What a horrible thing to have happen - to your sheep and to you both.
It is utterly awful when you've hundreds of sheep, too, by the way. You spend all your energies caring for and nurturing these animals, planning your tupping and anticipating the lambing... It's utterly sickening, in every sense of the word, when something like this happens, whether you've 8 sheep or 50 or 200.
There is certainly more on social media, but I can tell you that the message doesn't seem to be reaching dog owners. I was incandescent with rage at two lots of owners yesterday.
The first was on the private access track to where I keep my sheep, with a Boston Terrier off-lead. She was about 30 yards from the nearest sheep at that point, with a stock fence and a galvanised gate between them. She leashed the dog when she heard the quad bike approaching. She was just being nosy, she said, clearly utterly bemused as to why I would be so angry and shouting at her to keep her dog leashed anywhere near sheep at lambing time. (Not to mention not trespassing off the public walkways, especially at lambing time, and with a dog.)
The second owner was some distance from the sheep's field, but in countryside where they couldn't know how far the nearest sheep might be. They leashed their Skye Terrier as they heard the quad bike approaching (this is a regular thing and it makes my blood boil. They
know their dogs should be on a lead and only leash them when they hear or see the farmer approaching.
) I said nothing, except with my expression, but further down the track I found a small white terrier running about. Sure enough, this belonged to the same people. It was several hundred yards away from them, completely out of their sight. I said a bit more about this one.
There was some stuff on Facebook recently, where a Husky had been shot dead as it attacked sheep. The owner couldn't understand why the farmer had shot it, all he'd have needed to do was fire over its head and it would have run away, she said.
I'm a bit emotional due lack of sleep due lots of pet lambs (too many triplets!) and just generally being lambing time. But I am so worried that we're losing this one, along with so many others. More and more people are getting out of farming; it's becoming an untenable lifestyle, and not just financially.
