Dear Val and Malcolm
An eventful walk this morning involving horses and foxes. There is a racing stable nearby and today we chose to walk that route which takes us past it. Lottie was on her lead (fortunately) as there was a foal that was loose on the road (single track) next to the fence containing three adult horses and as we got nearer it decided to bolt past us with that scary look that only horses get in their eye. The owner looked on at us and did not seem to be perturbed, as we past him we offered a "Bonjour" for good measure.
Shortly after a large version of a very spirited horse was also next to the road and then I heard a van coming toward us. We took cover on the verge, the van came round the corner and was presented with us and the horse, amazingly he slowed down and stopped. The horse ran by, hooves clattering on the road, the van followed slowly and stopped by the owner. I think they were trying to get the horse into the trailer for race day but the horse was not having any of it.
We continued away from the scene but the horse made another bid for freedom and came haring after us. Great, I thought, I had just released Lottie from her lead and she has a thing about horses. So holding onto her collar, I spread my remaining arm out wide and the horse just stopped, performed a U turn and went back the other way. The lad that was in the van managed with the owner to usher the horse in the right direction and we went on our way.
Next our route takes us through some woods and fields back to the house. Lottie was bringing up the rear and I saw a fox in the field, I called Lottie and had her lie down. The fox was big in fact the biggest I had ever seen, the colour was different too, it was more brown than red so I thought this must be a male or dog fox. We sat and watched it for a while as it meandered around the field, probably looking for voles or mice but as we had the wind behind us it was only a matter of time before it detected our presence, so after a look in our direction, it loped off into the undergrowth. As we moved off there was another fox, same field but hidden briefly by a bush so we ducked and watched this one too. This was probably female or vixen as it was smaller and distinctly red in appearance but again we were detected and she moved off toward the undergrowth, frequently turning in our direction to ascertain if there was any increased risk from us.
Nev
Val says ... and where is your camera when you need it?
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