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

Words are my seed corn and I am rarely lost for them, but words failed me when I saw an expensive cream settee dumped in a layby on the road between Fettercairn and Edzell. read more

We have been entertaining Rosie, daughter Cait’s roly-poly bundle of fun – a rough-haired Jack Russell who terrorises Inka. read more

Dogs – as I’m sure other dog owners will confirm – have a canny habit of finding the most revolting things in smelly corners and either rolling in them and carrying the fragrance back to share with the family, or eating them and throwing the proceeds up on the drawing room carpet. read more

Walking with Inka on a woodland track a woodcock rose silently from rough grass and flitted off ahead of us, jouking and jinking low between the trees.  Woodcock are essentially wading birds with a long, straight beak, a dumpy body and short legs which have adapted to a woodland environment.  Unlike the explosive clatter of a pheasant taking flight, woodcock can be so silent and fleeting you question if you really saw it – just a blink-of-an-eye encounter. read more

I’ve just finished an utterly absorbing book – The Seabird’s Cry, The Lives and Loves of Puffins, Gannets and Other Ocean Voyagers, by Adam Nicolson.  The ocean voyagers are “creatures of the high latitudes and distant oceans” and include albatross and gannets, kittiwakes, shearwaters, fulmars and gulls – “pelagic wanderers and wind-buffeted migrants”. read more

A report in this paper of the sighting of a hoopoe at the Scottish Wildlife Trust visitor centre at Montrose Basin reminded me about a possible sighting of one of these exotic birds on Piperton croft, outside Brechin, in 2005.  I haunted the croft for five days hoping to see it but was disappointed. read more

Several weekends ago we – the Doyenne and I, that is, and son Robert and his family – were frustrated by the weather from meeting for a family lunch at the Finzean Farmshop.  The Lecht was closed to the north and Cairn o’ Mount closed to the south with our intended destination marooned in the middle. read more

Tomorrow marks the one hundredth anniversary of the end of World War One.  The Doyenne and I shall attend our church Armistice service to commemorate the stark events of the Great War – a hideous euphemism for those four years of conflict and their bitter harvest of senseless death. read more

On Monday morning I drove up Glenesk hoping to get the best of a sun which was competing with some wintery-looking clouds.  I was just too late to get a cup of coffee and a scone at The Retreat Museum for it had closed for the winter the previous evening read more

With the threat of the first winter snows this weekend – earlier than I would normally expect – it’s certainly time to start feeding your garden song birds if you haven’t already done so. read more