I read with dismay yet another story in last week’s Gazette & Herald about stock – this time an alpaca – being killed, most probably by a loose dog.

I do not know what it will take to get the message through to walkers that, although they may have the right to walk on a footpath, they do not have the right to stray from the footpath wherever they wish; and a footpath is only two metres wide. Nor do they have the right to allow children or dogs to run amok, disturbing or even injuring livestock and wildlife. Where is their common sense?

We scarcely have anyone cross our footpath without incident.

Only today we have had a young family who, on the face of it, came onto our land in the correct manner and with their spaniel on a lead.

We have signs all along the fencing stating that dogs must be on a lead. However, within 50 feet of getting on our land they proceeded to go through two lines of fencing to get off the footpath into a field with sheep! It was only because the internal fencing was electrified and the spaniel yelped that they returned to the footpath itself.

However, having crossed one field they then proceeded to try and take the dog through another line of fencing into a field containing horses – and across which there is no footpath at all. They then argued this fact as they hadn’t read the map correctly.

Maybe a timely reminder is due, before the real ‘hiking’ season gets under way, that landowners have the right to shoot any animal bothering stock, although it is usually the dog owner who is at fault. Also, it is the walker’s responsibility to know where they are going, not the landowners. It is incidents like these that make formerly ‘kind’ landowners wish to close a footpath off completely as they bear the inconvenience and costs when something goes wrong. Another case of the few spoiling it for the many. Please think before you set out and act responsibly!

LESLEY PEPPER Christian Malford