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

NAMES MUST be withheld to protect the guilty, but the forgotten turkey stuffing was uppermost in everybody's mind. Could Christmas dinner survive the omission of such an essential ingredient? Would it be just a grim pantomime of the joyous events being celebrated the length and breadth of the country?

I SAT, with no dogs at my side this time, by the side of a disused quarry, one of dozens that dot the countryside. Some are so small they were obviously opened to provide the stone for the nearby farmhouse, and possibly also a couple of cottar houses, before being abandoned for a readier supply of building material.

THE DOGS and I were walking round a lonely pond which frequently attracts duck, especially in the evening. We'd reached the top end when I heard the first haunting cries of geese heading our way.

A SOUTHERLY wind was blowing an already high tide higher up the beach. A fine mist of spray, from breaking seas on the rocky shore at the top end of St Cyrus Bay, cast a veil over the cliff tops at the edge of the village. It was a coorse sort of morning as I parked at Scottish Natural Heritage's nature reserve centre at Nether Warburton, but I needed to see the sea.

I CAN'T remember how the conversation got round to Nature's more off-beat liberality, but when I mentioned that my mother used to cook me and my father rook pie, it was clear from the raised eyebrows and faint looks of distaste that this was not a subject for the breakfast table. Mother used only the breasts from juvenile birds, before they had learnt to fly. At that age their diet is mainly seeds and grain and other vegetable matter, and the meat is tender.