Posting days: Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday.

Wednesday

In Highbury Park on Sunday we meet beautiful Jackson and his human. It’s several months since I have seen her and I update her on Isis. We exchange dogs and gardens horror stories. Jackson, apparently, has a thing about her favourite shrub and however many times she tries to replant it, nourish and protect it,  always succeeds in digging it up and demolishing it. I describe Hairy One’s behaviour in Wales. But she can’t believe that I am complaining: last time we met I was worrying because my poor little dog didn’t play!

She’s right. I shouldn’t complain. I love to see Isis play. She has transitioned, on her own terms, from a dog who didn’t know what play was to a dog who plays all day long. Beginning with leylandii branches, she progresses to wire mesh, to wire netting, to aluminium sheets.

Magically, in Wales, on her own initiative, she plays with her snakes for the first time. Back at home, though, they are ignored again.

But now the aluminium sheets have been confiscated and have joined the rest of the scrap metal in a secure place – my intended vegetable garden. Sigh.

And things are beginning to change. Sometimes I hang the snakes from the branches of the buddleia. She soon finds and removes them. But she often picks them up from the ground herself and plays with them. Grabbing them by the back of their necks, she’s in for the kill and shakes them vigorously until they’re dead.

But there’s more to come. It’s Tuesday and I am speaking to Polymath on the phone when I hear an ear piercing squeak. I walk into the garden with the phone. Isis, it appears, has accidentally trodden on ‘Horns’ and has heard his squeak. Ever since she came I have tried to interest her in Horns but she has remained  oblivious to his charms and given no indication at all that she can hear him.

Now she stamps on him. SQUEE-AK!  SQUEE-AK! SQUEE-AK! Then she picks him up in her mouth and runs around the garden squeaking him! Now, obviously,  she can hear him and connects him with the noise he’s making.

She even indulges me and plays tug with yellow snake. Yes!

P.S. I am still not quite sure that my responses to comments on Facebook remain there after I’ve left the page. If they don’t, I am responding, really. I’m just a bit dim.

Isis came from the Aeza cat and dog rescue and adoption centre in Aljezur, Portugal. For information about adopting an animal from the centre, contact kerry@aeza.org or  www.dogwatchuk.com