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From 1986, I co-owned Int. Ch., Dutch and Belgian Ch, Killymuck Maolagain Maigue, trialer (28-11-1995) with Mej. A.C. ter
Kuile, who bred him. Although I did a lot of gundog work with him and he did very well on shows, he certainly could be naughty.
When it was allowed to take dogs with you to Great Britain, the first thing we did was make them "England proof",
and then we set off...
After a few years of England Holidays we stayed at Dartmoor for a while. Lovely surrounding and a LOT of sheep. They were
everywhere, grazing freely. So, as our dogs were not used to walking among sheep, we decided to keep the dogs on a long leash.
However, during one evening walk on the higher situated Moors, it looked like there were no sheep around at all. We let the
2 IWS's and 1 Irish Soft coated Wheaten Terrier off the leash to run around. Lovely!
For about 5 minutes this was okay, then suddenly Mulligan (almost 8 years old) ran, into the wind, straight up a huge "mountain".
He went on and on. I whistled him to come, I screamed his name but he just kept on up the mountain. Then he vanished; I couldn't
see him anymore.
It was almost at nightfall. I couldn't catch up. His condition was really great. I thought it must
have been water that he smelled. He loved to swim. But when I reached the top at last, I couldn't see him. There was nothing
but sheep and a new landscape of hills. No water and no dog.
I rather got into a panic. I called his name while my
friend looked for him called him on the other side of the hill. Still nothing; silence everywhere and the sheep still grazing
quietly. The only thing I heard was the pounding of my heart.
We had been warned that it could be very dangerous at dusk in the hills. And there we were, abroad in a totally unknown area.
Brr; My friend came towards me and suggested to return to the car and to wait there for him.
As we descended and looked behind us again, we noticed a brown sheep. For a moment we thought it was him, but no - that was
wishful thinking, it was a brown sheep. Then suddenly the creature lifted his head and we saw an ear flapping. We called his
name again and he just returned to me and sat in front of me. Good boy!!! We'd found him.
We went upwards again to
see what he'd been doing up there. We found a very old cadaver of a sheep. The mystery was solved. Mulligan certainly was
a supporter of BARF-diet for free. He must have smelled it far from 500 mtrs down the hill!
From that moment on we
called that mountain; Mount Mulligan.
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