Dogless Walkers COUNTRY SQUIRE MAGAZINE

Dogless Walkers COUNTRY SQUIRE MAGAZINE

BY DOMINIC WIGHTMAN Every morning at five, when the world is still half-asleep, I take the dogs across the fields. The ritual is unchanging, the path well-worn, yet the people I meet are like fragments of a larger story, half-told. Normally I pass four. First, the man with the spaniel puppy—a cheerful, ruddy-faced fellow whose enthusiasm for cricket is matched only by his bewilderment at the state of things. We pause, peel away our headphones, a…