Eddie gets lost in the fog!

Eddie has always been a highly functional sheepdog, he’s good at working in the sheep pens, rounding up big flocks and he works very hard. But there are some things that Eddie is not so good at, like remembering his left and right!

But this week Eddie had a problem of a completely unexpected sort. on Tuesday morning we had set off to check on the sheep on a hilly bit of ground in Mortehoe. It had been foggy for most of the morning, and as I drove up the hill on the quad bike the fog got thicker, and I had only gone a few hundred yards when I noticed that Eddie had gone missing! I didn’t  think much of it, as even in thick fog a sheepdog should easily be able to find his way back to the starting point (in this case the land-rover) So when I returned to the land rover ten minutes later and found he wasn’t there, I was a little surprised. I retraced the route that I had taken, but still no Eddie, so after a bit of calling and whistling I decided that I’d better check that he hadn’t tried to walk the mile and a half back along the road to the farm.

But there was no sign of him on the road and when I returned  to Mortehoe fifteen minutes later, I was beginning to get a little worried. Just then Heidi from the village came running over ” have you lost a dog?” Somewhat relieved I said that I had, and was told the story of Eddie’s morning wander. Once lost in the fog, he must have wandered back to the land rover, but instead of waiting there he jumped the gate into the car park. Then smelling the morning bake of croissants in the village shop decided to pay a visit. Once inside Mel, the shop owner thought that she recognized him as another dog in the village. so put a lead on him and shut him in the stairwell of the next door flat. However, once Mel had locked him in, Eddie spotted an open window on the first floor landing and jumped through it, landing on the flat roof of the kitchen next door! Here he was completely marooned until another neighbor was summoned to rescue him with a ladder. The rescue which was just in progress when I arrived.

He didn’t seem at all embarrassed at being passed back through the  window into my arms, I put him on a lead and he walked, presumably putting it down to ‘just one of those things that happens when you are an Eddie!’

Thank you to Mel at Mortehoe Village stores and to Heidi at Town farm house b&b for their help in the rescue of Eddie

some sheep!

Not all sheep are the same…. thankfully!  Most behave in a predictable way,they follow the flock and they have a vague idea of self preservation. However there are some exceptions. For the past couple of weeks there has been an awkward old ewe grazing on a piece of land on Morte Point known as the three cornered island. I say awkward with good cause, she’s good enough at evading capture to still have her lamb with her a month after the rest of the lambs have been weaned.

The three cornered island is not actually an island, but one side is particularly inaccessible, where the sheer cliff turns into a perilously steep grass bank and it was here that the ewe in question had decided that the sweetest grass on the point could be grazed. However having led her lamb down to a grassy ledge, there was no way of getting back up, so when I spotted her on the morning round on bank holiday monday, it was obvious that she was going to need some assistance.

After rounding up a few unsuspecting members of the family to assist (visitors for a quiet bank holiday weekend!) we returned with rope in hand for what I considered  should be a fairly straight forward ‘catch and hotch’ back up to level ground. Unfortunately our errant ewe had different ideas. The very sight of my arrival on her personal ledge had her scurrying further and further down, jumping ledge to ledge far happier to risk a fatal fall than to risk capture. Her lamb was easily caught and with not too much effort carried and dragged to the top of the cliff, in the hope that it’s mother would attempt to follow, but she was having none of it. Even when eventually I caught her, she made no attempt to assist her own ascent, and it took a full hour of rope heaving from the ‘quiet bank holiday weekenders’, to pull her back to the top, passing straight through the middle of a bramble patch on route!

Once reunited with her lamb the old ewe wandered away without a care in the world. Sheep have short memories, so I shan’t be surprised to see her stuck in exactly the same place in a few days time. It’s just as well that not all sheep are the same as 700 like her might be enough to make me give up sheep farming!