• I have been on holiday in Dorset, camping.
    Every morning I walked about 2 miles down to a little bay with the dogs for a swim. We had been that way a few times and I didn't think I needed dog leads. My dogs are really well behaved.
    On one morning as I was heading back from the beach I noticed a cyclist coming towards on quite a narrow part of the track. I got the dogs to wait to one side as the rider approached, to let her pass.
    I noticed her bike had a belt drive, and a Rohloff hub. I made some comment and she stopped, she had bought the bike only a few days previously. It was a titanium mixte frame, with some really exquisite details. We chatted for a bit and I told her the track towards the beach had been affected by a landslip, and she would have to carry her bike over that bit, so she decided to turn round and we headed back along the path.
    As she went right and I went left I noticed that my dogs were missing. I called and two of them came bounding out of the undergrowth, and one, Milly had a long blade of grass in her mouth. I knew right away she had found something disgusting, and had been eating it. I then realised that the old dog, Barney was nowhere to be seen. He is totally deaf and no amount of shouting would bring him back. There was nothing for it but to go and look for him.
    I made the other dogs sit where they were while I started searching the undergrowth in my shorts, getting stung all the while by nettles. I spotted Barney, well his tail anyway, deep in the undergrowth ahead of me, but nothing I did got his attention. He was busily doing something head down in the nettles. I chucked sticks at him, yelled myself hoarse but he never flinched. I used a bit of a branch to beat down the nettles to try and get close to him, and then the smell hit me.
    Then I noticed a large white heap in the nettles between me and Barney. It was the wool of a sheep that had died, and it had all fallen off the corpse. Barney was a bit further on head down in the entrails of an animal that had been dead for weeks. There were maggots in huge piles exposed by his pawing at the remains, and his face was black with slime. The smell was completely overpowering.
    Then he noticed me, and came gleefully bounding over.
    I recoiled in horror and tried to step back as quickly as I could, getting badly stung in the process as I ran backwards up the slope through the nettles. He was almost on me when I made the path and could try and outrun him. He is quite elderly and it wasn't too difficult but the excitement aroused the other dogs.
    When the saw me running they chased after me, and are way quicker than me. It was then that I realised they were all covered, their faces, their paws were all dripping with this black stinking ooze like some canine Zombie pack.
    They were on me leaping up, german shepherd biting at my arms, with her teeth green with the rotting remains of long dead sheep, the other leaping up at me pawing me and leaving great oozing smears down my shirt and shorts.
    The dogs were now out of control, the combination of my horror and their fetid breakfast got them into a state of some excitement. I could hardly control them, and as we got to the campsite they raced off ahead, I daren't shout out, it was early, most campers were still asleep, and what could I shout out anyway?
    We arrived back at the tent just as my partner was waking, and the dogs raced under the tent flap. The campsite resounded with screams of horror as the smell hit home in the close windless atmosphere of a small tent on a hot summer's morning.

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