Adventures of the Yorkshire Shepherdess

by Amanda Owen

  The hard work of lambing time was just around the corner, and it would be then that the sheepdogs would be invaluable, so for the moment they could enjoy some well-earned time off. However, Pippen and Chalky, as terriers of leisure rather than working dogs, chose to snooze whenever the fancy took them. Often, they could be found laid out on the hearth beside the fire in the afternoons and early evening. At nighttime they would come to life, baying at the door at last light, ready to head out into the dusk to patrol the farmyard. In the morning they would return to the farmhouse door, sometimes scarred with snout wounds that told of nighttime battles with rats. After a brief interlude patrolling the kitchen in search of discarded breakfast food, they’d loiter around the yard awaiting the departure of the first available quad bike. Quite why they liked to gallop all the way to the moor and then almost immediately turn around and gallop all the way back was a mystery to me, but every morning it happened. Neither dog was fast enough to keep up with the quad bike and being on a short leg meant that they often needed to take detours. Becks and gutters that we crossed with ease would have to be carefully negotiated by the dogs via stepping stones. Sometimes I would reckon to have shaken them off, but without fail they’d show up, often wet and panting from sheer exertion. The sheep weren’t too bothered about the terriers, they’d be far too interested in the impending meal of hay and sheep nuts to give more than a casual glance in their direction or the occasional look of disdain if one ventured too close. Clive would get annoyed with the terrier twosome and growl at them under his breath, telling them to ‘Git away yam’.

  As the terriers were free spirits, nobody ever really took notice of their whereabouts. They were just always in the background, checking in and out as and when they wished. Pippen, being the older of the two, was more set in her ways and less open to persuasion than her counterpart Chalky. Pippen’s days of being led astray were pretty much over, her final foray into the unknown being a trip over the moors to a far-flung spot where she became entangled in a long-forgotten snare. This journey had almost been a one-way ticket as it was two days later when we found her, head bloated and eyes bulging, the wire noose slowly and painfully strangling the life out of her. She recovered, but was left with a bald ring around her neck where no fur grew. It spelled the end of any great excursions and now she never strayed too far from her own patch, enjoying her home comforts far too much to consider taking off.

  Chalky, on the other hand, was as fickle as could be and would think nothing about heading out into foreign climes without so much as a backward glance. Being a sociable creature she enjoyed the attention that the passing walkers lavished upon her – and any food they might have – and would follow them on to wherever they were heading. For six months of the year, when Ravenseat was bypassed by walkers and visitors and reverted to being a rural backwater, there was no temptation for Chalky to leave us. Indeed, there were rich pickings soon to be enjoyed around the farm at lambing time and I am sure that Chalky was well aware of this. The placenta expelled by the sheep after the birth of the lambs was one of her favourite snacks. It was entirely natural that a dog should enjoy eating these as they were wholesome, good and packed full of nutrients, but it still turned the stomach to see her exaggerated chewing on the bloody membranes.

  So, it came as a bit of a surprise when we realized that Chalky was missing.

  ‘Has she not bin wi’ you to t’sheep?’ I asked Clive.

  ‘Nay, brown ’un ’as,’ he said. ‘Mebbe, I dunno, I cannot remember.’

  I’m ashamed to say that neither of us could recall when we had last seen Chalky. With no confirmed sightings from the children in two days, and no clue where to even start, the search began. We checked around the farmyard, under the feeders, in the hay lofts and every outbuilding, but there was no sign of Chalky. We looked in ridiculous places: right under our noses, in the hall robe cupboard, the odd-sock bag where occasionally Chalky had curled up and slept, behind the sofa and in the place that nobody ever went, under teenager Raven’s bed, where even angels fear to tread. As the search around the farm proved fruitless, we cast our net further afield, this time visiting our most far-flung barns and stone-built shelters, always hopeful that from behind a rotting wooden door we might hear a faint whimpering.

  We tried the local hostelries – Tan Hill Inn, The Farmer’s Arms at Muker, The King’s Head at Gunnerside – where she’d turned up in the past, but nobody had seen her. We looked at other favourite haunts, the local campsites, which were still deserted owing to the cold spring, and we asked a few gamekeepers who tramped the moors and desolate places but, again, nothing.

  Frustratingly, Pippen seemed unconcerned for the welfare of her partner in crime, she just stretched herself out across the cushion that they had previously shared together, luxuriating in the newfound roominess of the gap beneath the long settle.

  As time went by, I’d take a slightly different route every day when travelling out to the sheep, convinced that Chalky might be right under my nose and that I had just never seen her. It was a ridiculous notion, but even though I had resigned myself by now to looking for a body, I still needed that closure. It was vexing to not know what had happened.

  Understandably, the younger children were upset, but the older ones displayed a more stoical acceptance of the situation.

  ‘She ’ad a perfect dog life,’ was Reuben’s take on Chalky’s demise.

  ‘We should get another dog,’ said Miles. ‘Pippen will be lonely.’

  ‘Pippen ain’t lonely,’ retorted Raven. ‘She’s lovin’ it, more space, more dropped food to hoover up, it’s a win-win.’

  ‘Look, it’s been two weeks now an’ there’s bin no word ’bout Chalky,’ said Clive. ‘It’s time we drew a line under it and accepted that Chalky has gone forever.’

  ‘Dead,’ said Annas, who had an obsession with death at that point.

  ‘Yes, dead,’ said Clive.

  I nodded. ‘I’m gonna write the Twitter obituary,’ I said. ‘There’s no hope now.’

  Commiserations came in thick and fast, phone calls from friends and messages from people far and wide who knew the pain of losing a pet, but life goes on and that was that. In the run up to lambing time there was a huge amount of walling to do. Making the fields stockproof before we gathered the sheep down from the moor was a matter of urgency and Clive and myself were desperately struggling with the huge workload.

  ‘I’m gonna ask Tuppence if he’ll gi’ us a day or two wallin’,’ Clive announced over breakfast one day. ‘We need to get a straight edge afore lambin’ an’ we’re runnin’ out of time.’

  I was in total agreement. Tuppence turned up the next morning, striding into the yard in his standard-issue long black railway coat and hobnailed boots laced to the turned-up toes. A long-standing friend of Clive’s, he was a countryman through and through, a master craftsman in the art of walling and hedging and extremely knowledgeable about birds and wildlife. He was strongly built, though not heavy-set. Pale-skinned and thin-lipped, his deep-set piercing blue eyes darted this way and that, taking all in. He stood tall, though slightly stooped, leaning forward, like someone bracing himself against the wind. One hand cupped the top of a knotty stick that, like himself, had a slight curvature, and wrapped around his other hand was a length of twine, on the end of which was a broad-chested wiry-coated terrier.

  Tuppence was in his eighties, but still as strong as a man half his age. He attributed his good health to fresh air, being out in the elements and walking. Not just gentle ambles in the countryside, but traversing hills and slopes to get to the most awkward of places and then spending the day lifting rocks and boulders and fitting them together so beautifully that you could hardly tell that there’d been a repair in the wall at all.

  ‘Whaaaaat,’ was his standard greeting, to which he got the standard reply from Clive.

  ‘Aye, owsta keepin’? Yer lookin’ lish like.’

  ‘I’s reet, what aboot thoo’s gurt dog?’

  ‘Wh
at, Bill? Nae t’hell, ee’s gan’ reather porped.’

  ‘Better it than thee.’

  A conversation that, to the outsider, would have needed a little translation.

  Tuppence tied his dog to the gate and came into the kitchen to get instructions as to where the gaps that needed mending were. I made him a cup of coffee.

  ‘What aboot thi’ bait?’ asked Clive. ‘You’ve gotta bit of a way to t’first spot.’

  Tuppence lifted the flap of the pocket of his coat and proceeded to rootle about inside. Out came a plastic bag in which was a meagre slice of dry white bread and what looked like a bit of cheese.

  ‘You on rations or summat?’ said Clive, looking unimpressed. ‘’Ere, ’ave a scone wi’ yer coffee.’

  I dutifully handed over a scone out of the tin on the side and they talked for a little bit on the usual subjects: weather, trade at the auction and who was ‘in a bad way’. Tuppence generated crumbs which dropped on the floor.

  ‘Where’s thi’ dog at?’ he asked, staring at the crumbs.

  ‘Chalky’s a-wantin’, dunno what ’appened, been gone for two weeks now,’ I said flatly.

  He gave a protracted, ‘Ayyyye.’

  ‘We’ve all been gae dowly, I’ll tell ya,’ I said.

  ‘Bloody thing,’ said Clive crossly, ‘’t only ’ad itself to please.’

  There followed a long silence.

  ‘’Ad it got brown spots on its lugs?’ Tuppence asked.

  I said that yes, she had little flecks of brown on the tips of her ears but that they were not really that visible.

  ‘Why?’ I asked.

  ‘I think I’ve seen thi dog,’ he said ever so slowly.

  ‘Where?’

  My mouth had dropped and even Clive’s face had taken on a look of complete astonishment.

  ‘Face beeak,’ Tuppence announced in the thickest Dales dialect imaginable.

  ‘Facebook! You’re on Facebook . . . and more to the point, mi dog is on Facebook? I’s not even on Facebook.’

  ‘Aye.’

  I could not believe firstly that Tuppence had an online presence and secondly that he’d seen Chalky on there.

  He explained that a couple of weeks ago he’d seen a picture of a small white terrier with a wiry coat and speckled brown ears that had turned up at a pub on the outskirts of Kirkby Stephen.

  This already sounded promising, with Chalky’s history of frequenting boozers. The dog had no collar and had been taken to the local vet to be scanned for a microchip, but it failed to read. She had then been taken in by a local farmer and subsequently rehomed and was currently enjoying the high life as a pet dog. She had been shampooed and groomed to within an inch of her life and was now living under the assumed name of Twiglet!

  Chalky was alive and well only some fifteen miles away, and if it had not been for Tuppence then we would never have known. I rang the veterinary surgery, and they confirmed what had happened and arranged for Chalky to be returned after being microchipped again. We can only guess that Chalky had set off on the Coast to Coast footpath but instead of heading down Swaledale she went in the opposite direction to Cumbria. We know that she had a collar with her name tag and phone number but must assume that at some point it became detached.

  It was a cause for great celebration at Ravenseat when the prodigal terrier returned. Not with her tail between her legs, though – the moment she returned she scampered back off into the barn, tail aloft and teeth bared, ready to continue the war against rats. Neither did Pippen seem that elated; after the obligatory sniffing of behinds it was back to business as usual, sleeping, eating and fighting.

  I had always liked Tuppence but after this he went right up in my estimation. It broadened the topics of conversation too. Where once we would talk only of the weather and whose sheep were looking in good fettle, we could now discuss global affairs and politics and it extended my reach on the gossip front, as I gleaned information from his newsfeed. Poor Tuppence didn’t get long basking in the glory of his online detective skills before the tables were turned. It was his third consecutive day of gapping at Ravenseat when he came back into the farmyard dogless.

  ‘What ’appened?’ I said.

  ‘Nae, Rusty’s gawn, tekken off,’ he said breathlessly, his normally pale cheeks red with exertion.

  Tuppence, as a rule, never let Rusty off his lead because the dog had a blinding obsession with rabbits and, given the chance, would pursue them relentlessly until he either caught one or it went down a burrow. Then things would get worse as Rusty would never admit defeat and would go to ground. A spade would then be required to dig him out and this was only possible if you knew which tunnel he’d gone down.

  ‘Where? An’ which way did ’e gan?’ I asked.

  ‘Over yonder,’ he said, waving his stick towards the Close Hills pastures. ‘I was eatin’ mi bait, Rusty was off ’is string an’ then ’e put up a rabbit.’

  He delved around in his pocket and eventually his hand emerged clutching an old mobile phone.

  ‘It won’t work,’ I said, ‘there’s no reception around ’ere.’

  ‘Naw, I want thoo to ring mi missus on t’ouse phone an’ tell ’er I’s gonna be leeate back.’

  I did as he asked, left a message on the answerphone and then set off to the allotment, the best vantage point to watch for sheep moving in the distance, which was usually a sure sign that there was a dog on the loose. Tuppence returned to his gap, this time with Clive on the quad bike.

  Rusty had disappeared without trace and, in true Chalky-style, there was no sign of him anywhere. The children returned from school and decided that they, too, would join the search. They knew all the likely places, after all this was the second time in as many weeks that we’d been out hunting for a lost terrier. Finally, when dusk came, Tuppence bade goodbye. He was not in the best frame of mind, muttering under his breath, cussing his dog and looking troubled. He was now without the long black coat which, upon Clive’s advice, had been rolled up and laid just inside the door of the barn nearest to where Rusty had vanished.

  ‘He just might land back to t’place he last saw his master and settle for t’coat being the nearest comforting presence.’

  I’d heard this theory before, spoken as a kind of folklore amongst dog owners who’d recount stories of sheepdogs being sold on after their owner’s deaths only to refuse to run or be in any way obedient. The solution was always to take an item of clothing that previously belonged to the deceased owner to give the dog the familiarity that it needed in order to relax and understand.

  ‘Maureen’s gonna kill mi,’ Tuppence said to Clive. ‘She dotes on that lal’ dog.’

  ‘More than thee?’ said Clive.

  Tuppence didn’t answer.

  ‘I’ll be back first thing in t’morning,’ he said heavily as he got into his car.

  Sure enough, the next morning the barking of the sheepdogs in the farmyard told us that someone was around. I lay in bed, not willing to move, while Clive stirred and mumbled. Pebbles hit the glass of the bedroom window. Clive staggered out of bed and went to look who was outside.

  ‘Whaaaat,’ he shouted, mimicking Tuppence’s usual greeting.

  ‘Is ta gonna lig in bed til’ sun burns yer eyes out?’ replied the voice below.

  ‘Yer just up an’ about early ’cos you’ve been gettin’ some earache,’ retorted Clive.

  Rusty had not returned and we were now at a loss as to where to look. I had to go to Hawes to get some bags of hen feed and lambing-time supplies, so loaded the little ones into the pickup promising them we’d call at the sweet shop whilst out. The morale boost would be needed if the day was going to be spent searching for the lost dog. We set off in no particular hurry, the children looking out of the windows and pointing at various things that caught their eye. It was the usual stuff.

  ‘Sheeeeeep,’ said Clemmie.

  ‘Yep, soon be lambs too,’ I said, staring fixedly ahead.

  I tried to sound upbeat and e
nthusiastic when actually the mere thought of lambing time tired me; it was taking us the entire day just to get all the animals fed and seen to as it was, so goodness only knows how it was going to be when the lambs began to arrive. The relentlessness of the hard winter, preceded by a dire summer, had taken its toll and we all, the animals included, needed some sunshine.

  ‘Peewit,’ squealed Annas, delighted to spot a lapwing nervously strutting at the roadside before taking to the air in fright at the roar of the engine as we passed by.

  It can be easy to overlook the sights that pass you by every day, so to see the children’s wonder was heartening. ‘Nebbin’ was what I was doing as I crossed the Hoggarths Bridge looking up towards the Keldside Allotments, where we had a handful of shearlings grazing.

  ‘Dog,’ shouted Annas.

  It didn’t register.

  ‘Daaawg?’ piped up Clemmie, more quizzically.

  I quickly swung round to look at the road ahead and saw Rusty sniffing about beneath the budding hedgerow by the verge. I slowed down and pulled to a stop at the side of the road. I wasn’t sure whether Rusty was biddable, so needed to tread carefully to avoid spooking him. I gestured to the children to be quiet as, by now, I could see their faces pressed up against the back window as they waited to see whether the ambush was going to be successful.

  I need not have worried, as Rusty came right to me, his short, stumped tail wagging furiously back and forth. He looked up at me expectantly with shining dark eyes, his muzzle wet from rootling around in the undergrowth. I picked him up and carried him to the pickup, noticing he was quite a weight for a small dog, solid as they say. The children were delighted with the new passenger, who chose not to sit in the footwell but to balance precariously with his front paws on the dashboard and hind legs on the passenger’s seat. He stared intently out of the windscreen as I turned around and went back to Ravenseat.