This weekend we went on a lovely walk that is not our normal route - well it started out as lovely, but ended up a nightmare. I persuaded Other Half to keep his phone handy to collect me,my son and and 2 dogs when we phoned. We set off down into the valley towards Froghall to enjoy a different route. We stopped to admire the unusual track that used to be a railway line, used to ferry the lime from Cauldon Lowe to the canal basin at Froghall.
I noticed a single string of barbed wire draped rather pointlessly a few yards away from the path into the woods and said to my son "what's the point of that wire? All it's going to do is injure animals!" I had in mind foxes and deer. Then we heard a frantic yelping.
My poor dog had been busy sniffing out squirrels and, nipping back to the path to find out what was delaying us, she slashed herself on the wire. I'll spare you the details of the blood, the crying 7 year old, my having to run carrying the dog to the nearest road to meet Other Half, who had thankfully picked up our call (for once!), and all the stress at the out of hours vets surgery. She is now recovering thank goodness. Somehow she managed not to sever a major vein, which was lucky.
For those that know my dogs, it is the shy black one who is the sweetest and best behaved dog ever. She doesn't deserve this to happen, no dog does.
Why is there a single strand of barbed wire draped around in the undergrowth? Shall I go out with my wire cutters and get rid of it? Or shall I kick up a fuss with Staffordshire Wildlife Trust, whose volunteers I have seen working nearby? I am absolutely not the sort of person to do criminal damage to working fences (this is not a working fence), on the other hand I am thinking that lobbying is pointless simply because I let my dog off the lead.
I will think about this for a while and try and calm down. Meanwhile I need to take another two weeks bookings just to pay for the vets bill. Ho hum.
