Poor little guy

Don't be distracted by the lovely sunset colours - in the foreground are the remains of a poor sheep that had obviously been trapped in unmaintained fencing and died what was probably a long and painful death. We came accross this poor buggar on our night run over Moel Eilio last night. It really got me down on what was an otherwise amazing evening...

...I don't often use the blog to rant or be all political ;-) ...but enough is enough - so here it goes...

I am sick and tired off seeing sheep limping, flyblown etc and rotting carcasses all over the hillside. I have raced after 2 sheep in the last year and tackled them down to untangle them from trailing barbed wire caught in their wool. I've given up notifying the farmers every time I see a sick or dead sheep - when we first moved here I did but it often led to a counter attack:

"excuse me, you've got a dead sheep on your land"

reply: "Yeah, your dog probably killed it"

MAN!!!! ARGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHH

We have put huge amounts of time and effort into training our dogs around sheep, as anyone who has run with us can testify. But it's always the excuse. We've lived here for three years now and I can say that if farmers here were so worried about dogs attacking their sheep, why do they neglect them so much that they die of natural causes so frequently?

Fences left in disrepair, sick animals, pasture accumulating foreign weeds... I come from a farming background in Australia and if a farmer treated his animals and land like this they'd be getting it from all sides - especially other farmers! These sheep are dying because of poor husbandry.

Every other profession has to adhere by animal welfare standards.....