I should know better

Busy getting ready for a big show today - lots of soapy water and evil smelling dog toothpaste humorously labelled "poultry flavoured". Only one product of the hen smells like that, and it`s an end product.

There`s an escaped ewe in the belt of young trees above the cottage. She looks an experienced old bugger, with a neck scraped bare of wool by negotiating many narrow holes in fences thought to be sheep-proof. I`ll just phone around, as my ewe-wrestling days are over, although years of it have left me with significant upper body strength, and I can still heft 20 kilo bags of feed with a reasonable show of nonchalance.

Dougal used to be a great test of strength. Dougal was a ram with attitude I got cheaply due to his fighting ability. He had been put in a field as a lamb with another promising show male and promptly ruined both their chances. He came out of it with a loose horn, and when he reached me Roy had thoughtfully wired it to the other one with a metal crossbar and a lot of duck tape. He was a fearsome apparition, and my ewes took one look and ran for cover.

Well, the horn firmed up, and eventually he was armed with two foot spikes on top and strong handlebars at the side, Jacobs being four horned sheep. Armed and dangerous and waiting his chance. If he couldn`t find a person to attack he could often be found just battering an old brick wall for the hell of it.

But victims weren`t hard to find. No-one likes to admit to being afraid of a sheep, and warnings were ignored. The electricity guy who checks the external pole spent a whole morning up it, clinging on for dear life as Dougal charged the base repeatedly, making the whole thing vibrate, and the wires dance alarmingly. I think he may have been crying by the time I got home and found him. You don`t really like to look that closely....

I used to have to rescue people. The rescue technique was simple and horribly dangerous. I would wait until he was totally occupied in trying to kill someone, then, repeating the mantra "I am stronger than any sheep", I would dash out, grab him by one of the curved "handlebar" side horns, some how wrestle him over to the nearest fence, hook the handlebar over it and advise the victim to do as I did and run like buggery. You had a good three minutes before he got himself off that fence, as mad as a hornet.....

Sometimes the victim wasn`t quick enough. I remember the lad who hurled himself at the wood fence, tried to do a fosbury flop over it, and got caught on the barbed wire by the seat of his jeans. I think that rescue involved getting a rope round Dougal`s hind legs and was particularly prolonged and nasty.....

I try to forget the time I misjudged the whole operation and found myself riding round the field on his back. It wasn`t that I couldn`t get off - it was just much safer on there.

"I bet you were sued!" I hear you cry. No never. You see, no grown man will ever admit he was bested by A SHEEP. It`s a testosterone thing. Sheep are what you eat, for heaven`s sake. One lad who had come in to cut some trees for me was had by Dougal, who had waited until he turned his back before the charge. He was used to sheep and managed to escape. I wasn`t in, and he staggered over to my neighbour, Old Peter, who was shocked by his appearance and offered him a dram, asking what had happened. The lad told the story.

"You were savaged by a SHEEP? I`ll have that whisky back!" Peter was still laughing when I got home.

Eventually I lent Dougal to a friend, and in the course of his rammish duties he was flystruck (you don`t want to know, really you don`t), and never recovered. My friend buried him in a corner of the field, but after the rain the ground sank a bit and you could just see the tips of those two great horns sticking up, like the ones protruding from a Desperate Dan cow pie.

I miss Dougal. I miss his confiding ways as he sidled up. waiting for a chance to stick you. He really belonged in a Tarantino movie, not in a field. LIfe`s quiet, now.