The all new all new training diary

[Bierzo Baggie]

I teach kids. I heard a comment from a 9-year old girl in class the other day.

“I had a pony,” she said to one of her chums, emphasizing the past tense, “but the wolves ate it up.”

Anywhere else and young miss would have been sent to the headmaster for telling fibs but in this case the grisly story was probably true. There are wolves in them there hills and a pack of the buggers can tear apart a calf, a foal or a 9-year old’s precious pony in a matter of minutes.

The local government are supposed to compensate local farmers for loss of livestock but the problem is that usually it’s difficult to prove who did the dirty deed. A common excuse to avoid the payout will be; “ahh.. but they were wild dogs, not wolves… no wolves around here mate.”

But there are. Lots of them. Their privileged status as a protected species and the fact that rural depopulation removes its most natural predator, man, means that the wolf population has risen steadily over the last 20 years. There is disagreement over whether that population is still rising today or has stabilized. I’ve never seen one although I know a few people who think they have.

Sunday’s race is in wolf country. Oh, there are bears as well.

Grrrr…snarl.