The walk started by a nice stroll across the local farm fields, taking in the start of the new growing season and wondering what crops were slowly starting to show themselves as their small green leaves started to shoot. We have walked these fields for years, and watched their life-cycle from seedlings, to full crop, harvested and then empty field.

In the distance we could hear the toot-toot of the steam train and as we crossed another field, which had recently been spread with manure, we dodged the drying dung and made our way to the railway crossing just as the train steamed past us.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=PSpwH-Tud_g

Over the other side of the railway line we stopped to look at a field of baby lambs and recalled some of the events featured on the recent BBC Lambing Live series.

Enjoying this afternoon stroll, taking in all the sights and sounds of spring we thought that instead of re-tracing our path back home, we’d go the long way around, through a small village and then back across some other fields.

Venturing into the village we passed a series of council houses. As we got to one particular house, we were greeted with two dogs who started to bark as we approached.

The owner who was in the front garden shouted to the dogs to be quiet, but they were having none of this. One particular dog was getting more irate as we passed and looked for a way to get out from behind the locked gate.

Slow motion

The next part was so surreal it kinda happened in slow motion.. As we walked past the property, the agitated dog had managed to get itself free from within it’s confinement and had it’s jaws locked firmly around Harvey, my Cavalier King Charles Spaniel.

The dog was growling and shaking Harvey, who was still attached to his dog lead, like a ragdoll!

My mind was racing and I didn’t know what to do. Do I kick the dog away and risk the chance of getting attacked myself? Trying to pull Harvey away proved fruitless as the dog had such a tight hold around his neck.

After much shaking the dog’s owner raced over to prize their dog away, as this was happening, Harvey’s body was slumping to the ground, foaming at the mouth.

There he lay on his side at the side of the road motionless with the froth from his mouth on the road in front of him.

Time seemed to stand still for ages. My other-half bent down to check Harvey and move him to see if he was OK, but he just lay there motionless, unconscious in a limp lifeless state.

My heart sank, and I was in a daze. Could this really be the last moments of my lovable dog dying at the side of road?

What to do? Who to call?

After an exchange of words with the owner who then quickly disappeared back into the property, we tried to get our heads around what had just happened. One minute we were laughing and joking, the next we were looking in despair at our dog whose life seemed to be slipping away before our eyes.

What do you do? phone a vet? the police? I couldn’t think.

Thankfully after what seemed like forever Harvey’s still and lifeless body started to stir and after a few coughs he slowly staggered to his feet, looking somewhat shaken.

Amazingly on checking Harvey over, the attacking dog hadn’t actually broken the skin and there was no trace of blood. We were so lucky.

Shaken by the incident we headed home. Walking slowly to start, Harvey was soon back to his normal self and tail wagging frantically like nothing had happened.

That image of Harvey lying motionless is something that scares the life out of me. It reminds me how we all take life for granted and how easily it can be snatched away from us.

It also highlights the need for people to be more responsible for the actions of their dogs, and how the planned insurance for all dogs is much needed.

]]> http://nechbi.com/2010/03/28/sunday-afternoon-dog-walk-from-hell/feed/ 1 http://nechbi.com/2009/08/19/hello-my-pocket-os/ http://nechbi.com/2009/08/19/hello-my-pocket-os/#comments Wed, 19 Aug 2009 14:29:55 +0000 Neil Bird http://nechbi.com/?p=1742 Today saw the launch of my brand new website My Pocket OS a site focussing on those Operating Systems (OSes) that are starting to invade our pockets.

Mobiles have been around for years, but only now are they starting to be more than just a device for making calls and sending text messages.

Since the dramatic arrival of the iPhone in 2007, Apple have set a benchmark for others to follow. Google released its Android operating system a year later and the likes of Nokia have being struggling to play catch-up with it’s Symbian platform.

Today’s mobiles are turning into mobile computers – the Mobile OS wars have commenced..

Check out My Pocket OS and let me know what you think.

I have sold the site to new owners, who will take over the iGadgetLife helm and expand on the work that I started.

It was a tough decision to let iGadgetLife go, as having built it up from a hobby blog (nechbi.com) I kinda got attached to it.

Through the site I have met some cool people, been to great places and of course been able to get my hands on some very exciting new technology!

For now I can be found here on blog.nechbi.com and on Twitter.

Thanks to everybody that stopped by and got involved, it has been fun!

Sorry it’s been a little bit quite recently, I escaped the miserable British weather for the hotter climes of Turkey for 2 weeks.  The day after my arrival back, I was invaded by family, so have not had time to catch up with by blogging for 3 weeks…

What have I missed anything exciting?

blog.nechbi.com was started way back in February 2004 as somewhere I’d share my passions for all things gadgetty. Recently though things have gotten a bit too focused on one topic – My Nokia N95!

Why the name change? Well, nobody really understands the name nechbi (which is a combination of the first 2 letters of my first, middle and surname) – and it didn’t really relate to the content of the site. So I decided that a name change and proper content theme for the site was long over due.

One of the things that I love about mobiles and a lot of the new technology currently out there is being able to connect to other people wirelessly and how these gadgets are becoming more and more part of our everyday ‘connected’ lives. From taking pictures on your mobile and uploading them to Flickr, to playing Tetris on your DS with somebody the other side of the planet – I just think its amazing!

The new name focuses on my passion – gadgets with the ‘i’ representing internet or interaction and how they are transforming our Lifes.

With the new name, I’ve also added some structure to the site, with some sections at the top, enabling you to get to the content that matters; quicker.

Hope you like it, Let me know what you think of the changes..

Let me know if you see things that aren’t working as expected.

Neil.

He was taken to the vets surgery early yesterday morning, where the Vet was unable to determine what could be wrong. He administered some Antibiotics and prescribed some medicine that we had to feed on a small and frequent basis.

Early yesterday evening he was taking the prescribed medicine, and was hopping about on the sofa a little as I think he just wanted to be alone. We decided to put him back in his run.

About an hour later, I popped out to see how he was doing, and was saddened to see he was slumped in his bed.

I have no idea what was wrong with him, and how he could go from being such a happy bouncy bunny to this in a matter of days… He was only 3!

We will miss you Stewy!

My webstats are so much easier to read now – and the information that can be gained from the additional Peppers is just facisaniting. For instance – on Tues when I checked, I had some hits from Beirut, Lebanon – even during all the bombings thats going on in the area, people still have time to look at blog.nechbi.com!

Another interesting fact was that Bury St. Edmunds in the UK has now moved to the south-east coast of Africa near the equator..

Besides the little querk, it’s great to be able to see what pages are the biggest hitters and where readers are linking from.

Oh and no more referer SPAM!

It’s just everywhere. You get it in your emails, I’ve had it in my website comments and trackbacks, now they are driving me mad in my website stats.

I think that website statistics are fascinating – it’s so interesting to see what people are looking at and how they get to my website. Referer information has to be the most interesting because it shows what other websites are linking to you and how many people use those links.

AWStats has been the web stats package that I have been using to discover all this interesting information as it comes as part of my hosting package. This has done me fine until about the last year, when I slowly started seeing my results full of strange URL’s containing casino, gambling, poker and viagra related websites – aka referer SPAM!

Over the last year the amount of referer SPAM has grown so much that it’s hard to find the genuine links to my website. I have looked into ways to prevent this data from being recorded in the server logs without any success. One site that did crop up many times during my searches was Mint.

Mint provides a fresh look at your site. It is concise, flexible and timely. And to sweeten the deal, this delicious little bundle of PHP, MySQL, and JavaScript joy is referrer-spam-proof.

Mint is different than the usual web site statistic packages that you get, it has a nice clean interface and gives you all the information that you need clearly on one page. It has also been getting loads of rave reviews from fellow bloggers.

I have to confess that I was initially put off getting Mint due to its $30 license cost. To me it seemed a lot of money for a webpage that looks, well quite basic in appearance. As time went on and my referer spam got worse, I kept hearing more and more about Mint in some of the various blogs that I read. Could it really that good? So I spent some time researching the produt properly and having a look at the Demo installation of Mint.

In the end, I decided to go for it and registered. After a quick install and a bit of code added to my website I was up and running in no time. After only 5-10 minutes of use, I have to say that Mint is an absolutely fantastic product and is worth every penny. It just goes to show that you shouldn’t judge things by first impressions!

One of the great features of Mint is the expandability using plugins (called Peppers) that allow you to get extra functionality. Brilliant, just brilliant!

Go on Have a Mint and say goodbye to referer SPAM!

All previous posts have been imported into WordPress, the only problem being that WordPress handles permalinks (individual article links) differently, so any external links to my site will probably have been broken. I need to think of a way to address this…

In the meantime please bear with me as I continue this transition….

Oh, and don’t forget to update those RSS Feeds!