Monday 5 January 2009

Which is your dog..........

"A leap before you look" or "look before your leap?"
Why am I asking this question.
Well I'm still recovering after witnessing a "Leap before you look"

Your never guess which dog???
But anyway after a week, all looks fine so I'll tell you the story.

Last Wednesday late morning - New Year's Eve, Ian dropped myself, two friends and all four dogs at Hawkers Cove, he then drove around to Padstow and parked in car park and walked along the coast path to meet us all, it was a beautiful sunny day, but with cold winds (that's Cornwall) the tide was on it's way out - I'd checked the times.

We had walked down through the fields to the path to the beach and had walked along the sea line with the dogs doing their normal, charging around, barking, running in and out the water thing.
I could still see the sea up against some of the rocks further down the coast and as one of our friends (and Buzz) aren't great on climbing over rocks, I thought we had better go up onto the sand dunes and walk a little way along the coast path, past the rocks and then back down again. So we climbed up on to the dunes about 20 foot, to be met by a Tractor and it's workers picking cabbages, nothing wrong with that, we turned left and started towards Padstow.
We had only gone 20-30 yards, when Buzz decided he was going back to the sea, straight over the side of the cliff, followed by Red, who stopped dead in her tracks and peered over the edge, which is when I started to panic - not a good idea, as Red and Mindy went into "run wildly around on the cliff edge" mode, Harry (My soul Mate) stayed glued to my legs, watching my every move and trying to calm me down, unfortuantly not successfully!
I ran over to the cliff edge, to see this sheer drop of 20-30 foot, no way would he have been able to run down that and the speed he ran towards it, would have sent him two or three feet away from the cliff edge, I yelled his name, but couldn't see him, part of the cliff went in under us, so you couldn't see all the way to the sand (luckily it was sand and not the sea, which 2 hours previous to this it would have been) I yelled his name again and started to run back the way we had come, to go back down on the beach, he appeared, looking slightly sheepish, wondering what had happened, by which time Mindy and Red had made their way down to him via another slightly easier route !
When we eventually greeted each other, he had the biggest hug he had had for a long time, I checked him over as much as I could, he looked fine, all four legs touched the floor!
The two friends where still in shock and said whilst I was running back towards the beach they had looked at the sand that was directly below where he had gone over and said all they could see was his paws prints, nothing that looked like he had gone down on his side.

He stayed on the lead for the rest of the walk.

The rest of the walk, was enjoyable, mind you by the time we got back to the car, I was a little spaced out!

Anyway almost a week has gone by and although he was very stiff that night, that eased off with two hourly Arnicas pills, the only thing you can see, is raised hair along his rib cages, so we are waiting for an appointment to see the chiropractor.

It still make me feel sick, thinking about it.
I took Ian back there at the weekend (from the beach side, we didn't go up on the cliff) to take a photo of the spot!

Ian is 5 foot 10 inch, so you can see it was a fair "leap before you look" jump!

3 comments:

OBay Shelties said...

Oh my god how scarey. My husband laughs at me because I won't let my dogs near any cliffs.(I am afraid of height anyway) He says dogs aren't stupid and they know not to jump! HA! Another example that they don't know. At least it wasn't a hundred foot drop!

Angela said...

...Well if Dennis ever gets to meet Buzz, he will understands that all normal dog rules, go out the window!
...Your babies are looking more beautiful every day.

Lorna said...

Oh dear barmy Buzz !! Glad he is ok - the things dogs do to worry us!! My not at all brave little Foggy ran straight off the sea wall down onto the stones at Felixstowe once!

Lorna x