Skip had been following his nose all day when he realised that his master was not at his tail.

 

Skip was a little white Westie that I saw on our epic walk from Sandbanks to Bournemouth – and back again.

I used a sketch of a life buoy and rocks to add some drama to the scene.

His actual owners were not far off behind him but like most dogs he had run off ahead. At the sound of the crashing waves he would look back to check he was still being followed.

I had a black Heinz 57 dog that had a similar disposition. She never treated the fences of our back garden as a deterrent against escape. In the first year that we had her we received a constant flow of phone calls from neighbouring roads where she had escaped over our back fence. She also managed to turn on the gas in the kitchen one time but that’s another story.

We also had a Yorkshire Terrier that disappeared on Brean Sands in Somerset in search of some liberated Fish and Chips.

I guess we have a history of badly behaved dogs!