WHEN the Beast from the East swept across the UK in early 2018, Wiltshire-based shepherd Jess King had a serious others, in trying to escape the drifts across the fields, had gone up onto a bank and got caught in brambles. They were stuck and it was too steep for me to reach them.' Luckily, help was on hand in the form of her farm dog, rough collie Tully.
'As I stood there trying to work out what to do next, Tully climbed up the bank and, without any instruction, began to pull each sheep free of the brambles,' she recalls. 'He did it for hours, calmly taking the lead in the situation.
Tully has always been able to figure anything out-there have been so many times that he has saved the day.' Although it may be sadly unusual to see a rough collie out herding in the fields, if there's one thing this level-headed breed is famous for, it's coming to the rescue-and Tully has proven to be no exception. Now 10 years old, he still works sheep and cattle a few times a week alongside a team of border collies.
'He's a fantastic farm dog. He would work all day, every day if he could,' Ms King says. *Not all rough collies have the working instinct any more, but there are still some traditional lines out there. They don't like a lot of schooling: Tully questions me more than a border collie, but, in the end, he's always right. Their working style is similar to a Welsh sheepdog; they're loose-eyed and upright, and use their voice, which is useful for big groups-I've moved 4,000 sheep on my own with Tully.'
この記事は Country Life UK の February 14, 2024 版に掲載されています。
7 日間の Magzter GOLD 無料トライアルを開始して、何千もの厳選されたプレミアム ストーリー、9,000 以上の雑誌や新聞にアクセスしてください。
すでに購読者です ? サインイン
この記事は Country Life UK の February 14, 2024 版に掲載されています。
7 日間の Magzter GOLD 無料トライアルを開始して、何千もの厳選されたプレミアム ストーリー、9,000 以上の雑誌や新聞にアクセスしてください。
すでに購読者です? サインイン
Save our family farms
IT Tremains to be seen whether the Government will listen to the more than 20,000 farming people who thronged Whitehall in central London on November 19 to protest against changes to inheritance tax that could destroy countless family farms, but the impact of the good-hearted, sombre crowds was immediate and positive.
A very good dog
THE Spanish Pointer (1766–68) by Stubbs, a landmark painting in that it is the artist’s first depiction of a dog, has only been exhibited once in the 250 years since it was painted.
The great astral sneeze
Aurora Borealis, linked to celestial reindeer, firefoxes and assassinations, is one of Nature's most mesmerising, if fickle displays and has made headlines this year. Harry Pearson finds out why
'What a good boy am I'
We think of them as the stuff of childhood, but nursery rhymes such as Little Jack Horner tell tales of decidedly adult carryings-on, discovers Ian Morton
Forever a chorister
The music-and way of living-of the cabaret performer Kit Hesketh-Harvey was rooted in his upbringing as a cathedral chorister, as his sister, Sarah Sands, discovered after his death
Best of British
In this collection of short (5,000-6,000-word) pen portraits, writes the author, 'I wanted to present a number of \"Great British Commanders\" as individuals; not because I am a devotee of the \"great man, or woman, school of history\", but simply because the task is interesting.' It is, and so are Michael Clarke's choices.
Old habits die hard
Once an antique dealer, always an antique dealer, even well into retirement age, as a crop of interesting sales past and future proves
It takes the biscuit
Biscuit tins, with their whimsical shapes and delightful motifs, spark nostalgic memories of grandmother's sweet tea, but they are a remarkably recent invention. Matthew Dennison pays tribute to the ingenious Victorians who devised them
It's always darkest before the dawn
After witnessing a particularly lacklustre and insipid dawn on a leaden November day, John Lewis-Stempel takes solace in the fleeting appearance of a rare black fox and a kestrel in hot pursuit of a pipistrelle bat
Tarrying in the mulberry shade
On a visit to the Gainsborough Museum in Sudbury, Suffolk, in August, I lost my husband for half an hour and began to get nervous. Fortunately, an attendant had spotted him vanishing under the cloak of the old mulberry tree in the garden.
