Posting days: Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday.

Monday

Poor Isis. What a day. It’s Saturday and we begin well with a nice park walk. We’re expecting visitors. M and May her border collie, whose portrait appears earlier on the blog.

After breakfast and her usual enforced rest, Isis is let out into the garden. She does not, of course, hear the arrival of our guests and continues her idyllic frolick. Little does she know that someone with a long black and white muzzle has padded softly down the hall and is poking her nose in the toy collection.

But Hairy One soon picks up the scent and dances in twirling and woofing, trying to find the culprits. The commotion disturbs May who begins to sneak guiltily away from the toys. Unfortunately, as May exits via the back room door, Isis enters by the same route. They are both alarmed. May nyaffs very loudly and grabs a few mouthfuls of Isis hair. Isis utters a terrified shriek and shoots under the desk into her emergency bolthole bed. Where she remains for forty minutes until I coax her back into the garden.

When Hairy One next comes into the house, the intruder has left but H.O. still sniffs and woofs and twirls. She is locating the scents. Then she sniffs every millimetre trodden by May.

But sadly her traumas do not end here. In the late afternoon a storm gathers. I don’t know whether Isis can hear the thunder but she is certainly spooked by the lightning. Attempts to comfort her are rebuffed with cross growls and movings away. She barks spasmodically until 2.30 in the morning. At this point I decide that she is not going to sleep and, ignoring her menacing growls, I carry her upstairs.

After several wild glances at the window and a few more grumps and growls, she drops her head onto my leg and falls asleep.

No doubt the Midlands are full of fraught animals.

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