Thoughtless Visitors

Well, that was a good walk ruined.

Yesterday I went for a walk along the Offa's Dyke Path by the river. It was another glorious day with a cloudless blue sky. There was a heat haze over the barley field, and wild flowers under the shade of the trees.

Three fields along the path, there's a little pebbly beach, well below the level of the field. A family was down there, sitting on the beach and playing in the water.
There were two dogs. I was a bit concerned by this, as the first two open fields I'd walked through were full of sheep, and I'd seen a ewe and a couple of lambs in the field with the beach.
But, okay, the dogs were down on the beach and playing in the river, well away from the sheep, so I didn't say anything.

I walked as far as I felt comfortable with in the heat, and then I turned back.
In the distance, I could see one of the dogs from the beach chasing the ewe and lambs.
As I got closer, a man came up from the beach, holding a lead, and started to chase the dog. If he shouted the dog, it was too quiet for me to hear him. The dog ignored him, and now the sheep were running from the dog and the man trying to catch the dog.
Eventually, he caught the dog and put it on the lead, but he didn't seem to tell it off, or rebuke it in any way.

By this time, another woman had appeared on the path coming out from Hay, with her dog on a lead. She exchanged words with the man - again, I was too far away to hear what they said. I had got to the part of the path next to the beach, where a woman with a baby on her hip had come up and was watching the man trying to catch the dog. I spoke to her, and tried to impress on her the seriousness of the situation.
"We didn't know there were any sheep in the field," she said. "We haven't been here before."

Wales is still on lockdown.

Now, I used to have a dog, and I made damn sure that she was trained not to chase sheep. If it had been her in the place of the dog yesterday, I would have been bellowing at her loud enough to be heard two fields away - and she would have come when she was called. But since I was aware that the sheep were in the field, she would have been on a lead anyway.

I spoke to the other local lady as I went on. She was fuming, too.

So, just to make it completely clear:
Wales is still on lockdown - the visitors should not have travelled to Hay in the first place.
It is the responsibility of dog owners to keep their dogs under control - and to know where the dog is at all times. These people didn't notice their dog running off to chase the sheep until it was too late.
It is the dog owner's responsibility to make sure there are no sheep in the field.