Nature Lover

Nature lover. This is not the only evidence of her appreciation for nature and wild things. We were walking round the park today. As we came round the corner of a large bush, I spotted a pigeon about five feet ahead of us. She normally runs in and flushes these as she likes the noise they make as the fly off but this morning I thought I'd re-emphasis some training. She was told to sit. When she did this, I waited for her to sight the pigeon. No response. I told her to watch and she stood up and looked around quite properly but still no reaction to the pigeon that was walking around directly in front of us. I straddled her and used my hands either side of her jaws to direct her gaze at the bird. Absolutely no response. There is little point in my training method in forcing it so I gave up. Made a fuss of her and urged her on so that she could do her instant flush. She went to a point and I thought - this is it - at last! I released her. She ran off about 50 yards to the right after a blackbird. What a wonderful thing it is to have a pedigree dog from a Crufts and trial winning mother. Not.
She might need to abandon this laissez-faire attitude. Norma's quilting group had their end of term party today and she took in chicken legs as part of the buffet. Half a dozen or so left over. Took them with us as we went to Berwick beach. I stayed at the car and noshed a leg. One of the seagulls came down and I threw the half-eaten leg at it. The bird hopped across, picked up the leg and swallowed it whole - paper frill and all. This was just one of the ordinary seagulls and not one of the damned great herring gull like those well-fed looking ones that used to perch on the wall around the Belfast post-mortem theatre. I will have to check that one of these does not hold of Sable and swallow her up - or down.