ALL three of our dogs are TV addicts.

When they are in the house and a TV is perhaps flickering away in the kitchen, they are transfixed. Most noticeably if there are dogs on screen and even more so if said dogs are barking.

What I had not appreciated though was that Moss, our spaniel, must have been become hooked on gardening, if the evidence of scattered plant pots, scratted out borders, bulbs uprooted and relocated perennials is anything to go by.

Just yesterday, though, when we were all outside in the yard, the dogs were far more interested in the clattering of horses’ hooves down our lane than digging up pots of flowers.

Fizz, Millie and Moss clawed at the gate, barked frantically, raced back and forth from me to our entrance.

I kept telling them to shush as I was concerned that the dogs’s barking would spook the horses, but it turns out there were far more problems concerning horses and riders than a trio of noisy dogs at a yard gate.

The riders were part of the local hunt. They were meeting on what was our land before we sold it to a local farmer who, although he does not hunt himself, like us, did not object to the hunt riding on his land as long as they kept to the paths and edges of the fields.

No riding straight across the land and creating deep pockets and puddles where water could stand for weeks on the heavy clay.

Although most hunts have their own methods of communication between their members to notify where meets are taking place, in this case the security must have been breached as a large number of saboteurs were out in force.

I had noticed a number of vans circling our village but had not appreciated who they were until John, who had just come back from checking on his pheasant feeders, told me that he had seen these vans trying to get down to the woods.

Not only that but another contingency of the saboteurs had turned up at a neighbour's farm to try to access the woods.

How it all turned out I do not know. The police were called to defuse the situation, but there is a van still stuck in the mud down that lane and the gate is now locked and blocked.