Duck... Duck... Dog

Saturday, July 14, 2001 - UK

ABERFOYLE, SCOTLAND — The only thing goofier than a row of ducks following a dog would have to be a row of people watching a row of ducks following a dog.  But hey, it happens.

The UK's catastrophic outbreak of the livestocks' foot-and-mouth disease has led to severe cattle-moving restrictions on farmers, shepherds and agriculturists across the countryside.  But one farmer, Mr. Fergus Wood, has decided to improvise and make the most of a difficult situation.  Faced with the seasonal shutdown of his daily sheepdog trials, a substantial visitor attraction, Mr. Wood simply substituted ducks for sheep.

That was the easy part.  Next he had to break the news to Dorothy, his two-year-old Welsh Collie, and after that, he had to break the news to the busloads of camera-toting tourists who were all wondering, "Where's the beef?"

Yippee-ki-yay motherduck; Dorothy's on the job. (Photo: Katie Lee / The Sun)

At first it was a disaster.  Mr. Wood describes, "We used Aylesbury ducks and they were useless because they just flew off."  But after the first few shows proved unsuccessful, they tried using Indian Runner Ducks instead.  "They're excellent because they stand erect, which makes them nice and visible to the audience, but they don't fly well," he explains.

And Dorothy is just happy she doesn't need to take those flying lessons.

When seven-year-old Louise Hammond heard plaintive squeaks coming from an underground pipe at the Brooke Marine boatyard in Oulton Broad, she immediately told her father.

Mr. Paul Hammond, 26, arrived on the scene and attempted to crawl through the 2-ft. pipe (60cm) and managed to extract two abandoned ducklings.  Several trips later he had the whole litter of two-day-old mallards at his house.

Apparently unnoticed during the rescue operation, the Hammonds' five-year-old German Shepherd/Labrador mutt was busy on the homefront taking care of the new arrivals.  "Ben" wasted no time in licking them clean and instituting a foster-family structure, which the ducklings eagerly accepted; now the kiddies follow Ben around the house and swim with him in a small paddling pool out back.

According to Mr. Hammond, "Ben is very gentle with a loving nature.  We only got him last year after he was abandoned.  Perhaps he realizes that the ducklings are in the same boat as he was in."