Hard day up in the mountains..

[forest of dean redneck 11,685]

Rip ruby always liked seeing her pics sometimes it’s not about a working dog but companionship

[Neal 1,873]

On 19/11/2021 at 01:16, OldPhil said:

Nice post Andy...

Every time this happens to me,...(and it has occurred many times, over my last 60 seasons...) I am always reminded of Kipling's words...

He wrote,..."Never give your heart to a dog to tear"...

A canny piece of script,...but we never learn from it, do we....

Onwards and upwards, Brother,....all the best, stay safe, OldPhil.

I often think of those lines too. The other thing I think of is a section in Konrad Lorenz's "Man Meets Dog" in which he talks about keeping future generations of past dogs; there's a sketch in the book of him walking along with a line of ghost dogs following at his heel. I was thinking of this when I returned from the vet after having one of my kelpies put to sleep and I kept getting the feeling she was still trotting along behind me. I kept looking around but she wasn't there. In my case I've never bred from my dogs but I often think that the way I am with them owes a lot to what I've learnt from previous dogs...kind of making up for the mistakes.