A breath of fresh air from Scotland

Welcome to "Man with two dogs" - the family website for dog owners and dog walkers.

This is my countryside diary which appears each Saturday in the Courier & Advertiser newspaper.

North-East Legacy

May 14th, 2012
Claivers

A SLIM volume of poetry with a faded dust jacket and dedicated to a friend by the poet , a small watercolour painting signed with just the artist’s initials ‘VJ’, and a single sheet of writing paper with a poem written in an unsteady hand will come under the auctioneer’s hammer in the next few weeks. …read on »

WHITSON FAMILY TARTAN TRADITION

May 14th, 2012
Claivers

If the family tradition is to be believed the surname Whitson in Scotland is of Viking origin. The story as it was written down by my great-uncle Sir Thomas Whitson, who was Lord Provost of Edinburgh from 1929-1932, was that three Viking brothers sailed from Norway to Scotland in their longboats, landing at Footdee (locally Fittie), at the mouth of the River Dee at Aberdeen where it meets the North Sea. …read on »

Reeking of history

May 5th, 2012
Weekly

THEY TALK of Aberdeenshire’s historic Castle Trail which features the grandest and most important castles of the north-east. As I drove over Garvock Hill above Laurencekirk, which links the Howe of the Mearns with the coastal plain, it occurred to me that there’s another castle trail right here on our doorstep. …read on »

Keep your eyes open

April 28th, 2012
Weekly

HOW CAN you think up new things to say? It’s a question that I was asked again by a friend who had just discovered the Man with Two Dogs website. The answer is always the same – I don’t have to think up new things to say, Nature does it for me. …read on »

Springing to life

April 21st, 2012
Weekly

THERE ARE times when a dog in the countryside, especially one as rumbustious as Inka, can be a drawback. At this time of year the focus is on nesting and breeding and it’s often possible, if you go quietly, to get closer than usual to a lot of wildlife. Going quietly isn’t really an option with Inka, but there’s still plenty to be seen. …read on »

A box of memories

April 14th, 2012
Weekly

IT’S FUNNY what trips the mind and releases a flood of memories. Last Saturday it was an ordinary egg box. Well, maybe not all that ordinary, for it was a ducal egg box. I don’t know if it had the ducal coat of arms painted on the lid because the lid was open and I couldn’t see the top side, but it was in a ducal residence. …read on »

Keeping it in the family (or Spoilt for Choice)

April 7th, 2012
Weekly

I TOOK it badly when winter interrupted the summer we were enjoying. There was plenty warning about the snow so it was no surprise when it came last Tuesday, but the steep fall in temperature was still a bit of a shock to the system. …read on »

Scotland’s Accordion King

April 1st, 2012
Claivers

Music and the sea each have a heartbeat of their own but they dance to different rhythms. No one knows this better than Dave Pullar, one of the last of the east of Scotland salmon netsmen and owner of probably the largest collection of accordions in Scotland. …read on »

A Kissin’ Year?

March 31st, 2012
Weekly

THREE PAINTED Ladies on the Kirrie Dumplings – were they three colourful girls on a feeding frenzy? It’s the sort of remark my father would have made for he was born and spent his early years in Kirriemuir. …read on »

Golden brown

March 24th, 2012
Weekly

IT’S ONLY mid-March, for goodness sake, but it’s been so warm you’d think it was mid-April. Mind you, it’s been nippy when I’ve taken the dogs out last thing at night, and when we go out again in the morning there’s frost on the grass and on the cars. …read on »