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