The eight o'clock walk

      There's nothing quite like an early walk I'm up way earlier than eight o'clock but at that time it's pitch dark and although the two terriers are mostly white it's too easy to lose them in the orchard and dyke side reeds. If they're totally engrossed digging, rooting or involved in canine detective work their obedience isn't what it ought to be either. They simply ignore you.

      It is a treat being out at first light and it's always worth taking the camera with you too. However there's a problem with taking photographs, turn your back on the two terriers and they disappear, or they photo-bomb the shot you are taking and as a last resort if they are on the lead, well, just as you take the picture they'll set off in the opposite direction. In terrier world all this is pre-ordained, you can't fight it. You simply swear at it and them.

      I was trying to take a photograph of an Egret standing in the winter wheat having done the commando crawl along the dyke, but who arrives but Lucie, she scares off the bright white bird and blocks the chance of a photograph of the bird taking off. Photo-bombing terrier.
      What was it that W.C.Fields said? Something along the lines of never work with animals or children.
      The man wasn't wrong.