UKH

Walking the path up past dinner time buttress in Glencoe yesterday with the dogs.  There are sheep on the hill here, something I wasn’t aware of before we set out but as a result both dogs were on leads. The path is steep and quite slippery in the wet and descending back down from the Corrie there is a small wet area where the path crosses a minor fall.  I changed the set up from a single rope to the dogs to separate long leads to allow them and myself to cross.  The Staffy cross had no problem and as usual led, I followed and brought the Bearnese across after.wards. I’m not sure who had more surprise on their face me or the 40kg Bearnese as her paws slipped from under her and away she went.  Fortunately she was quickly held on the climbing rope attached to her body harness she quickly regained a safe stance and recrossed the slippery rock safely.

i was glad I had spent a couple of minutes changing my control set up on the dogs.  Potentially the Bearnese could have been hurt or on a single rope with both dogs she could have pulled me off.

both  dogs walk regularly in the hills including scrambles.  The point of this tale is that it was much more difficult managing them on rope throughout the walk. A necessity because of the sheep.  It would have been easy to just cross the small hazard assuming the dogs as so many times before would be ok but on this occasion it went wrong and the less competent dog could have been hurt. 

In reply to ropedandready: Shouldn't your post title be 'Hazardous dogs' since its the sheep that are native to the hillside and didnt actually cause you any harm ? It was the handling of your dogs that caused you problems.

At least you had your dogs on leads though

Try having a word with the local farmer about it and perhaps ask him to take his sheep off the hillside whenever you are going for a walk with your dogs ? I'm sure he`ll be happy to oblige.

In reply to L.A.:

There are plenty of walks sheep free in the highlands nearby Corrie an Lochan is fine and we’ve never met sheep on Curved ridge.  He sheep added to the complexity of controlling the dogs and actually made the walk much more difficult.  I was surprised how much more difficulty there was keeping the dogs under close control.

In reply to ropedandready:

I got a few months lucrative work after a colleague had his leg broken by a sheep  whilst he was teaching

In reply to ropedandready:

I recommend you avoid Pen y Fan then; they're psycho-sheep up there and bully walkers for their sandwiches at the top cos they're so used to the crowds and they're not scared of them!

In reply to ropedandready:

As an ML and SPA holder were you really surprised?

In reply to L.A.:

?

In reply to Climbing Pieman:

It appears to have escaped your notice that there are sheep, deer, rabbits, hares, grouse, ptarmigan amongst other interesting critters from a dogs perspective throughout the Highlands.....Please hand back your ML and step away from the Highlands, in fact any upland area of the UK.

On second thoughts I can recommend that you find a stag with the sap-up, roaring away and stand in front of it imitating its call. Its better to be on the downhill side of the beast, and between it and the  hinds as well.

In reply to felt: Yes ok I thought Id get picked up on that but you get my point Perhaps the OP could try Yorkshire as I believe they're Sheepless in Settle

Sighs and walks away

In reply to ScraggyGoat:

Not me 😉! I’ve seen them all. 

In reply to L.A.:

Oh dear, can someone please call a lambulance.

In reply to ScraggyGoat:

Yes and the dogs love them all.  I’ve often sat watching ptarmigan or deer I wouldn’t have spotted had it not been for the dogs. The point I was trying to illustrate is how small changes in the way you are managing a group or dogs can affect the day on the hill. In this case an easy walk became much more challenging.

In reply to felt:

Are you ovine a laugh?

In reply to felt:

Oh deer?

In reply to ropedandready:

On the flip side if the dug hadn't been on a rope it could have had a nasty fall? 

In reply to ropedandready:

I'm glad everyone's ok  

In reply to ropedandready:

You have to watch them woolly bastards. I had to submit an accident report when one of my guys was opening a gate on a rural site and a sheep came up behind him and bit him on the back of his leg, left a right bruise. 

In reply to L.A.:

I try to let them know by advertisement in the local paper that I might be in their area when I'm up there and request them to "stand by" for the period of my visit and when I leave when they can stand down and relax.

In reply to wercat:

Agree with this. Farmers Weekly and Farmers Guardian welcome such messages. Responses vary though - very similar to university freshers meets at Castle Naze on UKC.

In reply to ropedandready:

And here I was hoping for some "Shaun the Sheep" real stories thread of sheep eating your rope, but even the puns are just woolly 

OK, here is some Sheep Hazard:

Set up a nice bivvy just below the col of one 3000m Pyrenean peak on a solo hike, for easy scramble to top at sunrise. Flock of sheep somewhere around (bells), shy and out of sight. It's getting darker when I spot two hikers, descending from a different col set up tent on a small ridge above me, naturally I go say hi. We chat a little, bottle of liquor gets opened, we chat more. Bells gradually ringing closer and closer, very enjoyable evening, when suddenly I see some conspicuously whiter spots around my bivvy. Cue a cartoonish run down the scree back, made even funnier by dark and liquor, while belowing "Shoo"!

The fluffy, adorable shy sneaky bast*rds waited right until I was away and most distracted, mobbed my bivvy and tried to eat and lick everything, including the tarp, pack and sleeping bag. Hazardous indeed

In reply to ropedandready:

I’m not totally sure I understand the purpose of your post, if it was snowing and the dog slipped would you be talking about hazardous snow? The dog’s probably thinking that you are the hazardous one for taking it there. 
 

On the slightly related tangent hazardous sheep stories:

Me and my wife almost tripped over a pair of sheep with our ropes that appeared between us on one of the middle pitches of Tennis Shoe on Idwal Slabs. 

In reply to Frank R.:

I thought the OP would be about some sheep related mishap.

Some goats raided my friends' bivvy site below the Piz Cengalo while they were climbing and ate a sleeping bag, a leather wallet, and part of a bivvy bag. Left the euros and credit cards, though. Guess they didn't fancy a night out in San Martino.

I'd been staying in the Gianetti hut that night and ended up having a cheaper night than they did.

In reply to static266:

I had a friend whom on leaving the belay in his peripheral vision saw falling rocks, there was a scream, a heavy thud, accompanied by the sound of air being expelled from lungs and then silence from his wife whom was belaying. He turned to find her  slumped on the belay covered in blood and brain matter. He feared the worst, but it transpired she was unharmed and was covered in the remains of a sheep that had hit the ledge and bounced off further down the crag.

A sheep nearly did the same to me on the Isle of Scarp, having fallen off cliffs to land on the beach 5 meters from where I was having lunch. It took a long time to die leaking clear cerebral fluid through its nostrils, which it snorted and coughed out as it struggled to breath.

Dangerous things suicidal sheep.....

In reply to ropedandready:

Once, on Dartmoor in the clag, a friend of mine took a bearing on a sheep thinking it to be a lighter coloured rock. 

In reply to L.A.:

The sheep are in no way native to the hillside!

In reply to Rich W Parker:

That depends on your definition of "native".

Wool was being woven in the Bronze Age. How far back do you have to go to prove that an animal has been resident in the UK?

In reply to Tom Valentine:

Or elephants.

In reply to Tom Valentine:

I think the notion of 'native' sheep on a Glencoe hillside has, shall we say, a particular historical resonance.

In reply to Tom Valentine:

I suppose it does. But let's say sheep in the modern sense in which case it's late 18th century, in large numbers and large numbers because of human agriculture, so no, not native.

In reply to Rich W Parker:

On the contrary: let's accept that sheep husbandry has been a fact of British life from well before Roman times and that they have been a feature of our countryside since then, whatever particular vagaries might apply to single glen in Scotland.

In reply to Tom Valentine:

I think it's probably best to distinguish your Old Scottish Shortwool and its presence in the Highlands pre-1750s from the Blackface and Cheviot breeds that are surely the subject of the OP and the current discussion.

In reply to felt:

Would they have presented more of a "hazard" than those encountered by the OP on his/her dog walk?

The argument was that sheep "are in no way" native to a hillside. I disagree.

If you have to start specifying different breeds, then the expression "in no way" becomes invalid.

In reply to Tom Valentine:

Sheep are not native to the Scottish Highlands, I can say that with some certainty. There may have been the occasional sheep reared but the vast majority of sheep rearing was introduced in the late 18th and early 19th Century. I think we know something about how that happened (or we should)

In reply to timparkin:

Yes, it was those damned Lowland (Scottish !) shepherds who took them there, at the behest of the Highland Chieftains who "owned" the land.

T in H please note - the English were NOT involved.

In reply to Dax H:

That wasn't an accident - the sheep almost certainly did it on purpose!!  

In reply to timparkin:

My apologies; I've just been reading about the history of the Hebridean wool industry and it says quite categorically that sheep are not native to Scotland and Britain because they were introduced 6000 years ago'.....

In reply to Lankyman:

No, but ewe are 

In reply to Billhook:

You are correct and one of the learning points that consultation with my customers H&S team was that I need to add attack by animals to my risk assessments. 

In reply to ropedandready:

There was a video of a sheep falling down ideal slabs, they'd have taken out any climbers.. 

In reply to Roadrunner6:

I once saw, from the other side of the lake at Pavey Ark, a sheep fall almost the full height of the cliff, bouncing off several ledges on the way before finally landing on the screes. Amazingly, it managed to half get to its feet, wobbled about a bit, then collapsed, stone dead.