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

The local great spotted woodpeckers have been drumming their tarradiddles in the trees across the road from the house. read more

I’ve been lucky to have lived most of my life in the country, away from the noise and light pollution of built-up areas.  I often make the point in my talks that the night time walks with Inka can be every bit as interesting as the day time ones  We live on the edge of a village now but I’m just a step from the countryside proper. read more

The sky was flushed with a glowing, pink sunrise as Inka and I went out for the morning walk on Monday.  The pity is it was so fleeting, the colour fading imperceptibly into infinity – for where else was there for the colour to go? read more

On Wednesday Inka and I were out around half past eight, the morning sun shining out of a clear sky streaked with high trails of cirrus cloud.  There wasn’t so much as a whisper of wind to shiver the topmost branches of the leafless trees or the dead grass heads, bleached ghosts of their summer glory, crowding the burn side. read more

A message from David Turner, the Bursar at The Burn, near Edzell, was to tell us of the demise of an old friend.  Recent high winds had brought down the hundred years old towering monkey puzzle tree in the part of the gardens known as the Arboretum. read more

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