A visitor to the North Lakes is angry at the attitude of a dog walker whom she claimed allowed his pet to chase wild deer through woodland.
Andrea Green and her mother, who has a timeshare in Keswick, had been rambling on a road through Brundholme Wood, when she spotted three female deer being “intensely” stared at by an English setter.
She scanned the area with her binoculars and saw a man on the horizon above the tree line wearing a blue top who was “just sitting there.”
Concerned that the deer were trapped “between us and the dog,” Andrea and her mother moved to allow the deer more space and to be less visible as they did not want to cause the animals distress.
“We watched for around 10 minutes and then the dog just ran at the deer,” said Andrea, who lives in Lancashire and used to run the Yorkshire Dales National Park Authority visitor centre at Malham.
“They ran away and the dog chased and we lost sight of them all. I was so angry and upset I shouted out: ‘Get the dog on a lead, it’s chasing the deer’.
“We carried on walking and saw a few more people on the path above us and saw the dog again but still off the lead.”
They rounded a bend and came across the English setter off a lead next to fields filled with sheep and their lambs.
The man, who was in his late 50s to early 60s, with white hair, of slim build and wearing a blue jumper, was following.
It was then that Andrea confronted the man who confirmed that the dog was his. Andrea said that what followed was “appalling, distressing and simply unbelievable.” She said that the man had a “rehearsed” answer to every point she raised with him about the reckless way he was allowing his dog to charge around the woods while not being on a lead and he simply watched on.
He said that there were no signs in the woodland stating dogs should be kept on a lead; the deer knew the dog; she was not a hunting dog and was not interested in cattle or sheep. The man added that the deer have their young higher up in the woodland and that his dog needed exercise.
“I informed him the Countryside Code has been updated in relation to dogs, but he was not interested,” said Andrea.
“He was clearly enjoying himself. When I indicated he should not be in the countryside with that attitude, he asked if we were visitors. I did not see the relevance but he just turned away in apparent disgust muttering ‘tourists’.”
“It’s always the tourists that get the blame for leaving gates open and leaving rubbish behind. For a local he was not setting a very good example to visitors. I was left gobsmacked by his sheer and utter arrogance. He had an answer for everything.”
Andrea has since written to the Lake District National Park Authority and the Mirehouse Estate, which owns the woods, complaining about the attitude of the man “who had no regard for the natural world.”
She hopes that he will be challenged by more walkers and shamed into putting his dog on a lead.
