I seem to have spent a good part of my life - probably too much – in just standing and staring.

If having a soul means being able to feel love and loyalty and gratitude, then animals are better off than a lot of humans.

There was no last animal I treated. When young farm lads started to help me over the gate into a field or a pigpen, to make sure the old fellow wouldn't fall, I started to consider retiring.

And the peace which I always found in the silence and emptiness of the moors filled me utterly

A farmer once told me one of the greatest luxuries of his life was to wake up early only to go back to sleep again.

I am never at my best in the early morning, especially a cold morning in the Yorkshire spring with a piercing March wind sweeping down from the fells, finding its way inside my clothing, nipping at my nose and ears.

Over the years I knew her she always looked at me like that - as though I was a quite pleasant but amusing object - and it always did the same thing to me. It's difficult to put into words but perhaps I can best describe it by saying that if I had been a little dog I'd have gone leaping and gambolling around the room wagging my tail furiously.