Hunting dog?

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Hunting dog?

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Bulgarianlily

Joined: 01 Jun 2008
Posts: 1667
Location: South West Mountains of Bulgaria

Posted: Wed Mar 02, 11 6:52 am Post subject: Hunting dog?

We have a beautiful and bouncy Karakachan puppy, 9 month old. Normally these are sheep and cow herding dogs, guarding them against wolf and bear attack. But ours seems to what to expand his job role. I looked out the window this morning to find him playing in the light snow with a pump action shotgun.

This was a bit surprising.

We hastily got it off him and took it up to the village shop, where a lot of the local men were drinking their morning coffee. One abashed man had to admit it was his, and was told firmly by his brother that he had left it propped by his house woodpile , so I guess that is where our dog found it. The dog is now being called Rambo and the story is going round the village with great enjoyment. We are just glad it wasn't some hunter that had fallen somewhere out in the forest.

Brownbear

Joined: 28 May 2007
Posts: 14929
Location: South West

Posted: Wed Mar 02, 11 7:02 am Post subject:
I hope he made sure the chamber was empty before gnawing it too heavily. Some remedial training otherwise - when he learns to field-strip it, give him a biccy. Two when he can put it together again.

Bulgarianlily

Joined: 01 Jun 2008
Posts: 1667
Location: South West Mountains of Bulgaria

Posted: Wed Mar 02, 11 7:10 am Post subject:
Three biccys when he brings back a rabbit as well.

Dumnonian

Joined: 27 Feb 2011
Posts: 67
Location: North Devon

Posted: Wed Mar 02, 11 8:58 am Post subject: Re: Hunting dog?

Bulgarianlily wrote:

took it up to the village shop, where a lot of the local men were drinking their morning coffee. .

Wow, you still have real life in villages in Bulgaria then, not just hermetically sealed commuters like in England?

Lovely story - sounds like you have fun over there!

Bulgarianlily

Joined: 01 Jun 2008
Posts: 1667
Location: South West Mountains of Bulgaria

Posted: Wed Mar 02, 11 9:12 am Post subject:

Oh boy villages don't get more real life than this....

We have a village shop with a pot bellied wood stove, round which the women knit in winter, with a small side room in which the men drink coffee, beer and the occasional rakia. Outside the cows wait in the morning for the herdsman to come collect them for the day, and in the afternoon the women wait on the bench outside the school not for the children but for the cows to return for milking. Every house except ours has at least one cow and a horse and cart, and most still have a hand loom. Food is grown in horse ploughed small hillside fields, and onions and bunches of maize hang from the eaves. Pumpkins dry on the roofs over the gateways into house yards filled with woodpiles, sheep pens, donkeys, packsaddles and woodfired cooking stove where the women cook in the summers. Chickens hang around outside the shop hoping for bread crumbs. A traffic jam here is when both the cows and the sheep arrive back in the village at the same time. Small boys go out with axes bigger than themselves to proudly chop kindling for mothers and grandmothers. Men canter into the village on horse back with chainsaws roped to their saddle bows and tie the horses to the school fence. I could go on for hours....

Dumnonian

Joined: 27 Feb 2011
Posts: 67
Location: North Devon

Posted: Wed Mar 02, 11 9:17 am Post subject:
Do you think the village will still be like this in 10 years?

Bulgarianlily

Joined: 01 Jun 2008
Posts: 1667
Location: South West Mountains of Bulgaria

Posted: Wed Mar 02, 11 9:18 am Post subject:
There will be changes but the main thing that will keep the village community together is more village based work. If the young people drift off into the towns then that will be the end of it.

Dumnonian

Joined: 27 Feb 2011
Posts: 67
Location: North Devon

Posted: Wed Mar 02, 11 9:34 am Post subject:

Bulgarianlily wrote:

There will be changes but the main thing that will keep the village community together is more village based work. If the young people drift off into the towns then that will be the end of it.

That's something our two rural areas have in common then.

Because of the industrialisation of agriculture we have virtually no work in North Devon. Imo, we desperately need a focus on creating opportunities for production of food and other agricultural and horticultural commodities in a way that increases employment, rather than what has gone on since WW2 which has been all about making people redundant, with the predictable results of mass unemployment in rural areas and exodus to cities.

alice

Joined: 18 Feb 2006
Posts: 2820

Posted: Wed Mar 02, 11 2:23 pm Post subject:

Bulgarianlily wrote:

It sounds like a scene from a Terry Gilliam film......is there a lot of mud as well?

giveitago

Joined: 02 Jan 2011
Posts: 151
Location: surrey

Posted: Thu Jun 16, 11 1:39 pm Post subject:
Did you consider a holiday let? What a place to spend a few days in eh!

kirstyfern

Joined: 03 Jan 2010
Posts: 1574
Location: Great Dunmow, Essex

Posted: Thu Jun 16, 11 2:13 pm Post subject:
Sounds great I'd much prefer that to the mopeds / teenagers / parties / noisy neighbours on our estate!

gofarmer

Joined: 13 Sep 2005
Posts: 73
Location: Bulgaria

Posted: Tue Jun 28, 11 6:40 am Post subject: Bulgarian villages

It is pretty much as BulgarianLilly describes it. I have been here for around 5 years now and little had changed in the village in that time. I have just been over to our local shop (basically an old caravan trailer at bottom of someone's garden that also doubles as local cafe) to get our fresh bread and fresh eggs, that she literally goes to the hen hut to collect. The other day I spent a couple of hours tidying up my grape vines. We have already made several jars of strawberry jam, now waiting for the peaches and apricots to really get going.

And yes if anyone wants to come and experience Bulgarian village life we have a couple of rental cottages available!

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