Posting days: Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday.

Saturday

Hairy one’s weekly score:

1. good behaviour during food prep.: 89%

2. sitting and waiting for meal without command until given ‘eat it’ signal: 100%

3. eating like a sane dog: 0%

4. refraining from after meal spin: 22%

Now, impressed as I am by the first two scores, I am disappointed with 3 and 4.

In fact, her behaviour during eating seems to be getting worse. How many of us have paw prints up our dining room walls?

It seems to me that her manic eating habits have had a knock on effect and hence the return of the post meal spins.

Now, I don’t think that Kerry would approve of this, but, I tell myself, Kerry is at a safe distance away in Portugal. So drastic action. Yesterday and this morning I load my water pistol. When Isis leaps up the wall, barking, to her surprise something wet lands on her head. She places all four feet on the floor and resumes eating. As usual, she eats so fast that as soon as she has devoured the last mouthful, she emits a hearty belch. Isis – manners!

She then proceeds in quite a restrained fashion, to ‘find’ the scattering of dried food I’ve left on the floor to soften for her the blow of finishing her meal.

Interestingly, sometimes, when it has been very hot, she has jumped up the wall in defence of her water as well as her food. Polymath says perhaps while she was chained up in Portugal, other creatures stole her water too. Perhaps they did.

Because she is obsessed with playing with wire mesh and sheet metal, I have often wondered whether she lived in a Portuguese scrap metal yard. I’ve changed my mind.

I’ve been sandpapering my staircase (as you do) for the last three weeks and, of course, guarding equipment very carefully in case Isis might be partial to a swig of paint stripper or a munch on a contaminated cloth. I must have dropped my guard as a couple of days ago, I find a roll of 100 grit sandpaper in her bed. How careless. I must have dropped it.

But last night, as I begin to clear up for the day, she appears from the garden, collects a roll I’ve just removed from the block and trots triumphantly off to her bed with it. She must have been chained up in a builder’s yard, I decide.

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.co.uk