THERE ARE VERY few times in my life when there isn’t a dog near to me. Sometimes I’m watching an intelligent, hard-working border collie handle my sheep at the far side of a field. Sometimes I’m sitting in the kitchen reading with a furry body pressed against my legs. Sometimes I’m bumping across the fields with the back of my truck loaded with four dogs – the collies Peg and Pearl and our Hungarian wire-haired Vizslas, Boo and Olive. Sometimes, when I’m away from home filming for Countryfile, I’m meeting other remarkable dogs whose relationship with their owners goes way beyond simple companionship.
Not that I ever underestimate the powerful beneficial effects of having a dog in the house simply as a pet. One in four households in Britain today is home to a dog and there’s plenty of research to show that dog owners are fitter, healthier, and suffer less from depression than those who don’t have them. Children growing up with pets learn so much, and also gain that simple, unconditional love that irons out so many worries and anxieties. There is nothing more reassuring for a youngster than cuddling up with a dog, who never asks questions about what kind of day you had, never judges you for not doing homework or not getting good grades, who is always in your corner when other friends are more fickle. Yes, just having a dog in the family is a wonderful thing, and our household always feels very empty when one of our much-loved dogs dies.
Although I understand the relationship between a family and its pet, I love the fact that dogs have evolved over millennia to be so much more than companions. Peg, the border collie sheepdog whose kennel is next to the back door of the farmhouse, is my partner when it comes to all the shepherding work I have to do. She makes my work possible in a way that no mechanical aids or extra humans could, and it is a role that dogs like her have filled more or less unchanged over centuries, even thousands of years. When I watch her working the flock I know there is a connection that goes right back to the evolution of dogs from their wolf ancestors: my work with Peg is something that a Bronze Age shepherd, rounding up his goats or sheep, would recognise. It was Peg’s ancestors who made it possible for men to stop hunting to feed their families and start cultivating their own land and animals. They were there at the birth of civilisation as we recognise it today.
For me, the bond I have with Peg is priceless; she gives me a wonderful devotion and loyalty that is a real privilege, as well as making an enormous contribution to my farming life. Every morning when she bounds out of her kennel, eager to greet me and to get on with the work I have lined up for her, I know how very lucky I, and thousands of other shepherds and farmers, are to have these extraordinarily bright, enthusiastic dogs at our side. And we, who work the land and our flocks, are not the only beneficiaries of the extraordinary relationship between man and dog.
If Peg’s ancestry goes back to the early days of dogs working happily alongside humans, there are many other dogs whose roles have evolved more recently to fit in with our changing times. There are gundogs, like the Labradors I grew up with, and the Hungarian wire-haired Vizslas like Boo and Olive who live with us now. There are assistance dogs, whose skills involve understanding modern life so much they can use cash machines, load and unload washing machines, and save the lives of their owners on a regular basis when they have serious health problems. There are guard dogs, search and rescue dogs, sniffer dogs – the list goes on.
In this book I want to introduce you to my own dogs, but also to some of the many others I have met through Countryfile, and whose stories have reinforced my belief that we humans owe an enormous debt to our wet-nosed, tail-wagging, snuffling, four-legged friends.