I spent a most entertaining day out on the moor today. The current guests have brought the most amazing English pointer (“Nguni” is his name) with them. The catch being that said hound is still very young and has not yet been trained to the point where he can be let off a leash and still be controlled. The object for the day was to do a walk and point on grouse and hopefully bag a couple for the day. Fred’s daughter Laura brought her dogs along for the day as they are trained to point and flush respectively and they work really well on the walk-ups for grouse. And then there was Nguni…

Seeing a number of coveys on the way up the moor we were all getting our hopes up for a good days shooting. Dogs being dogs they were all bouncing and eager to get going once we were stopped and getting the guns ready. Nguni was put on a leash so as to prevent him flushing birds unwittingly ahead of the shooters and this was successful until the point that he decided to play Houdini and slipped is collar. I do recall having brief glimpses of a spotted dog bounding through the heather in the far distance, ears and gums flapping in unison. There was also a fair amount of calling on the owner’s part for the rapidly shrinking pointer in a vague attempt at trying to restore some semblance of order to the shoot. I can only imagine what was going on in the minds of Laura’s dogs… When Nguni finally appeared on the nearest of the further horizons facing in our direction a vast quantity of calling, whistling and waving caught his attention and he must have assumed that we had found some grouse for him to chase because he came loping over and seemingly quite content with his perception that the whole day had been organized purely for his benefit. After being put on the leash again he at least had the conciliatory satisfaction of getting to drag me through at least one sloppy, sludge-filled bog before the day was through…