Posting days: Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday.

Friday

Last Saturday night I hear ferocious snarling and growling. Isis is having nightmares again. After forty minutes another outbreak. Again frenzied snarls and growls, this time followed by the clonk  which signals Hairy One’s descent from the futon. I hear quick, scrabbly clanks as she climbs upstairs.  She jumps onto the bed then utters a few short growls. After a gentle pat or two she settles and is soon asleep.

Now that there is no flickering television screen and only a half hidden daylight bulb in the back room the ‘nightmares’ no longer occur when I am with her during the evening. But they still happen regularly at night when I have left her downstairs. Her sleeping pattern has changed again this week. Twice she has followed me upstairs within half an hour; the rest of the time she has come up after fighting her demons. I assume that she must be having very bad dreams. Polymath is convinced that Isis suffers from past traumatic stress.

The rain has stopped and the sun has come out again. When the sun is bright, Isis is not comfortable in the park. Instead, she spends many happy hours in the garden. And, rather wonderfully, she has continued to explore her toys. Today she has played with one of her snakes, a soft plastic dumbbell and a yellow ball, chomping on them, dropping and picking them up and running joyfully round the whirligig with one of them in her mouth.

I delight in watching her being a dog!

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