IT is a time for family reunion and break-ups. Yesterday, Meg, our black labrador, spent the day with her sister and brother on a day's shooting, and four of our geese went missing in the fog.

The day's shooting took place at a friend's farm. John was picking up game with Meg and Bonnie, her sister, was doing the same. Meg came from the litter of a friend's dog. The friends live in Perthshire, and the dogs, all brilliant working dogs, come from gamekeeper stock and do not have kennel club pedigrees. Their owners are more interested in their capabilities as gun dogs than show dogs. Meg's mum, two sisters and auntie are all well known to us. They are docile, intelligent, loyal, hard workers. Much like me, really.

The geese are cunning, destructive, fickle, aggressive idlers. I know. Much like me, really. They worked out how to fly home after John had clipped their wings and taken them to a pond far away from the farmhouse. Just like John, really. He is always trying to get rid of me and sending me off all over the country, but I still keep coming home.

During the freezing cold spell, the geese and ducks have antagonised neighbours, and me, by eating choice plants and tender emerging buds. They mess all over the area around the back door and steal bread and food put out for the other poultry. But the sight of one lonely goose honking her loneliness is driving me distracted.

"They must have become disorientated in the fog," John said. I am worried that another shooting party might have shot them. I remember when visiting guns on another neighbour's land shot a neighbour's tame goose. It's a dangerous place, the countryside.

Perhaps we should invite Tony Blair to come and visit us and sort things out in the same way that he does for all these other warring countries. It might be the only way to get him back to Britain.

Meg apparently took not the slightest bit of interest in her sister Bonnie - far more interested in the pheasants and partridges. Jasper, Meg and Bonnie's brother, was however very interested in them. But not in a fraternal fashion. Meg and Bonnie are coming to that interesting time of year when life in peace is riven asunder by lovesick dogs and lustful bitches.

"The geese may be starting to pair up," John thought aloud.

"But they're related," I said, "from the same clutch."

"Doesn't matter much to birds," John said. "Look at the Muscovy ducks."

I had to agree. A successful story of family interbreeding, our seven Muscovy ducks from two years ago have filled my freezer with tender ducklings, their offspring.

Bonnie, Meg's sister, is due to be mated this year. John will not entertain the idea of Meg having puppies although many people have expressed an interest in having one of her pups if she had any. He is worried that she may come to some harm and could not bear that to happen. None of our bitches have had puppies, in fact, and all have lived to ripe old ages with very little wrong with them.

John occasionally regrets not having puppies from his very favourite dog, Jilly. Her portrait graces the chimney breast and gazes down at us with soulful eyes whenever I argue for Meg to have a litter. "Just think," it seems to say, "you could be taking one of my pups shooting with you if you had listened to that wise woman, your wife."

Funny how deaf John has gone recently.

Updated: 11:10 Thursday, January 17, 2002