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.

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 long diversion from the normal walk.

Yesterday's walk was something out of the ordinary. Cath was at work, so it was just me and the dogs. I fooled the dogs by making it look like the usual walk, then doubled back and into Sugley Dene. I wanted to see whether the Council had opened up the path through the lower part of the Dene.

Amazon got things off to a start when she spotted a cat brazenly walking through a garden, but once we were past that place, things boiled down to just wanting to be off. I knew that they would assume we would be going up the Dene, so I let Holly off the lead first so that Amazon would not hare off into the distance. I kept the dogs close until they knew that I had turned down the Dene, after which they got the message and changed direction. I thought I would go along the side of the stream rather than across the field as I had no ball with me and it would give the dogs more to do.

I put the dogs back on the lead to cross the road and had a look at what used to be the entrance to the Dene. When they first closed the footpath through the Dene there was a sign up to explain the closure, but that has now gone and there is nothing to say when it will be opened again. There was certainly no sign that any work has been carried out to improve the state of the paths through the Dene.

Well, the continued closure put an end to the walk that I wanted to make, but I decided I would walk down to Bells Close anyway. There is a tarmac path that runs most of the way down the side of the Dene, so I decided to walk along that way. The dogs were a bit non-plused by all this, as this was definitely NOT our usual walk!

I got to Bells Close, where I was thinking of giving the dogs a bit of time off the lead so that they could run down to the stream, have a drink and then come back up, but I decided that they would be just as likely to disappear out of reach, so I turned towards home. That of course meant that I had to head down a little further before I could find the grassy bit that runs up beside the A1 and finally let them off the lead.

Rover and Amazon were off like a shot. After Holly had done her "chase Amazon" routine, she dropped back to walk behind me. We were overtaken by a man and his rather mad wire haired lurcher who was much bigger than my two and he bowled into them, only to find that two little lurchers can hold their own against one bigger one. They played nicely though - lots of noise but no aggression. Then as we walked up the hill we passed a collie pup who also wanted to play, then decided to sit on my feet when the prospect of three adult dogs running around in circles became a bit too much.

We reached the field where we usually throw balls for the dogs. Here Rover decided to mount Holly, who had been waving her tail in his face for the past week. Normally our reaction is to shout at Rover when he does this, but I thought I would just let it be. He has been neutered anyway, so Holly was quite safe!

So we got back onto the paths, put on the leads and wandered home.

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!

About Lurcher Tails

Hi, my name is Kevin Futers and almost every day I am out walking with my two lurchers and the lodger dog. When I am out I often see, hear or imagine things that are to do with the seasons, the weather, other dogs, other dog walkers and so on. The purpose of this blog is to let me share with the world (or the half dozen people who pick up on this) a brief part of my day spent with my dogs.

The regular cast includes my wife, Cath, Amazon the neurotic alpha bitch, Rover the happiness dog and Holly the Lodger Dog.

Amazon and Rover are lurchers with a mix that includes blue merle collie and either greyhound or whippet, we just can't decide. The problem is that they are much smaller than greyhounds and they are much bigger than whippets, so they are, I suppose, collie sized in height. They both have brindled markings on parts of their body but these are broken up by their splodges. Amazon had a lot more tan in her colouring, Rover is very grey and black with hints of tan. They are about four years old now. They came to us free from a lad in Ashington who had rescued them from a neighbour who was giving them away without any thought of the sort of home they were going to. We only set out to get one dog - Rover - but when we got there we found out that Amazon was not going to the person that said she would take her, so we got a bonus dog. Rover got a well thought-out name, Amazon got an on-the-spot name based on the box we had brought to bring Rover home in. It all worked out well as the pair of them are inseparable and love running around together. They keep each other company and that is good for the times that they are alone in the house.

Then came Holly. She belongs to my future daughter-in-law and came to us from her home as her mother was  moving into accommodation that did not allow dogs. Holly looks mostly like a short legged border collie and we are fairly sure that she is crossed with a fox terrier. She is now about twelve years old and is starting to have senior moments but at other times she acts like a puppy.

When Holly arrived we had a little trouble sorting out the pecking order which was eventually won by Amazon. It must have been a close-run thing, because Holly remains insubordinate and does some things that almost seem like top bitch actions. Rover realised pretty quickly that he was in no place to challenge either of the bitches. I mentioned earlier that he is a happiness dog. I am fairly sure that his happiness derives from never striving for the top - he is an underdog and quite happy with that, thank you!

I think that is enough information to be going on with. The next post will be the first walk.