Neal

I switched off when I saw the name Gove.

Until about ten years ago, the only time I ever saw red kites was when we went a little farther north (I live in South Hampshire). Now I see several every year. Also, two species which I always thought of as West Country species were the buzzard and jackdaw. When I was growing up I very rarely saw them until we went on holiday to Cornwall or Devon. I always found that, the farther west we drove, the magpies petered out and were replaced by jackdaws. While I was at art college in Falmouth in the early 90s it was all jackdaws and virtually no magpies. Now, although the magpies are still com

I think it's a male as the females have a black line down the back...or have I got that the wrong way round? I know the males sometimes have blue spots too. No, honestly!

Apologies for going off topic: did you ever find out, conclusively, what caused the blood from nose and mouth? The reason I ask is because the same happened to my second kelpie. It was literally dripping from her nose and around the gums. Never seen anything like it before. We (the vets and I) never found out what it was. The only thing I could think of was that she may have been previously bitten by an adder. (Went into a patch of brambles where I saw an adder a couple of days later and a mile later I had to carry her home as she went all drowsy and kept falling asleep standing up.)

Thanks everybody, that's pretty much what I suspected.

Genuine question: I've heard GWP lurchers mentioned a lot, off and on, over the last thirty years or so...but never GSP crosses. Any reason for that? Is it simply because the wire-hairs have more of a reputation as general vermin dogs?

When I used to work lurchers I always kept quiet about what they were used for. Now that I work kelpies (or to be honest, now that I'm older) I tell everybody who asks about them what I use them for. I'm amazed at how many people let their pet dogs chase deer in particular. I've heard everything from 'I can't call him back' to 'it's completely natural' with a huge dose of 'I'm not worried because I'm sure he's not fast enough to catch one.'

There was a feature on the national news yesterday lunchtime about deer numbers and saying we should be encouraged to eat more venison. You'd think someone would put two and two together and come up with the obvious solution.

I had one particularly large one (not as big as a dog though) which frequented my garden for a while. It made a guest appearance in the middle of my son's birthday party about fourteen years ago. Fortunately, only one of my neighbours spotted it, but she renamed it "the wallaby." The kelpies eventually cornered it inside the potting shed. It had climbed up the sloping side but was unable to get out again. When I went into the shed in the morning I opened up one of the drawers and saw something move. I initially jumped back in shock, then said to myself, 'don't be daft, that was just a thi

Thanks. That makes sense.

What's with the weird posts on the photography section? There were several yesterday which all had titles connected to writing a thesis and then another this morning in Russian.

Straight after reading this yesterday, I was looking for something else on either preloved, freeads or pets4homes and saw an ad for two nine month old pups bred this way. I think they were only £100 each.

I found a high backed corner one and wedged it in place with a couple of bricks.

There's nothing left, all gone and run away...

Thanks for that.