Oscar

Hello Everyone,

please find below the latest escapades of Oscar, one of our rehomed springers.

A couple of weekends ago we were up at the cottage in the Lake District – one of my favourite places! – and my human mum took me and the other Springer out in the car. I was really excited when we stopped by the side of a field and I looked out of the window and saw that there were loads of sheep in the field – woo hoo!!!! This was going to be a brilliant morning full of chasing and games and mum shouting my name!

Anyway, it didn’t turn out quite like I’d planned. I had to wait in the car for a while because they took just the other Springer into the field and when she came back a bit later she looked very tired, so I was super excited to go and do the running and chasing of sheep that I thought she had been doing. There was another lady with my mum and she clipped my lead onto a very long lead so I was pretty sure I would still be able to chase the sheep a lot.

Boy, was I wrong! I saw this lovely little cluster of sheep in the corner of the field and so I started making a dash to go and play with them, but before I could get up to maximum sprint speed there was this HUGE noise right next to me. I was absolutely shocked and immediately rolled over onto my back while I tried to figure out what the heck had just happened! Next to me on the grass was one of those plastic squash bottles that seemed to have a few pebbles or something in it but but let me tell you, it had made a huge noise and really frightened me. At the same time, the lady was shouting “leave!” at me.

Well that was all a bit confusing but I got up and shook myself down and then started to have a walk a bit more around the field. The sheep started to move again when I walked towards them and I thought this meant they wanted to play so I started running towards them and then again – whoosh! This loud noise as the plastic bottle landed next to me and was told to “leave” again.

Now I’m not stupid and I started to realise that clearly whenever I went to play with the sheep this loud, noisy thing happened that I really didn’t like! So after a few minutes of walking nicely next to the lady I stopped and just had a really good look at the sheep. I sort of sniffed the air and gave them a good old stare, which the lady said to my mum was what she called “mint sauce eyes” and so she said “leave” very loudly and sort of showed me the scary bottle. Well, that was enough for me – message received and understood – so for the next 20 minutes or so we walked all around the field and let me tell you, I kept well away from those pesky sheep. At one point the lady even tried to make them run towards me but I quickly kept my head down and went in another direction!

I heard the lady say to mum that a farmer owns these sheep and is happy for her to do the training with them in that field, and that mum should use the same technique when she’s out on the fells with us. I could understand why the other Springer was so tired – it’s hard work to keep thinking all the time!

We weren’t back up in the Lakes for a couple of weeks and lots of fun things had happened and I’d forgotten all about this until last weekend when we went back to the cottage – which meant great excitement as we would be running on the fells again. We leapt out of the car and off we went, enjoying the fun and freedom until after a short while both the Springer and I spotted some sheep nearby. Unfortunately, our mum had spotted them too and no sooner had we started to run over to them and – BANG! – one of those rattly plastic bottles landed at our side and we were on our backs again! She told us to “leave” and we didn’t need telling again. It was a very different kind of walk after that – great fun and we spent hours sniffing and exploring and rolling in mud and splashing in water but whenever we came near to some sheep we both kept our heads down. If we looked at them for a few seconds – just to see if they wanted to play with us – mum shook the bottle to remind us how scary it was and we walked away.

Still, there’s lots of other exciting things to do this summer out there!

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