From our June 14th edition
Walking the dog is not getting any less stressful.
Don’t get me wrong. The pup, now over a year old, is a little bit better behaved than he was and his owner slightly better trained too – although I still have a long way to go!
What’s putting my blood pressure up on our daily perambulations is the desire to walk taking others into account.
Finn (the dog) is a people lover and very friendly and will tear off to greet every other walker and their dog – but the truth is there is nothing new there. He has always done that. That is one pressure I have learned to live with over these last however many months he has been with us.
It’s the feathered “others” who are causing me stress. There are lots of nesting birds where we walk and I really do not want Finn to disturb them, which means that I spend our hour of exercise in the mornings, multi-tasking.
I keep an eye on the dog, another looking for people for him not to run to and another looking out and listening for agitated birds trying to steer us away from their nests!
Mind you, we are not the only ones who have to learn to live and let live. It seems golfers do, too.
I suspect it is the same in Golspie, but there are oyster catchers nesting on the Struie course in Dornoch. One pair have found the safest place. They are nesting right in the middle of the fairway – my ball never goes there.
As well as oyster catchers, there are curlews sitting on eggs in the rough and of course skylarks and pheasants, too. Brora golf course will also have all these things to contend with plus the odd bit of slightly bigger livestock.
Perhaps there is a lesson in there for humans generally.
A lesson about living considerately and making room for one another.
We are not always very good at that. We can be selfish about taking from the world without thinking about what we are doing and without putting anything back.
We can treat the natural world and one another without respect. We can dismiss both people and things and treat them as worthless.
They are not though, to be taken for granted, or pushed aside, or abused because each is a gift: to be treasured, enjoyed and safeguarded.
Each has its own place on this planet.
That said, it is not always easy to make space for one another. In the end however, it will be worth it.
As for me and ma dug… we look forward to seeing lots of baby birds running and then flying round the golf course and to facing the same stress again next year! – Susan Brown.
