Welcome to "Man with two dogs" - the family website for dog owners and dog walkers.

This is my countryside diary which appears each Saturday in the Courier & Advertiser newspaper.

Cheap cheep

August 30th, 2008

ENCOURAGING WILDLIFE to the garden can be expensive. One way to do it is by planting the right flowers to attract bees and butterflies, and the right berry-bearing bushes and trees such as cotoneasters, rowans, cherries, hollies and hawthorns for the bigger songbirds like the blackbirds. A cheaper way is to leave wild areas in corners of the garden where seeding thistles and other weeds can flourish and support tits and finches. …read on »

Jelly pieces

August 23rd, 2008

COUNTRY MICE sometimes go to town, which is what the Doyenne and I did recently. We usually try to take a short break during the Edinburgh Festival to sup up a bit of culture. …read on »

A fickle nature

August 16th, 2008

THE PAST four or five months seem to have scooted by. Being very busy anyway has probably contributed to things, but it seems no time since the dogs and I were walking under bare trees waiting for that magic moment when the branches took on the whisper of green which heralded spring’s early leaves. …read on »

Post code happiness

August 9th, 2008

A RURAL sub-postmaster’s life isn’t just postal orders and licking stamps. Three years ago David Greasley brought his family of wife Sharon and son Tom to take over the post office in Edzell. They left behind them a life in Leicestershire where both David and Sharon had been in business selling animal feeds to farmers and horse breeders. …read on »

Murmuring of innumerable bees … Tennyson

August 2nd, 2008

MONDAY P.M. – Walking with the dogs in the baking afternoon sun the dusty bank ahead of us seemed to be moving with ants scurrying all over it, and I thought we had stumbled on a nest. I kept the dogs to heel (the last thing I wanted was hordes of the insects running amuck in Macbeth’s thick coat) but as we got closer it was clear they were airborne and quartering the area just above ground level. …read on »

Rambles

July 26th, 2008

SPUR OF the moment decisions are often the best ones. Last Sunday seemed to herald in summer properly, at last, so the Doyenne and I bundled the dogs into the car and set off to find new places to walk. …read on »

Hunting & gathering

July 19th, 2008

LAST SUNDAY morning I gave the Doyenne a wee treat. The wild strawberries which grow in the two troughs at the front of the house had been getting riper and riper and my fulsome assurances that I would pick them “this evening” were met with patient forbearance. …read on »

Black & blue

July 12th, 2008

OUR SQUIRRELS are back after goodness knows how many months’ absence. We’d seen a very occasional one coming to the peanut feeders but it was the Doyenne, at the start of the week, going downstairs to make an early cup of tea, who saw one on each of the two feeders outside the kitchen window. …read on »

More than babbling streams

July 5th, 2008

“BELLOWING LIKE the bulls of Baal” is an expression to describe extreme, intemperate noise – a “beastly” noise, you might say. Baal was one of the ancient Egyptians’ most important gods, rider of the clouds and god of fertility, who presided over not just the earth but the animals too. The bull was Baal’s cult animal and symbol of the god’s power. …read on »

Holidays in Scotland

June 28th, 2008

THE SPIRITUAL homeland of West Highland terriers must surely be the west Highlands so we hoped that our holiday in Ardnamurchan would be as west Highlandy for Macbeth as it was possible to be. …read on »