Maddie’s World
In her weekly column, Maddie Grigg shares tales from her life in rural Dorset . . .
ARTY and I are out on our morning walk when she shoots off from the playing field and down the slope into the copse.
Try as I might, I can’t get her back, despite a pocketful of treats and a shrill call on the whistle.
She’s making for a spot in the wood where she has been several times of late, and I can’t work out why it interests her so.
“Arty!” I yell, to absolutely no avail.
“It’s all right, Maddie. She’s with me,” a soft voice says in a small clearing as I blunder through the undergrowth.
I screw up my eyes to see who it is, because I’ve forgotten to put my glasses on. Distance vision has always been a bit of a problem since the day I took my driving test at the age of seventeen and realised I couldn’t see the number plate.
I get closer and can make out that it’s Dick, a retired farmer. He is surrounded by feathers and is carrying something under his arm. Arty is taking rather too much of an interest in what’s going on.
I move a little bit closer and realise Dick’s plucking a pheasant.
“It makes too much of a mess at home,” he explains. “I generally get rid of all the bits here and then let nature take its course.”
This would explain why Arty has been so insistent on visiting this part of the wood every time.
Putting Arty on the lead before she does any damage, I tell Dick that.
Then he lets me into a little secret about a holidaymaker who was staying in the village last year. His unruly spaniel had apparently been on a walk, then emerged from the wood with pheasant body parts in its mouth.
“The owner was really pleased because the dog never retrieved anything,” Dick says. “But he was a bit disappointed that it had eaten most of the bird. I didn’t like to tell him that the bits the dog had retrieved were the ones I’d left in there after plucking.”
We hear the sound of human footsteps, and another dog barges through the undergrowth. It’s Mr F-word (I call him that because he used to be a top chef locally and was rumoured to use ripe language in the kitchen), and he’s here with his son’s springer spaniel, Patch.
We exchange swear-free pleasantries and I remark on how handsome the dog is. He’s black and white, quite low to the ground and very solid. He has a lovely face.
“I’ll be glad when he goes back,” Mr F-word says, gesturing at Patch, who is snuffling around the copse floor like a pig hunting truffles. “He’s certainly a handful.”
It’s time for me to head back home for a hard day’s work.
At the end of the afternoon, Arty nudges up to me, which is her way of saying she wants to go out for another walk.
We walk up the lane and we meet Dick coming the other way, heading for the village shop.
“You’ll never guess what happened after you left, Maddie,” he says with a twinkle in his eye.
But, actually, I can. “Not Patch?”
“Yes,” Dick says. “Mr F-word and I were so busy nattering, I didn’t notice Patch make off with the pheasant I’d just plucked.”
“So you went to all that trouble for nothing,” I say.
“Yes,” Dick says, a smile breaking out across his face. “But it made me laugh. Every dog has its day.” n