Sunday 20 April 2014

The puppy, the owners and the mouse!!!!

The last few days have been beautiful sunny days on the mountain. Steve and I decided we would do a few things around the property which meant the dogs would be loose with access to the bottom field. As we got on with our jobs (or jobsus as Steve says ... I guess you have to speak Welsh to understand!) we kept an eye on what was going on in the field and I commented on how good Sammi was, just sitting in the middle of the field playing in the grass.
A good few minutes later I looked again, the adults were mooching and there she was still in the same place and still playing with something, she was too far for me to see what but I smiled and got on with the matter in hand. But when she was still in the same place on my third time of checking I got a tad suspicious and went down the field to have a look. As I approached she picked "it" up and ran off to a different spot, this time I got close enough to see a tail hanging out of the corner of her mouth and realise that she had a dead mouse. My stomach churned at the memory of young Asha swallowing a whole living mouse that she stole off Billy cat; I had to get this off Sammi.
I called out to Steve for help. So imagine the scene, 2 middle aged people, one on a walking stick trying to catch one puppy with a dead mouse in a 2 acre field! On top of that 4 adult GSD's who found it all greatly exciting and were really not helping, and 2 cats who I'm damned sure were laughing at us! It took us sometime to catch her, any toys we tried to bribe her with were immediately pinched by Mikey and Sammi temporarily forgot the meaning of "Come, Wait, Down" and any of the commands she has learned. Through luck not judgment we eventually cornered her and I had the pleasure of removing the wet, squashed, flat, chewed little creature from her mouth. I threw the poor little bugger over the wall and warned Jamie cat that he was not to go back and get it, seeing as he probably killed it in the first place! As much as I love him he's a mass murderer of wildlife!
As we toddled back up to carry on with our worked I thought of one way it could have all been so much worse, Linda Lawton could have been there with her video camera!