She wove through the sparse stalks of bolting wheat on the field’s edge, nose pinned to the floor. The grass margin a few feet to our right had recently been cut, and on it, some way ahead, a young roebuck sauntered towards the big wood below the keeper’s house. I watched the pup carefully and wondered if she was on the deer’s trail or simply transfixed by the stew of other scents that surely filled her nostrils. I suppose it’s a different world down there when you’re vertically challenged and ruled by your snout.
‘She’ is a teckel, a wirehaired dachshund — my first, and not yet five months old. Her name is Scribble and this was our maiden outing. A milestone in her journey as a budding ‘deer dog’? Maybe,
