The Easter holidays are here and the hills and moors are calling. After a winter in the cities and towns, it’s good to get out in the countryside.

What could be more Yorkshire than a stroll in the Dales or the North York Moors admiring their glory of soaring hillsides, crags and vast heathery expanses populated only by flocks of gambolling lambs and their woolly mothers.

Cotswolds eat your heart out, the real chocolate box scenery is here in the north.

For dog owners, the coming of the warm weather and dry ground is a double relief. The pavement and urban routes that are the staple of daily walkies in the winter get tedious when you’ve done them for the hundredth time in as many days. Even giving your dog a run on Clifton Backies or Hob Moor can become a chore rather than a pleasure, especially after the land turns muddy in the late autumn and dogs have to be washed at the end of each visit.

So it’s understandable that the moment the weather turns fair, dog and owner are raring to get out of the town and up into the hills where the dog can be let off its lead without fear that it will run into the road, badger a child or otherwise make a nuisance of itself.

But there are problems in the countryside too. Those flocks of carefree lamps and bleating ewes are not there as a service by the farmers to Welcome to Yorkshire and tourists, nor are they there to justify the Yorkshire Dales National Park using a blackface sheep as its emblem. They are working animals and the moors and dales are food production premises.

When a farmer leans on a gate staring into the middle distance, he isn’t admiring the view, he’s checking the condition of his stock in trade and making sure that it’s safe.

The one thing he doesn’t want to see, apart from sheep rustlers, is a dog loose near his sheep and worrying them. If he sees that, he will take out a gun and shoot it and he is perfectly entitled to do so.

If the person with the dog complains, then the farmer may call the police and the dog walker could find himself before the courts, charged with allowing a dog to worry sheep.

It’s not just sheep that can be worried. A dog near cattle can also be shot and the person with it sent to court to explain why it was there.

Even if you leave the dog behind when you go up into the hills, farm animals can get you into trouble. Lambs and sheep can’t read and no-one tells them the Highway Code. So they wander back and forth across those picturesque country roads, they startle at the sound of a car and run just where the car driver doesn’t want them.

Hit a lamb or a sheep and kill or injure it and you are reducing someone’s income. Hill farming is a precarious existence and every sheep counts.

More than that, if you are on a bicycle, a motorcycle or driving really fast, it may not just be the sheep that’s injured or killed. It may be you or your passengers.

This Easter, think about farmers and the welfare of the animals on the hills as you head for the moors and dales. Keep your dog on a lead if there are any animals in sight – and leave gates as you find them. They will be open or closed for a reason - such as allowing sheep to move from one stretch of grazing to another.

If there are animals on the road including horses with riders, keep your speed right down and give them a wide berth. When you go over a cattle grid, you’re on notice that there will be animals on the road. So expect to have to stop suddenly - and slow down.

Then everyone can enjoy being in the countryside.