Sunday 29th May 2011
Some good news yesterday. John Bowker, my oldest friend, is going to be coming up here in a couple of months with Alex, his son. We have spoken to John a few times but it was not until we contacted Alex that anything actually got sorted out. Ever since I have known him (when I was just out of my pram)John has been late for anything. We even used to have trouble getting him to the pub on time as youngsters. He is a fine example of being laid back almost to the point of paralysis. Still, now that Alex is in charge then John will no doubt be forced into movement. It will be good to see him and I am sure he will love it here. He has been once before with me when we were kids, many moons ago.
Dennis came up with the four goslings today. He still approves of us so we are honoured to be allowed to have them. He checked that the grass was OK and that their little shelter was sufficient and then he managed to tear himself away and leave them with us. Shortly after this the goslings managed to find a hole in the fence and went into the bottom field. I got them back but on Monday morning they had all gone missing and I found them 2 fields away legging it off to who knows where. I decided that I would put them in one of the chicken pens so i made a small temporary shelter and locked them in a pen. These pens are a reasonable size, about 20 foot square and that stopped their wanderings.
I took some fertile Orpington eggs down to Dennis as he likes our Orpingtons and wants to incubate some. While I was there I mentioned that the goslings had wandered off and that I had penned them up for a while. On Tuesday Dennis came up and said that if it was OK with us he would take the goslings back and keep them until they were to big to get through the holes in the netting and then fetch them back to us. He does not like them being penned. At least it will save us a months worth of feed.
So we ended up having the geese for almost 2 days but it costs us no more to wait another month. We only paid £5 each for the goslings and at this rate they will be full grown by the time we get them so I can't complain about the price.
On Tuesday evening I had to take Molly to her dog training class. This one however was outside in a field full of dog agility equipment. The problem was that the field was not fenced and there were tractors and trailers whizzing up and down the edge of the field with silage. These tractors were driven by young lads trying to do handbrake turns at the right angled corner at the bottom. The field was about 100 yards from a main road (OK so it was an Orkney main road and there were only about 6 cars passed in the 90 minutes that we were there but it was a main road.)
True to form, Molly legged it off but at least she only went round the field having a sniff at all the other dogs. There were about 20 dogs, many of which she had not seen before so she thought it was great. She did eventually come back when she thought that she had introduced herself to all the others but I think that she has a fair bit more to learn about coming back before she gets onto the jumping through hoops, weaving, see-saws and tunnels. Admittedly she took to all the agility stuff like a duck to water and really enjoyed it but I think that until she learns to stop and come back when told then we will give the agility a miss. We are therefore going to try a different trainer with different methods. You never know, it may work but I will not hold my breath.
On Wednesday Pam and I were going to go on an RSPB boat trip round Deerness and into "The Gloup" but unfortunately it was postponed as the weather was not brilliant and they need it to be really calm to get into The Gloup and close up to the breeding sites on the cliffs. It has been re-organised for Saturday so we will just have to hope for good weather then.
No comments:
Post a Comment