You may have noticed a lack of cows on this site, the home of the original Friday Cow Blogging. Not even any sheep, horses, or other barnyard animals have found themselves near my camera lens these past few months.
As always, it's harder to find cows and sheep during the winter—ours go to another pasture to spend the cold months, when the grass in our pasture (not really ours, of course, we just live next door) isn't very tasty.
But there's another reason. I used to hike several miles each week with my hiking group, which I was once the leader of, along with my dog Bailey. In fact, she knew the footpaths and routes of our circular walks better than I did—if she veered to the left at a Y I followed her, knowing she knew which way we'd walked before.
I never had any problem with her on our walks. Walking through woods, pastures, along rivers, through crops—I could always trust her to never wander too far, and more importantly, she never bothered any livestock.
That's a serious issue here. Most dogs are allowed off lead routinely, unlike in the US where dogs are rarely off-lead. Yet there is a Countryside Code that must be obeyed: you always leash your dog when there are livestock about. Even well-behaved dogs must be leashed. I obeyed that rule, even though I had no doubt that Bailey wasn't about to worry sheep—she did want to eat their droppings, however. (Yes, dogs are gross. We love them anyway.) Technically, a farmer has the right to shoot a dog that's worrying his livestock, and I had no wish to argue with a farmer over the meaning of "worrying". I kept her on lead, except when there were no sheep about.
But she had plenty of fun at other times, since most of our walks passed through all types of countryside. She enjoyed plowing through the Thames, plopping down in puddles, and plunging into fields of bright rape, unhindered by a leash except when we crossed busy roads. Her recall wasn't close to perfect, but it didn't matter: I had absolutely no worries that she'd get into trouble. (Mud, yes, and smelly fox poop, yes, but trouble, as defined by the Countryside Code, no.)
Flash forward to now: Sparky isn't to be trusted around livestock. Not that he's really ever been given the chance; I know him too well. He did once slip away (I dropped the lead going over a stile) and he quickly found a nearby paddock with two horses. He raced up and down the fence barking, and then slid underneath the barbed wire. He didn't come when we called, and after eventually rounding him up, I swore I'd never let him off lead again.
His recall is better now, but I have no doubt he would never come if there were exciting sheep nearby. And since he's blazing fast off lead, he covers ground too fast for me to be comfortable with him off lead in the countryside, at least not in an area that's likely to have livestock over the next hill.
So we've been making do with walks in the park and the Common, and weekly forays to the almost enclosed hillfort nearby. We let him off leash only when there's no traffic nearby and no livestock. Since he's dog-reactive, we once kept him on-lead around other dogs, but we no longer worry about that. He's learned very well how to tell other dogs he's not interested, and only the occasional pushy dog gets a bark in the face.
Hence, no livestock photos for me. I could walk without him, but then I'd just have to come home and walk again, with him. I may do that more in the spring, but meanwhile, I've signed us up for a recall workshop, held on a farm with livestock. I'm hoping we can introduce Sparky to some sheep under controlled conditions, and at the same time improve his recall. Right now it's close to perfect—in low and medium distraction situations. When he's chasing squirrels, forget it. I have no doubt he wouldn't respond to our whistle if he was barking at sheep.
In the meantime, here's a video of Sparky, showing off his recall in a medium-distraction situation (helpfully provided by the neighbor's gardener and his little dog). It'll have to do until I can get to the countryside with a free hand for a camera.
