It’s a Dog’s Life: Celebrating Heroic Hounds
LN’s official office pooch celebrates the Lake District’s rescue dogs
Morning campers,
I say this hearty greeting with a bit of a shiver as it’s really cold this morning with snow on the ground and it’s April – crazy.
Today’s despatch comes from the Lake District, a place I’ve always quite enjoyed – it’s a bit too hilly and watery sometimes but it looks pretty and today it looks especially beautiful. As you can imagine there are literally thousands of walks here so my objective this week is not to talk about a specific walk but rather to issue a note of caution while walking or even climbing with owners who are just a little bit dim. And it appears that quite a few of these types visit Cumbria (or Coombria as the locals pronounce it).
The reason I know this is because a rescue dog recently picked up an award for having found numerous reckless ramblers who had got into difficulties. Her name is Sky and while she has now retired and got the award sometime after (must have been lots of bureaucracy, suggests my dad unhelpfully) it's a really feel-good story in this challenging world. Sky could apparently do the work of some 15 humans, she's a Bearded Collie which doesn't surprise me, those sheep dogs, as I call them, are completely bonkers and even when you see them on the beach they cover more ground than any other breed, even more than my daft cousins the Gingers, who never seem to stop either. Anyway, well done Sky for picking up your PDSA Order of Merit.
Just for the record the highest honours are PDSA Gold and the ultimate accolade is the PDSA Dickin Medal, this is reserved for any animal serving in a military conflict, it's even been won by a pigeon (which I think is a bit ruff given they can fly – but that's just my view).
There's also been times where a dog has been awarded a Medal of Honour, the best example being Kuno, a Belgian Shepherd Malinois – trust me you don't want to mess with one of these chaps. Kuno won the award for supporting an attack on Al-Qaeda, which gives an indication of the kind of hero dog he is.
Anyway that's all from the Lakes this week. I'm going for a bit of fresh water swimming with some weirdo types and then off for a pub lunch at a place called the Punch Bowl which Dad says is really good. I'll keep you posted…
