We rolled into the small carpark next to a small estuary with oysters clustered over rocks at the neck, pelicans and gulls, and one Border Collie wading around the shallows, barking sporadically. Dusk fell, we ran out of cooking gas, drove around looking for gas, returning to the same spot as dusk advanced to find him still there, paddling around the sandy shallows, woofing to no-one and everyone. I started to wonder where his owner was, if perhaps he was somehow under there, drowned and lost in ankle-deep water, as his loyal friend paced fruitlessly, waiting for him to re-surface. At some point it got too dark for barking and peace fell, but the next morning he was back. Ears pricked, tail aloft, making high kicking steps through the silty water, staring intently below the surface. Woof. Woof. Fishing? Never seeming to attempt to catch anything, nor was there apparently anything to catch. Mad? He seemed healthy enough, wore a collar, though nobody seemed to have any claim on him. Senility? Well, he wasn't that old looking. OCD? This was as obsessive compulsive as it gets, and our attempts to distract him with a thrown stick or doggy talk were completely ignored.
Maybe he was a bit mad, or maybe he was busy patrolling his shoreline, seeing off the sealife. Or, as Isabel put it, "maybe he's just here, and this is what he likes to do".
