A TALE FOR CHRISTMAS

[skycat 6,174]

Here is a Christmas tale I wrote some time ago: ............if only all true lost dog tales ended as well as this one of my own invention...........

 

A CHRISTMAS TALE

 

High on the cold moor a wicked wind hustled the first flakes of snow across the darkening land, and the skies took on a brownish hue, ominous forecast of real winter just around the corner. Deep in the heather, had you been looking closely and treading softly, you might have seen a brindled shape all but hidden, virtually camouflaged and already speckled with one or two spots of snow.

 

The lurcher shivered, burying her nose deeper under her feathered tail attempting thus to breathe in slightly warmer air. She was not made to suffer the cold of such a winter, and her once sleek coat was of a fine and silky texture, smooth apart from the feathering on ears and tail, a legacy of her Saluki ancestory.

 

She had been on the moor since late summer, wandering lost and bewildered, surviving on rabbits, which luckily for her had been smitten by the worst case of myximatosis in many years. Had it not been for the easy meals that the disease ridden animals provided the lurcher might well have moved on in the manner of most dogs which find themselves in unfamiliar surroundings.

 

As it was, she had stayed, and her hunting skills, albeit honed on a different prey had enabled her to adapt and eat well for several months. But now the disease had run its course and the only rabbits left to face the winter were quick and clever at evading capture, and the lurcher had learned to take the grouse sitting tight in the heather. If the keeper learned of her existence things would go badly for the dog.

 

However, the lurcher had several things in her favour; firstly her colouring, a sort of muddy brindle, and the feathering on her extremities which broke up her outline to some extent. Secondly, her inherently timid nature had kept her away from humans, a timidity which had been her saving in one way, as she had been quick to escape fro the clutches of those who had stolen her from a back garden in a southern city. It had been an opportunistic theft, perpetrated by men who had no great love for dogs, and saw them purely as a means to an end.

 

The first day they had run the lurcher, still shivering with fear from her captor’s rough handling, she had run, caught the hare on which they slipped her, then run again as the thieves approached, far from their shouts and curses. She had run until the land was no longer flat, run until she could barely move her legs, fleeing in mindless panic without direction. When the lurcher first came to the high ground she was confused; she did not know this northern land, and her first contact with the heather, gorse and endless hills had been tainted with fear and uncertainty, accustomed as she was to the open wheat fields of the south.

 

Already in early autumn the nights grew chill and dark, and the lurcher became adept at seeking out the leeward side of ricks, old buildings and thick hedges as darkness fell. Her natural shyness and recent experiences kept her clear of human habitation, and although she followed alongside some roads which led northward, at no time did she turn towards her former home.

 

The memory of her theft was too sharp in her mind and all her instincts told her to move ever further from the shouts which still sounded in her ears. Now, as winter approached, the dog had become completely feral, as sly as a fox in her approach to game, and almost as quick when she pounced. The one thing she lacked was a thick fur coat, a necessity if she was to survive the freezing conditions that came with winter up on the hill. And so she shivered, deep in her heather bed, unaware that on the slopes below her walked a man. He was accompanied by a lurcher not dissimilar in appearance to the wild thing that lay beneath the snow, and as he walked he called intermittently, hopelessly and as if he had been calling for years.

 

The man had been coming up to the hills every weekend since the autumn, a full month after his dog had disappeared. He had searched every corner of the country until a sighting had been reported not long after the lurcher had appeared on the hill. A dog walker had come across her as she stalked a rabbit, startling the bitch who was entirely focussed on her prey, but the lurcher had fled without turning to look back, despite the friendly calls of the woman.

 

And so they walked the hills every week, the man and the dog, still searching for the lost one, though with no real hope left inside his heart. He had set himself to search for his lurcher until he could find some closure, even the discovery of her remains would be better than the eternal not knowing.

 

The young dog gambolled beside his owner in the snow, joyfully bounding through the unfamiliar white stuff, and he barked in silly play as his paws sank into the soft coldness, and the wild thing on the hill heard the barks and prepared to flee once more. Yet, faintly, slowly, something familiar about those barks seeped through her mind, and instead of leaping from her hiding place in the heather, she stood and looked down the slope where the young dog described loops around his master.

 

The lurcher bitch stood erect, her ears pricked, her whole body shaking, though this time not from cold. She stood and watched the man and dog playing in the snow, the youngster trying to catch the snow balls his master threw into the air, and something inside her broke through the protective wild thing layers she had built around her core. She took two steps down the slope, and her movement attracted the man’s eye, then that of the young dog, who went leaping up the hill to wag in a frenzy of recognition around the motionless statue of his mate. The man sat down in the snow, and called his young dog back, knowing that the bitch would flee if he tried to approach, and slowly, hesitantly she followed the youngster down the slope until she stood just feet from her master. She drank in the smell of him, and heard his low voice saying the words she had heard since her earliest days, and gradually the wild layers fell away as she crawled into his arms and knew safety once more.

 

A man and two lurchers came down off the hill as the snow fell silently in what would be the hardest winter for many a year, and the bitch, trotting alongside the man put her nose into his hand as they walked.

[riohog 5,763]

not bad for a girl :laugh:

[The one 8,512]

aye nice wee read

[baw 4,360]

I was enjoying it till you described the dog good read penny

[whippet 99 2,613]

where did i read that years ago..................

i still enjoyed that as much as the first time i read it.................always stuck in my mind that one ................cheers penny

[Guest Moscow]

Good story skycat

 

There was a feral coursing dog around here for years, I lamped it one night asleep in a stubble field huddled up in a pile of straw thought it was a fox at 1st It was also seen taking a roe deer.

 

It also used to hang about a farm the farmers wife used to leave food scraps out for it which I always thought unsual because that particular farmer has a hatred of poachers and there dogs, the council dog catcher recieved a report about it and approached the farmers wife she sent him on his way with a few choice words and told him it was doing no harm

Edited December 20, 2012 by Moscow

[Country Joe 1,411]

AHH, I need a hanky.

[skycat 6,174]

I'll tell you the truth: writing that story made me well up even as I was writing it :icon_redface: Soppy thing that I am, I can't even read stuff about the special bond between dogs and humans without getting all teary. And when I think about the 'wild' predatory side of a dog, and that dog being totally bonded with its owner and wanting to bring back its catch: even more so: I know that we have manipulated their genes for ever, but it still gets to me every time.

[mikeball 108]

Nice story that

[storm323 191]

A good read I enjoyed that

[whippet 99 2,613]

I'll tell you the truth: writing that story made me well up even as I was writing it :icon_redface: Soppy thing that I am, I can't even read stuff about the special bond between dogs and humans without getting all teary. And when I think about the 'wild' predatory side of a dog, and that dog being totally bonded with its owner and wanting to bring back its catch: even more so: I know that we have manipulated their genes for ever, but it still gets to me every time.

its called loyalty ...........

you are everthing to your dukels....................treat them as you should and they will do anything to please you.............

but especially for lab ..............they wont do that.....

[patterdale666 1,620]

Good read

[sandymere 8,263]

Nice read Skycat, there was one on the moors down here, for a long while people reported a big cat and the sheep kills were reported as big cat kills until a saluki type lurcher was found or in that case shot.

[brazer 287]

Very nice read there enjoyable. A tear jerker too

[dodger 2,765]

Brilliant