Oh boy

You know you have one of those great ideas, that turns out to be, well, not so great? Well, the idea was to walk the lurchers home from the garage as the car is in for its MOT. We have moved recently and the walk would take them through their old patch - Denton Dene.
It started off fine: Rover stealing a ball off a labrador and both dogs having a whale of a time. Then It happened. Rover had gone towards the ponds and I called him back. The smell actually preceded him in a wave. We met a couple walking their spaniel and they noticed too. I now have to walk the length of Benwell with Public Health Hazard No 1 on the end of a lead. Heads will turn. Those of weak constitutions may blanche and faint. Pray for me, for we may be chased away with brickbats.

Midsummer - state of the ponds

Well, it may be a cooler day, but the top pond in the Dene is now waterless, though still damp. Ponds two and three still have standing water, but the fourth is as waterless as the top one.

I rarely go past the ponds, as they are a bit of a detour, but today is an exception. I thought I would see the effects of three or four weeks without significant rain and high temperatures (dare I call it summer? Of course I do). There is still a seepage of water coming from the spring lines, just not enough to keep all of the ponds going.

The dogs miss the water in the top pond as it is generally fresher then the others if they need a drink on a hot summer's day. Never mind though, it is nearly Hoppings week (even if they are no longer calling that) and the peonies are coming into flower, so we should be due a good downpour any day now. 

Outsider art in Denton Dene

I know I occasionally rail on about the damage I see done by presumed youths in the Dene, so to balance that (pun noted in hindsight) I thought I would share this little gem of youthful creativity.

Enjoy!

Four is a crowd

This week has been a bit of a handful, to say the least. We were going to be looking after my son's dog Ebony, then we were told we were not. I therefore thought nothing of agreeing to walk my little friend Homer while John was away.
As luck would have it we ended up with Ebony on Tuesday, so I am walking four dogs again. On Tuesday Homer thought I had brought him his birthday present; he was quite smitten. For her part, Ebony was playing the floozie, shoulder bumping Homer as they walked along and licking his chops. Since then the interest has waned, thankfully.

Bluebell time

The bluebells are out in Denton Dene. :-D

Where are the ents when you need them?

I was shocked to see the tree in the picture. Not because it is a fallen tree, as there are any number of them in the Dene, but because this tree has been systematically pulled down for no good reason. Denton Dene is well managed in that trees that fall are allowed to lie and to rot down, which is advantageous to wildlife.
This tree was in the prime of life and could have filled a gap in the canopy if an older tree had died. In an ideal world the little orcs that did this would be trampled into the ground by an avenging guardian. Sadly, ents are only a literary wish fulfillment of a writer who loved trees and who really felt that Birnam Wood should have really risen to attack Dunsinane.

Oh what a beautiful day

Well the hot weather has finally reached the north east. It was nice yesterday, but today is the real thing. Vest, shorts and sandals for me and splashing through muddy ponds for the lurchers. Said ponds are beginning to dwindle as the summer finally gets under way, but there are still four separate identifiable ponds in the dene.

Spot the lurcher

Can you see my camo lurcher? Today is dull and cold with a brisk northeasterly and the dogs' colouring blends in with the colours of the woodland floor.

I was in two minds this morning as to whether to pick up tje winter woolies. I am so glad that I did! It is still snowing in a desultory way. It is strange to think that even though it has only occasionally bothered to lie and it has thawed quickly when it has, it has actually snowed here every day for at least a week now.

Goodbye Max.

When the dogs and I were heading out on our walk today, I had a chat with John, a friend from down the road.

Last year I walked his two dogs for a while along with the lurchers. There was Max, a beautiful and very large American Mastiff, and Homer, an endearing, if somewhat pugnacious Staffordshire Terrier.

John had been concerned about Max's weight but was unable to get him on long walks. He knew I used to be out for about an hour with my dogs, so he thought I might challenge him.

It went well; I showed Max that I meant business and he loved Denton Dene. Homer had a couple of scraps with Amazon before conceding that she was the boss. We became a familiar sight to the residents of Denton Burn; there aren't many people who would walk four such willful dogs. Rover and Amazon would be pulling to be ahead, Max would be dragging his feet behind, and Homer would range between the two positions sniffing everything and leaving his mark everywhere. I think that it was good for Rover to be around them, because he learned how to be a boy dog during that time.

I stopped walking them when I started teacher training in September, so I lost touch apart from the occasional sighting  Max was always pleased to see me if he was in the yard, standing up and saying hello. I knew that something was wrong about a month ago when he struggled to rise. John said that he had fallen out of the back of his car and had not recovered well.

Two weeks ago I got a call from John asking if I could bring my trailer round because he couldn't get Max in the car to get him to the vets. Unfortunately we had just sold the trailer, so I was unable to help. He said that things did not look good, that he thought this was it.

So when I saw him today, it was no great surprise that there was just Homer with him. Max had cancer in his chest and shoulder and it was just too much for him to get up, so John sadly agreed to let him be put to sleep.

I know how much John loved his big friend and I know it has been hard for him to get over his death. I will certainly miss the big fella, and will cherish the memory of our walks together, however frustrating it may have been to keep the old guy moving. As you can see from the pictures, he loved to have a wallow in the water when the Dene ponds were full. He would stick his face into the water and blow out bubbles, then bring his head up, snort for a while, then do it all over again.

Goodbye Max, old friend.

Snowy day

I've just downloaded an app on my phone for blogging on the go, which lets me take pictures and comment on them as I go out with the dogs. Here you can see the slope down to Denton Dene and the bin that the yobs have dug out and thrown across the path. You can also see that it has been snowing!

Paws in the snow

This week has been very cold - I doubt that the temperature has been higher than 1°C all week and morning temperatures have been as low as -5°C. This has meant that although we have had no significant snow since Tuesday, there is still a substantial covering everywhere, and the footpaths are covered in treacherous trodden snow.

The immediate impact is obviously the outward journey. Rover and Amazon are always very keen to get to the point of the walk where they are allowed off the leash, so they see it as their job to get us all to that point as soon as possible - stopping for a sniff aside. I can curb the worst of it, but in icy conditions this has serious  implications if I need to pull them in at the same time as I step on a friction free surface.

Thankfully the upper bridge has been gritted this time, which makes a nice change. Even the section on the far side that gets no sunlight is passable with care. Quite what prompted this gritting is unknown, as it is unprecedented. Although I would like to think that it was gritted by someone involved in the maintenance of the bridge, I think it may be a private act by someone as sick of risking their neck on the bridge as I am.

In the Dene, the walk has been transformed. A good covering of snow brings a more mature, but still very excited response from the dogs. I was watching a documentary about wolves some time ago and remember them saying that it was with the coming of snow that wolves' hunting success increases. Watching Rover and Amazon in the snow makes me believe that something of this has passed down in the genetics of dogs, for they were looking for rabbits with especial interest today, scouting out all of the likely places. Rover would occasionally peel off to run around in circles, and he even jumped up at me, which he usually does not bother to do, so he caught me off guard.

There were few other dogs around today. There was a bull dog that wanted to come when I whistled for R & A (which is more than they did) and I saw twice (at a distance) an Old English sheep dog who is a regular.

As I was turning for home, the sunshine that I had been enjoying all morning was darkened by a rather pregnant cloud which was coming in from the east, and I expected a resumption of the snow (it has been forecast, although it is mostly expected to hit the south, the Midlands and Wales. As it turned out, the cloud passed over and the day is again bright.

Very glad to get back home and put the kettle on!

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.

In the dark

Yesterday's walk had to wait long after our lurchers' regular walkies. Cath and I had both been out all day and she was tired when she got in.

I put the one working flashing collar on Rover because he tends to go further than Amazon, then set off on our perambulations. Off we trotted, me keeping a nice steady pace, they at full pelt and many sidelong glances to reproach me for my lack of speed. It was a bit cloudy but the rain had ceased, which was nice.

It was hard not to think about Holly but I think that the lurchers are dealing with it a lot better than we are. To them she was an interloper, eventually accepted but still often annoying. She was a cute dog in many ways, but she had enormous capacity to annoy.

Down in the Dene, the dogs were off and exploring the dark. It is very unusual walking the dogs in the dark when you are used to seeing them running about - even when they manage to camouflage themselves, you have a fair idea of where they are. In the dark all you have to go by are shadows, jingles of collars and flashes from Rover's collar. I had a headtorch on in case I needed to examine the ground but it was pretty useless for illuminating the path, for although on one level it was dark in the unlit sections, on the other there is a lot of light that leaks in from either side and so the torch beam is weakened.

In the open area it became possible to see a lot further. The two of them had a polite greeting with a labrador, no bullying, which is always nice. Along the section leading to the lower bridge there were three men with six dogs., which can make things a bit anxious. It was Eric with his two lurchers with a couple of friends. Rover and Amazon know Eric's dogs, a brindled saluki cross who is absolutely beautiful and a smaller red hound (still bigger than ours), but have not seen them for ages so they were having a good run around and were making a lot of noise (Rover especially). This seemed to grow the longer I stood and talked, so in the end I decided to say goodnight and wander on. As soon as was polite, the two of them disappeared into the undergrowth to do a spot of hunting.

They came after a couple of calls and we headed home. It was the first official post-Holly walk and we all coped very well with the new reality.

A sad day :o(

Today we were having a delayed walk as I decided that I needed to get my Civil Service online test out of the way. Holly sat at my feet all the way through and was her usual self when anyone came to the door. Some time around twelve we got around to the little rituals of dog walking; the picking up of the poo bags, the sitting for the leads.

Holly did not appear, so I called her and Becky looked in to the living room and looked upset. Holly walked out of the living room, her back legs barely moving. She has had an episode like this before and we tried rubbing some life back into her hip. She seemed a little better for this, but clearly was not going to manage a full walk. I suggested to Cath that we all go out together but that I take the lurchers on a regular walk while she would see if Holly could manage a short loo-break walk. After that she and Becky could take Holly up to the vet. Cath initially seemed hopeful that Holly would perk up a bit once she was under steam, but she did not even make it to the grass before she had to stop for a poo, right on the roadside. This was very unusual in itself as she never goes unless she is on grass or gravel. Holly managed to waddle a little further, but then she just sat on the grass, from where she did not want to do anything. Cath tried to pick Holly up but failed, so I handed Rover and Amazon's leads to her and picked up Holly and carried her back. The lurchers reacted as they do to any dog that is being carried and started jumping up and barking, so I told Cath to follow at a distance. I set Holly down in her basket, patted her head and went back out with the lurchers.

It was the only goodbye I had.

I did the first half of the walk in a bit of a daze, thinking about the missing dog. I must admit that I was worried for her health but did not think that it would be the end. We went to the Number 38 turning circle and walked down the Dene. Since the New Year this has become the Usual Walk, as I decided that there was too much cat-association tension involved going the shorter way into Denton Dene, so the longer option is now preferred. I let the lurchers off the lead once I had the dazzle of the low winter sun out of my eyes and I was certain there was nobody in their immediate path. I followed the higher path near the school fence, just for a change.

Rover ran around me but Amazon spent most of that time on the other side of the Dene or in the bottom. They came when I called and we came to the meeting of the ways together. I had considered going straight on and so take the more nature-friendly route through the Dene, but Amazon was enjoying not having Holly behind her and was running all over the place and so I stayed on the usual path across the open field and so up and round. On the way up Rover found a liver retriever who had a ball and so Rover stole said ball when it was next thrown. I told Rover to leave, then put him on the lead because he is a ball thief and it is easier that way. I let him off the lead once we were out of sight, however I did not trust him not to double back, so I detoured over the lower bridge, around the big field and back home.

Normally that would be the end of my blog for the day, but when I got back, Cath and Becky were just going out with Holly. I went upstairs to look at a few job adverts and before I knew it they were back. Holly's spleen had burst and she was unlikely to survive. We went back up but she had slipped into unconsciousness long before we were back, then her heart had stopped beating. Apparently she had been carrying a benign tumour for some time, but it had been putting pressure on her spleen. The vet said that she would have not felt anything and certainly she did not seem in distress other than being puzzled by her inability to walk.

RIP little lodger dog.

It's been a busy week

This week's walks have been a bit of a blur, so I won't try catching up. Suffice to say that the weather has been getting warmer and the ice patches have disappeared as the week has progressed.

Yesterday we had a bit of a Holly-induced detour from what was going to be a Standard Route, Variant A. This means that instead of going the quickest route into the Dene you walk to the bus terminus and then walk the additional length of the Dene. For some reason, R&A's camouflage always seems to work best along this stretch of the Dene and Amazon likes to explore the higher reaches of the east side of the Dene. Otherwise this is the same walk as usual.

Everything was progressing well; Amazon was off having fun and Rover was trotting back and forth while Holly took up her accustomed place at the rear. Then we started meeting other dogs. First there was a collie who Rover began playing with. We rarely have a problem with other dogs and Rover but inevitably Amazon turns up.

Amazon hates other dogs enjoying themselves, unless it involves chasing a ball and she is involved. Squeaky toys, pulling ropes, shaking anything are all banned activities as far as Amazon is concerned. She will quite happily confiscate the other two dogs' toys and sit with them between her paws, in full sight but untouchable.

This attitude seems to extend to Rover having fun with other dogs. If the other dog is playful then Amazon will bark at it and try to subdue it. In itself this is not dreadful behaviour as dogs should be allowed to resolve dominance issues. What is more problematic is that Rover then turns on the dog he has been playing with and it turns into a hunt situation with both dogs chasing the dog they have just met. Thankfully Holly does not join in. The only solution is a timely intervention, getting Amazon out of the way and on the lead.

So we passed the collie and walked towards the lower bridge. Here we met two golden labradors who we meet quite often. Not being excitable dogs themselves, they just sniff and move on; they don't want to play chasey with Rover so Amazon does not get annoyed, which is good news all round. We had a quick chat with their owner and walked on.

At this time the routine is that R&A have a quick drink from the semi-permanent puddles along this stretch before running off into the trees to hunt about again, while Holly trots along behind us doing little more adventurous than snacking on the grass at the side of the path if she feels the need.

Not yesterday. She saw another dog on the bridge and decided to introduce herself. Having done so, she decided that instead of coming back over with the dog she had just met, she would keep going. We tried calling her, but got no response. Instead we called R&A and took them over the bridge in search of our wandering old dog.

We found her having introduced herself to yet another dog, whose owner was concerned about the whereabouts of her owner. Holly did not seem at all phased by her break from routine. Rather than backtrack to finish the planned route we continued the way home on the west side of the dual carriageway. R&A looked hopefully at the Big Field but as there were no balls to throw they grudgingly plodded back home having missed out on their last five minutes of freedom.

Rover having a crazy Alpha day

Yesterday was another beautiful winter's day with absolutely clear, cloudless skies. We went out at about midday even though there were other things to get on with in the dash to get everything ready for Christmas. Yet again it was icy everywhere but the sun was doing its best to banish the hoar on the ground. We again set off for what can only be called the standard walk - across the BOF, into the Dene, around by the Lower Bridge and back.

There was a lot more activity than usual, starting with a Staffordshire Terrier who Rover brought to see us. Rover being in unusually boisterous mood then decided that this Staffy was going to be his bitch (actual gender of dog unknown. Faced with an unusually dominant Rover and Amazon being her usual self, the Staffy flattened itself to the ground and then legged it when it heard its master's voice in the distance. We called the terrible twins back so that they did not bully the poor thing any further.

Later we met a couple walking a liver coloured labrador. Everything seemed to be going well until Rover picked up a ball. Rover is normally a gentle, placid beast. However if you introduce a ball into the equation he becomes an obnoxious bully who will do everything in his power to have that ball. He also happens to be able to devote all of the limited mental capacity at his disposal to the complex mathematics involved in catching a ball. When it turned out that this ball was not "just an old ball" as I thought but in fact the labrador's ball, there was nothing for it but to tell him to "leave", put his lead on and walk on with many a longing look over his shoulder.

Rover finished this walk with a hat-trick of crazy behaviour. As we made our way back up the side of the Dene he started jumping up in the air and running around with great excitement, easily jumping high enough to "lick" Cath's face. Lick is probably not a good description of what a lurcher at high speed does, but that was plainly the intention. He eventually calmed down and again both Rover and Amazon appeared at the waiting gate without having to be called.

For the information of the owner of the Staffy, Rover has been neutered. If the dog was in fact a bitch she has nothing to fear from Rover and other than that it was just normal canine dominance behaviour.

Still icy

We had another full day today, so the poor pooches had to wait until nearly nightfall before I could get out with them today. Cath was off to work, so I had all three of them to myself. We set off to find that once again there was frost on the ground. The snow yesterday had not amounted to much, although there was a light covering on the garden this morning.

The snow clouds have all gone off to pastures new, leaving relatively clear skies with some cirrus level clouds to add a bit of interest to the sky. I don't think that the temperatures have been much above freezing today, although I did find evidence of thawing and then refreezing, as you will discover.

Very early on we had an unusually noisy encounter with a pair of huskies. We were just minding our own business when they appeared down the road and started barking loudly and excitedly. A&R decided to bark back at them. Holly, normally as good a barker as any, kept out of it. There was a big gap between us so there was no opportunity to sniff and make up, so as far as I know that is unfinished business.

Dog owners seem happier about their dogs meeting other dogs in warmer weather, I've noticed. in cold weather we all want to just get around and get back home. The dark seems to make us additionally withdrawn and suspicious, so we don't tend to talk to each other as much as we would otherwise.

The Bridge of Food had a couple of chips swimming in curry sauce at one end which I spotted before Holly could make a bee-line for. I was able to direct her away from the scraps of food before she could zone in on them but she clearly spotted them and even Rover tried to scuttle over to give them the once over. Once past this distraction I had to keep all three dogs in control while coming down the ramp which was even more treacherous than yesterday. Somehow with all three leads in one hand and the other on the rail, and I got Amazon to behave to the point where I did not end up on my bum thanks to an over-eager Amazon. The ice was worse than yesterday, even though the snow had gone. It was obvious that where the sun had been out the snow and ice of yesterday had melted but when it ran into shaded areas it had refrozen, causing larger areas of ice. However I kept my feet and the Bridge of Food faded into the distance.

I was into the Dene before I realised that I had not  brought a torch. Thankfully all three dogs had donated prodigious amounts for the bins of Newcastle, so there was only one additional call of nature for Holly and she was accommodating  in stopping where I could see quite clearly how much she had done and where it lay, so the offending article was bagged and binned.

The ice on the upward path kept my eyes pretty much to the ground as I walked out of the Dene, so I was pleasantly surprised at the top to discover a glorious winter sunset over Blaydon. The sun itself was out of sight but there was a bar of orange-gold light along the horizon and one of the planets (probably Venus) was in attendance, bright and beautiful in the sky above the horizon.

At about the same time I became aware that there was a lot of ice over part of the area that the Council have put drainage in. It would seem that their measures are fine for dealing with liquid water but no match for water that freezes as it flows, so the ice was still accumulating. Thankfully I wasn't so lost in the beauty of the sunset and the early night sky that I lost my footing. I found myself a nice bit of grass to stand on and had a quick scan of the sky. A few faint stars were appearing at the zenith but my attention was caught by a bright star high above the horizon. I drew a quick line between it, the Evening Star and the point on the horizon where the sun had disappeared and concluded that this was another planet, probably Jupiter. I did not linger to enjoy this fine sight however as it was a bit parky.

We passed a young man on the path towards the lower bridge but he had his head down and hurried past with barely a glance at the dogs. Just like yesterday, R&A seemed only half interested in their last minute sweep of the Dene as I walked up the path and they came as soon as I called. They don't have very thick fur and I think their comfy corners at home were calling to them as much as they were to me. We passed three people walking a labrador but as I observed earlier, they were not interested in social contact. That left a slightly more confident crossing of the Bridge of Food (avoiding the chips at the end again and a return home.

Just had a quick look on an astronomy website - I was right about both planets!

A teeny bit of snow.

We were off to fetch home one of the kids from Uni yesterday so the dogs were treated to a nice early walk. There was a bit of wind blowing about, there was a covering of cumulus that had been a mist earlier in the morning and it was cold. Almost immediately I noticed the odd flake of smow - not the big ones that accumulate in no time, it was the very small nearly hard ones that are almost but not quite hailstones. The ground was frozen from frost the night before, so even though it was an inconsequential amount of snow it was actually able to accumulate.

We slipped and slid over the Bridge of Food, which lived up to its name today by having half of a small chocolate bar lying there in full view. We steered Holly (and the other two mutts for that matter) away from this tempting poisonous treat. Then it was down the final slope, which was not fun as there was a noticeable sheet of ice across the path. Cath let Holly wander down off the lead but there was no way R&A would abide by that little agreement so I had to put both leads in one hand and gingerly make my way down the slope with one hand hovering over the handrail, just in case.

As we were going we saw a woman and her dog wandering along the path below us. We know this pair quite well. The woman is nervous and not very talkative. Her dog is about Holly's height but much slimmer and it always had a muzzle on and as far as I am aware it is never allowed off the lead. Cath says that she has talked to her when she has walked the dogs without me, so I'm obviously too scary to speak to. By he time we got off the bridge they had got a fair way ahead along a different path to us, so that was the dogs only interaction with other dogs today.

The Dene was a little sombre on its winter colours. The odd snowflake continued to fall through the trees and here and there enough snow had accumulated to for isolated patches of grey-white. I jokingly sang a line or two from "Walking in a Winter Wonderland" but Cath didn't pick up on the sarcasm. I guess she was too worried about snow actually building up and causing delays on our trip to Leicester. Still the snow did add to the problem of getting up the path from the bottom of he Dene. The frost was bad enough but there was enough snow to cause additional slippage. Cath ended up walking on the grass to get a bit of traction but I managed to stay on the path with a little bit of care and concentration.

The Council did some work to help the drainage on one section of the path south of the Dene. Every winter this bit of path has become a large puddle which has frozen up in the winter and been a bit of a challenge. The work involved cutting three drainage channels through the tarmac, filling them with stones and covering them over with a layer of tarmac. They accumulated large amounts of pebbles and gravel on either side and dug a channel for the water to flow away from. This meant a slip free section here, although there was still a tiny patch of ice where water has flowed down from another path and it had frozen as it flowed across our path. Seems to be a job well done!

The return leg went particularly smoothly today - R&A appeared from their little hunting trip before we had a chance to call them, meaning that we were not waiting around for them for ages. It doesn't happen very often, but when it does it is a nice little bonus. We headed back, avoiding the little bit of chocolate on the Bridge of Food, and got the dogs back just before the tiny flutter of snow began to turn into something a little more like snowfall, with a scattering of big flakes.

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