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The Whitehaven News - Thursday, August 14, 1913

SHORT NEWS ITEMS.
 
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The dry weather is having an effect in the fell becks, which is unprecedented within the memory of anyone now living here. Some of the becks which usually flood and wash foot bridges away about this time of year are absolutely dry, containing not a single drop of water, leaving desolate spaces of gravel exposed.
 
Fish as a rule retire with retiring water, but the smaller trout have this year been stranded. The pools have dried up, leaving no outlet, and small fish, four and five in a hollow, may have been lying dead.
 
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There was an exciting chase on Wasdale Fells after a dog a few days ago. Many lambs were lost in the spring by the depredations of foxes, but there were some cases in which it was suspected a dog had been at work. When a dog takes to sheep worrying it has the instinct to go a long way from home, and generally chooses the night time for it’s felony, so that detection is very difficult.
 
Last week, however, a shepherd on Stockdale Moor saw a dog actually at work worrying lambs in broad daylight in the afternoon. He gave chase, other farmers and shepherds heard, took up the cry, and there was at once a merry hunt on foot. The dog was kept in sight, and the chase lay for several miles over moor and fell, through woods, over becks and rivers, and the trail was never lost until the rover was tracked to his own kennel.
 
He was taken and handed over to his owner, who promptly destroyed him. He was an old and hitherto faithful sheep dog, never suspected of misdemeanour, but in this raid he left four lambs lying dead.
 
 
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