It has taken me a while to think about writing about this. It was extremely traumatic at the time and is a real black mark on both Maddie and us.
We went to a dog-friendly place in Cornwall which, it turned out, was in the middle of a small farm, with sheep LITERALLY over the fence. We discovered this the first night, when (Richard as usual urging me to let them off the lead, although to be fair we had scouted the place out and asked about and been assured there were no sheep in the vicinity) we realised that Maddie had disappeared and I heard the sound of paws scraping over corrugated iron.
To cut a long story short, after ripping my jeans (and me inner thigh) on barbed wire and wading through yet another patch of nettles (my ankle was numb for about 4 days), I found her trying to attach a sheep. She had attached another one already.
So that holiday consisted of me NOT letting her off the lead ever (except for twice when yes, she ran off after sheep that were so miles away even she gave up before she got there, thank god) (and no, we had no idea they were anywhere near). On the plus side there were several occasions when I refused to let her off and this was proved the right decision when we turned a corner or whatever, and found sheep there.
The sheep/old lamb (Larrina - I thought it was a boy originally and named it Larry the lamb) survived and the farmer was gracious about it once everyone had calmed down and R had given him money for the vet costs.
So now it is essential we manage this and don't let her ANYWHERE near sheep. Next time she'll be shot.
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