Moobli - Tapa dura

Moobli was so powerful when fully grown that he could take a man's arm off. Yet Mike Tomkies called him 'a gentle giant'. For eight years this remarkable dog was Mike's constant companion as they roamed the 300 square miles of wild mountain terrain in the remote corner of the Scottish Highlands where he wrote his bestseller A Last Wild Place. Now, in this moving account, he reveals how an extraordinary relationship grew between man and dog so Mike grew to believe the animal possessed an uncanny ability to read his mind when no word was spoken or betraying movement made. Moobli's phenomenal tracking skill - not only after deer but in scenting out badgers, otters and even wildcats without harming them - enabled Mike to achieve a unique record of Highland wildlife. Moobli would plunge into an icy loch in winter, climb dangerously to the edge of giddying precipices while searching for eagle eyries, and fetch heavy tools (such as a sledge-hammer or axe) in his vice-like jaws while Mike worked in the woods that surrounded their home. He fought a pitched battle with a marauding stag, rescued his master on a mountain crag and lived in amicable friendship p indoors with Mike's owls and foxes. The tender care with which the Alsatian treated the many injured creatures which came to them for succor turned finally to tragedy as Moobli himself succumbed to affliction and lost the use of his rear legs through spinal arthritic paralysis.

Mike Tomkies has been a Coldstream Guardsman, an international journalist, a Hollywood columnist, a logger and salmon boat deck hand before spending twenty years living in remote wild places in Western Canada, the Scottish Highlands and Spain, photographing and writing about his boyhood passion - wildlife.