Another one of Barleys spectacular performances ‘the flying Golden Retriever‘ also occurred when we were on holiday with the dogs in the Cairngorms.
We were staying in a cabin that had pine forest immdeiately at the rear of it – absolutely great for walking the dogs.
We had our 3 Golden Retrievers Fern, Barley and Jane with us and they absolutely loved it. They were overdosing on wild life scent. When we took them in to the forest they hardly new which way to go first there were so many scent trails from the deer, foxes, squirrels, rabbits etc that thrived in the woodland.
Barley was far and away the most energetic about following scent trails and as soon as she was let of the lead she was gone nose down at high speed through the trees.
Barley did most things at full speed!
We did have some initial concerns that she might go to far and get herself lost but she was pretty good at coming in to the whistle so after a couple of days with no issues we began to relax about how long she was out of sight.
On the day of her ‘maiden flight’ we were walking up a forest track along th edge of the forest with a high bank (yes this adventure involves a high bank like the other one but this time no water!) on our right hand and with a low rise and a barbed wire fence on our left.
Barley had been gone for some time so we decided we best call her in to make sure she knew where we were and which direction we were headed in.
I whistled a couple of times but sign of Barley. She must have been a long way in to the forest but, it wasn’t long after whistling her for the third time that she came hurtling out of the trees a full speed just ahead of us!
The picture below was taken the following day when like the star she was, she repeated the performance but fortunately at a different point where the bank was significantly lower and no barbed wire fence!
Did she see not see the bank and the big drop or did she see it and wasn’t bothered about it – who knows?
Barley came off the top of the bank running flat out. We started on in horror as she flew through the air wondering just how badly injured she was going to be!
She almost cleared the whole width of the track which was for forestry vehicles so you can imagine how wide it was!
As she hit the ground she was almost immediately faced with a low rising bank and the barbed wire fence! Was she going to end up hitting the fence and tearing her self open on the wire?
Amazingly to us she hit the ground and began a high speed turn as she was running up the bank and ended up running along the fence line.
As nonchalant as you like she slow down and trotted off the low bank and back to us for a fuss for coming back when called!
How Barley made that landing without breaking her legs was incredible to us as was the way she managed to avoid the fence.
Needless to say we never whistled her back when we were by the high bank again!
So Barley was our flying Golden Retriever!
