Girl, don't be scared to move

I'm going to have to warn a neighbour about livestock-worrying. After last night's few drops of rain the ground of the ploughed field where I often walk the dogs was claggy and sticky, so I thought that going into the pasture would make a nice change. It's a bit more awkward going in those fields than it used to be because although I was given a key to the gate-padlock a couple of years ago, the lock was changed during the summer and I haven't got a new key. So we have to walk further up the road and cut through the hedge, jumping a ditch as we go, to get to the top entrance. Here we have the use of three lovely secure pastures, totalling about 50 acres, where the dogs can run free as long as there's no livestock in them, of course. Well, in the top field were my neighbour's sheep and a few cattle, so I decided to walk the long way round them to get to the gate into the next field, with the dogs still on their leads.

Sheep are afraid of dogs, aren't they? Try telling these ones. They all came running up to us, bleating away, and I found myself with three very good dogs and about 100 sheep walking nicely at heel. Then the cattle saw us and decided to come and investigate. I'm not very good with cattle. I like to have a barrier between me and them so that I can admire them at ease. (Even better, I like them on a plate, surrounded by vegetables.) In their natural state they're a bit too big for comfort, and they have a tendency to want to 'play' with dogs. So not only did we have a flock of sheep following, we were being circled by nine galumphing and bucking cattle, rather in the manner of Red Indians circling the wagon train, which just didn't seem to understand what bugger off meant.

As I said, I shall have to complain about the livestock-worrying; they were worrying me!