The greening of the understorey

It's a beautiful morning here in Denton Dene and we can see that all of the shorter trees in the wood are coming into leaf. This part of spring is their chance to grab at the sunlight while their loftier neighbours are still slumbering.

It's May tomorrow; hal-an-tol, jolly rumble-oh!

Wow, has it been a year?

I've just been reading over the last two posts from January last year and it may seem strange, given that this was always Lurcher Tales, that it should be Holly's death that stopped me from regularly posting.

So, what has changed since then? Well, Owain and Becky moved out not long afterwards, then moved again. They have another dog now, a Collie/ Chocolate Lab cross, called Ebony. They also got married in October, which was nice.

I started teacher training in August, but it was not to be. It is one thing to think that you would make a good teacher, but quite another to actually be one. So I am back at home and walking the dogs every day again while I try to find something else.

Rover has his own Facebook Page, courtesy of my daughter. Apparently he is a Public Figure. I cannot argue with that! He will probably get more Likes than my Author page on Facebook before too long.

So, today's walk, what can I say? I have to admit that there were long sections that I was very distracted, so I was a little unobservant. This largely stemmed from me playing over a conversation in my head that I missed the opportunity of having with a couple of men with Newcastle City Council high vis jackets outside Broadwood School about the ongoing disrepair of the school wall.

If I had been blogging through the summer I would have had a good few interesting observations to report. In the North East we suffered a lot of damage from a storm that the local press imaginatively named "Thunder Thursday." The day after we discovered that there had been a massive build up of water on Broadwood Road with the result that the school wall collapsed and the pent up water rushed across the playing field, following a natural low point, and cascading down into the Dene. A 10-15 metre section of wall had been taken out and the remaining wall on either side buckled inwards. The Council very quickly responded by installing a temporary metal fence on both sides of the damage, but they have done absolutely nothing since. There is a bin behind the fences that is now inaccessible and has not been emptied in months - I do not envy whoever has the task of eventually emptying it! More importantly, it is another bin removed from use and that is not a good thing for a conscientious dog walker!

Speaking of bins, I was just looking at the state of the one in the Dene next to the Number 38 Terminus (which has been uprooted again) when I realised that I still had Rover and Amazon on the lead and they were looking at me strangely. It was probably a good thing, as it happens, as they normally hare down there looking for squirrels and there was a lot of nasty large glass fragments. I walked them past these and then let them off.

I woke up a bit after that, but the snow meant that most of the time my head was down. Occasionally I would stop and look about, for the snow was just beginning to lie and it was quite a gentle fall with little wind. The Dene is too soggy and dead at the moment to really provide much in the way of inspiration, but it was nice to see the stuff come down. I always find a snow covered landscape to be so beautiful and the Dene will hopefully be so much more appealing if this does settle. The snow that fell yesterday evening was gone by midnight and the forecast is being understandably canny about whether any more precipitation will be solid or liquid.

I passed one or two other dog walkers today, mostly as buttoned up and distracted as myself. There was a little Jack Russell who always lies down when he sees Rover and Amazon and stays that way until they pass. There was a pair of Staffies who seemed well socialised and there was another small dog whose owner cheerfully announced to me "It's going to lie" - talking about the snow. Oh, and not forgetting the old shaggy dog that Amazon was very nice saying hello to.

The pair of them were well behaved passing The Alsatian House, from which there came a very welcoming smell of woodsmoke. As often as not Rover wants to stick his nose under the gate and get barked at and Amazon causes a fuss by barking at Rover and snapping at him. I put Amazon on the near side with a long  lead and Rover on the far side on a short lead. I think this may be the winning formula, but we will have to wait and see - it may have been a different matter if either of the Alsations had been near the gate.

Well, that was the walk. I don't think I will be back to daily blogging, but I might do one or two a week if anything that I find interesting happens.

An atypical start

I was hoping to start with an introduction to the usual route that we take on our little perambulations but yesterday we were anything but typical. For a start we normally get ourselves out at some point in the morning, but that didn't happen. I probably could have got out sooner but there were other things on like tidying the house ready for Christmas, so our patient pooches had to make do with the back door being opened for them periodically.

When Cath got in, things were starting to look bleak on the walkies front, as we all settled down to vegetate. I think it was the vegetating that led to a decision to go and get a meal from the chippy and rather than take the car we could walk the dogs.

Normally our walk starts off in the direction of this particular chip shop and then turns away to go in a big loop back to the beginning. If we had attempted this walk we would still have two highly strung and decidedly unexercised lurchers to keep in check while we waited for food and then the food would have cooled down too much by the time we completed the walk.

So instead we went for an occasional route which would let them have time off the lead before we got to the chippy. We stayed on our side of the A1 and walked through the estate to a footbridge which would take us into the Dene at a point well below our usual crossing point - at the furthest point away from home on our usual walk. This meant that we still had the full length of the Dene to walk before we got to the chippy.

It was dark when we set out, so we dug out the flashing collars, to find that all but one had dead batteries. Rover was selected for the honour of wearing the collar of red flashes and we set off. The dogs were puzzled when we missed the usual turn but this walk was not without precedent so we proceeded on our way.

There is a very good reason why we rarely go this way and that reason is feline. Although we love our lurchers to bits, they really are not the brightest of dogs. Excellent memories but lousy cognitive ability. If they have ever seen a cat in a particular place, they are convinced they will see it again the next time they go that way. And the next time. And the next time. They are very tense and excited when they go on a normal walk but this seems to be nothing compared to the anticipation of seeing a cat. This street has had numerous cat sightings over the years so there are a lot of memories overlapping each other and they basically look for a cat at every gate and every turn. This is not a fun experience.

Nevertheless we survived the street with only a single cat being sighted and we agreed that it was not nice to chase cats, so we reached the bridge in one piece. This particular bridge leads directly into the Dene so as soon as I can see clearly into the grassy area at the top I will unleash the hounds. I have one rule when it comes to letting them run and that is that I will not let them go if they tug to be away before they are unleashed. As Amazon had actually been behaving herself, I was about to release her when she tugged, so I left her waiting and let Rover off. By this time Cath had let Holly off, so she did her strange chasing thing. Amazon got off the lead fractionally after Holly, so she paused long enough to let Holly get onto Rover's tail before setting off at a dainty run which changed to a sprint as she reached the open grass and she could get away from Holly.

Holly has a fascination with chasing Amazon. She will chase Rover too but Amazon is more fun. Rover just runs very fast and gets clear, leaving Holly breathless and trotting back to us as if she had really achieved something. Amazon, however, reacts to the chase. She will pretend that she is not in a hurry, glance back at us, trot around in circles, anything but let herself be chased. Last night she got a clean break away from Holly and could run as fast as she liked. Holly gave a desultory "Worra Worra Worra!" and trotted back to us.

The Dene has some lighting but it is not exactly extensive, so we promptly lost track of our little hunters. Even Holly kept trotting off away from the path. I think that they get a completely different feel and smell to the place when it's dark, so even familiar places become more exotic. Occasionally we would see the flash of Rover's night collar or Holly would appear to trot along with us but we might as well have been walking alone.

At length we reached the top end of the Dene which is a bus terminus and well lit. As if by magic the three dogs reappeared. There was a brief bit of confusion as we did not leave by the gate that they were expecting because we had yet to walk the extra 200m or so to the chippy.

I waited outside with the dogs while Cath bought our suppers. An old friend known as Mel stopped for chat. He was on his way to town where he DJ's at a rock night at a pub we used to frequent when we were all  much younger. I think he referred to it as LYH which I think is Legendary Yorkshire Heroes, which used to be the name of an off-license from the same period of time (the Eighties if you must know).

We said goodnight and wandered back with the food. Holly seemed extra inquisitive regarding every bump or discarded wrapper. Cath thinks it was because she could smell the chips and was becoming conviced that everything she could see was unclaimed chips. Holly is an expert at snaffling food from the ground and it can be quite a challenge keeping her nose out of a discarded kebab or bag of chips. Nothing was forthcoming for her, however; even the Bridge of Food let her down. The Bridge of Food is a feature of our Usual Route that Holly loves because she often finds food there. I will probably have more to say about another time on Lurcher Tails