Bill’s surprise puppies prove there’s life in our old dog yet
June is the quietest time of the year on the farm, lambing time well and truly finished and the sheep are back at the moor and in the higher pastures.
The cows and horses now just occasionally come into view as they graze out on the open tops.
We use them as a weather gauge. As long as they remain just specks on the horizon we know that the weather will remain settled.
But they seem to have a sixth sense and somehow know when there’s a climatic change afoot long before the Met Office does.
One of our farming friends had decided to take a few days’ holiday and asked us if we’d be happy to look after a litter of sheepdog puppies for him.
The children were very enthusiastic and would ring him up every day asking him when he was departing for sunny Cornwall – the countdown to puppies had begun. There were six of them in all, not quite enough for one for each of the children but enough to create general mayhem.
Of course, all too soon it was time for the pups to go home, setting arguments raging about whether one of the litter should stay with us – and, if so, which one.
But I stood firm and said no, refusing to be swayed because, unbeknown to the children, our veteran sheepdog Bill had a few months earlier had an encounter with a neighbouring farmer’s bitch that had resulted in him becoming a first-time father at the ripe old age of nine.
Clearly there was life in the old dog yet and the children were delighted when Bill’s eight-week-old son and heir arrived.
Bill, on the other hand, has an aloof attitude towards parenthood, and other than a cursory sniff and threatening to cock his leg on him, has so far ignored the new arrival.
I guess that you can teach an old dog new tricks – but there’s a limit.