times since, and the two of them are rubbing along just fine.

The next morning we started the big grooming job – we had to cut off a lot of the felted, lumpy, matted stuff which was really disgusting. We went slowly and gently, bit by bit, over the next few weeks, and gradually she is improving, and has started to groom herself. We hadn’t realised at first, but she didn’t wag her tail – Honey is a big tail wagger, and it bangs on the furniture and floor. In the past couple of weeks or so, Réglisse has started wagging, really wagging, and she just seems happy and settled. We started walking with her straight away, we live in a beautiful mountain spot, with lovely walks everywhere. At first she could only walk a short distance, was very stiff, and quickly tired. These days, she runs and plays, and loves swim. We gave her a bath in the river on a very hot day a few weeks after she came, she seemed pleased with that! We have even taken her on an overnight camping trip in the high mountains

- a very happy dog who enjoyed eating our vegan pasties and biscuits – she is very reluctant to eat anything that is a prepared dog food of any kind, we think she must have always been fed on leftovers – so now we are two vegans with a fridge full of Top Budget paté, sausage, cheese and ham, with dog pasta to mix with tuna and sardines. How strange life is!

So that is the story of Réglisse – I have attached some ‘before’ photos of the evening we brought her home, and will send another mail with some more recent ones.

Thanks again for your interest, and hope this long ramble makes some kind of sense.

Karen

At the end of the working day Alice, who is now eight years old, is looking forward to get home to her Tuffies bed. Here she is, having a lunch time snooze in the heather.

As the dog picks up the scent of the birds, the dog handler and guns become aware of its behaviour and start walking towards it. The dog will stop on point and wait till everything is in place for flushing the covey.
Below Gollum, with the orange collar, is on point and I have walked up by his side with Tippex. Matt is ready with the gun.

Some times I will use Gollum for picking up, but mostly I use Alice.

This year the grouse count in July indicated that the breeding season was tough and that many grouse pairs lost their young in the wet June weather. Many pairs then had another cluster of eggs, hence the young birds in July. However, by the 12th August we didn’t run into too many situations where young birds were flushed and could not be shot. The fact is that it is perceived as bad practice to shoot young birds, but in reality it is doubtful whether these young birds will be fit and strong enough to survive the winter anyway.

What DID dominate this year as an annoying trend was how flighty the birds were right from the beginning of the season. Very often a dog would be on point, but the birds would sit up and look out. Obviously, as the party approached, the birds took off. It made it difficult and it was a bit of a mystery why this was so common. This normally happens a lot later in the season, but we have had days of flighty birds right through.

Below Heidi is on point, but the birds are standing in shallow vegetation looking at her. There is no way we can get near them.

There are still four days work next week and I will revert with some blogs about the dog work when I get the time.

The next picture is hilarious as he looks at me with submissive nose-licking saying “I’m a good boy, sitting to the flush”.

Of course, if the bird had been shot, he would miss marking where the bird fell and would have trouble finding it to pick up. Under normal circumstances, I would be positioned behind him and he would most likely mark the fall.

It seems like I am highlighting the faults of the day and here is another little embarrassing picture where Tippex tries to grab the bird, but the following picture shows that, when I blew the whistle, she hit the deck.

The reason for her ”misbehaviour” was mainly the fact that the birds were sitting so tight. By the time they flushed, they were almost 10cm from the dog’s mouth…. That’s my excuse anyway.

Here she is, perfectly still at a larger flush. She found these birds almost at 200metres off and there were 18 birds all together.

Good days!!!!