Years ago we brought home a scrawny giant of a dog, skittishly submissive and painfully biddable. He would cringe in horror as his adoptive sister bed-hopped every night, leaving a dirty-duvet trail of hair and sand so you knew she had graced you with her presence before she moved on to find a comfier bedfellow.
Ghillie wouldn’t even climb the stairs. He lay on bare floors beneath the supercilious gaze of our impudent sofa-snuggler.
Despite being younger, smaller and as daft as a brush, the incumbent girl dominated the lolloping interloper. She demanded he nibble her chest, sitting regally in front of him, bopping him on the head with her paw if he deigned to pause for a fur-ball cough. She would only remove herself from the sofa for the joy of hogging the heat from the fire, and had just to raise an eyebrow in Ghillie’s direction to have him relinquish his place and slink sadly to a colder spot.
We had the perfect opportunity to nourish this bag of bones with love and security while maintaining his sense of discipline and his innate understanding that he was a dog, a concept entirely lost on his new sister. It took a while, but incrementally we ruined the big lump.
At 69 kilos he was almost at his optimum weight when he began to perch his bony bum on human knees. Uninvited, he would back up to any dining, office or arm-chair and park his full weight on the occupant. Ideally his heavy head would then rest on the entirety of a computer keyboard; happy drool puddling around the mouse-pad, his enormous black eyes dolefully seeking approval from whichever human he had, that moment, sought out to love.
We turned one of the biggest, spookiest canines into a mushy lap-dog, so it should come as no surprise that our new foray into animal-husbandry might be of the softer variety.
Just a couple of generations ago our family were real farmers: proper hill farmers on the wild Argyll coast; shooting deer, trapping moles and killing bunnies, all while rearing an impressive stock of highland cattle. Now we have three wee girl calves of our own who might share their bloodline – although the link is as tenuous as Audrey Tatou being the daughter of Jesus in the Da Vinci Code.
Our girls are about nine months old and are from the Cladich Fold on Loch Awe. They are truly regal beasts. Well, wild-wee-princesses-mucking-about-at-a-royal-wedding kind of regal.
On the ridge below our house with the Sound of Jura behind them they look unarguably majestic, but take a closer look and there’s a bucket of mischief in those ginger-fringed eyes, and they love nothing more than a wee hairdressing sesh.
Now, I have experience of approaching a small ginger girl with a comb in my hand, but with my diminutive, fiery-tempered daughter it was so much more of a challenge than with these great 200-kilo beasts.
Rather than wriggling furiously away from me, the sight of me, comb in hand, has these girls thundering clumsily up the hill, only stopping when close enough to suck on my jumper and butt me gently, mooing all the time with pleasure.
Although we built them a cosy, straw-filled shelter up by the house, they prefer to hang out knee-deep in mud at the gate to the road. It’s the prime site for being coo-ed over by passing tourists and neighbours, but does muck up their glorious coiffure.
And it’s the one with the longest, blondest fringe that is the wee madam of the brood. Heaven forfend that the grooming attentions move to another cow. Then it’s a swift, stubby horn up the jacksie of either the groomed or the groomer, and a side-charge to throw herself back in the salon seat, head back, eyes closed while her gorgeous tresses are tamed yet again.
Fortunately, these feisty three are destined forever to adorn our hillside – there’s not even a glimmer of a knife and fork in their future, just an indulged life of hairy nonsense.
But their contented moos have just been joined by the squeal of wee weaners – and therein lies a very different destiny…
To be continued.
The Softer Crofter 