Sunday, November 15, 2009

Viking Captive Princess in stock and dog drama

First of all , Amazon.com is showing The Viking's Captive Princess as being in stock. So even though the official publication date is not until 1 December, they will be shipping now.

Dog drama or more properly dog attack

Yesterday, my husband and I went for a walk. It is the walk we do very often. One of the farms has a dog which is not under control and never has been. I am not sure if it does anything on the farm. Basically all I hear is people shouting its name --Charlie as it ignores them. We always keep our dogs on leads near the farm as we do not want bother.
Yesterday the hunt was meeting in that area which was sigh as it meant guiding Tess & Hardy through vehicles, horses and people. The hunt is very good about keeping its hounds off and away from the public highway until it is actually started. But we wanted to go on the walk and do have the right to walk on a public road.
Tess was on her halti and Hardy (because the halti rubbed on his nose) was on an ordinary lead.They were nervous but behaving. My husband had Tess and I had Hardy. We moved reasonably quickly.
Over the general noise, I hear -- Charlie, Charlie. My heart sank but I ignored it. Surely no one could be so dumb as to allow a badly behaved dog out when the hunt was about. The meet was at their farm and so they had to have known.
We stop as there are horse in the road. Tess lies down on the verge. Hardy sits a few feet away. We are keeping tight hold of the leads, and in my case Hardy's collar.
Suddenly there is a snarl and a dark brown dog launches at Tess going for her throat. Charlie. My husband pulled Charlie off Tess who was cowering and unable to defend herself with a halti. The dog spun around and attacked again, tried to get Tess's throat a second time. I allowed Hardy to go closer and between Hardy and my husband, they saw Charlie off. No one asked if we or the dogs were all right. No one apologised despite the woman whom I have seen calling Charlie, Charlie standing there holding her horse. She simply looked on stony faced. One of the hunt officials came over to remonstrate with my husband for having dogs but backed away when he discovered our dogs were on leads and properly under control.
The next time, the police will be called as you can not have a dangerous dog running around a public area out of control like that.
Tess and Hardy were very subdued for the rest of the day. Thankfully Tess was uninjured in the attack.

6 comments:

Caroline said...

Irresponsible dog owners are a right royal pain in you-know-what! Take care. Caroline x

Michelle Styles said...

Caroline --
Yes I agree.
Hitherto I thought this woman's stupidity was confined to riding a horse, while leading a young child on a pony and having the dog Charlie run free on a country road with blind corners where various regular users speed. It was when I assured that Charlie did mean any harm. At the time, we had our old border collie and Chile the Labrador with us who were on leads and disliked getting bothered.

Nell Dixon said...

Hugs Michelle, that must have been very scary. Poor Tess

Your Sister said...

You should lodge a complaint. It was an unprovoked attack. Next time Charlie could go after a child. If enough complaints were lodged, perhaps the police would be able to do something.

Poor you and poor Tess and Hardy. This is going to stay with you and them for a long time. Tracy was attacked once. It was very scary. It makes you skittish of strange dogs.

Kaye Manro said...

So sorry about the dog attack, Michelle.

But congrats on the early release of Viking Captive Princess!

Hetal said...

I'm so sorry for the near debacle. I can only imagine what you must have felt seeing Charlie attack your baby. I admire your collectedness despite the attack and hope it doesn't happen again. Hugs. ~Hetal