RE businesswoman Shirley McKaskie’s successful six-year battle for damages over being left brain-damaged and confined to a wheelchair after being attacked by cows while walking her puppy on a public footpath through a field near Penrith, Cumbria (Echo, July 7).
I have, when walking my dog, been in similar terrifying situations to that in which Ms McKaskie found herself. On one occasion, I was rescued by horses chasing off the young bullocks that had me trapped and encircled.
As I understand it, the dog is the key. Although I experienced, on more than one occasion, attacks by bovines I do not feel comfortable with this court judgement against the farmer.
Farms are inherently dangerous places in which the individual has to accept that they each have a responsibility for their own safety.
While I sympathise with Ms McKaskie, I have more sympathy for the farmer. The countryside is their place of work.
Would we venture into a coal mine with so little regard for our own welfare as we do strolling on farmland? It isn’t a garden.
We may claim the right to roam, but we haven’t been invited or paid a charge. We undertake these pleasures and their risks at our own choice.
Don’t target the farmer.
Gerard Wild, Richmond, North Yorkshire
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