New regular posting days: Sunday and Wednesday and, sometimes, extra ‘news flashes’!

 

Sunday October 6th 2015

I was nuts to imagine that the fence would deter Isis. She’s such a scrambler. Here’s hoping the extra tiers will do the trick. It’s four days now since mark two was finished.

 

 

 

Isis is unimpressed.

 

 

 

As I work on Wednesday she patrols the fence incessantly.

A few days ago I again forgot to bring in the washing box. This time she removed two essential nubs so it can’t be resuscitated. I let her have the box and this distracts her for the rest of Wednesday.

 

 

 

 

On Thursday as soon as she is let out, she takes up her patrol again, searching for a way in.

 

 

 

 

 

After repeated sniffings along the panels she senses that the gate must be the easiest part to crack.

She’s right. She leaps and scritches and scritches and leaps over and over again. I smile to myself. This round to me.

Next time I check, the little b. is in my space. I dash out and discover that she’s managed to lift the latch on the gate and is trotting very contentedly down the path. She stops to suss out whether a seven foot  timber will be good to play with. I pick her up gently and remove her to the other side of the gate. She is very sweet about it and doesn’t growl. I recall her hysteria when I picked her out of the strawberry bed a couple of months ago. She is so good that I feel mean evicting her.

Once she’s succeeded in opening the gate, I guess she’ll do it again. But fortunately, it seems that it was a random move and she is not aware of how she did it.

She throws herself at the gate continuously

 

           

 

 

In a moment of inspiration I give her an old dustbin and ‘hide’ all her toys in it.

 

 

 

 

This distracts her for most of the time

 

 

 

although she continuously approaches the fence looking sad. I am a tyrant. Poor little dog.

On Friday and Saturday I work in the new space, removing an old compost bin made of pallets, re-shaping and rolling up the ninety centimetre high wire netting which she had extruded to twenty times its length and compressed to a tenth of its height, collecting up all the flower pots which have survived her attacks, dismantling the remains of the (expensive) dog tunnel lovingly bought early this year for the dear little soul to play in.

She approaches the fence now and then. Just checking. But she finds other entertainment. From under my nose she snatches a plank from the dismantled pallet. She uses it like an axe to swipe more branches off the forsythia.

She uproots two clumps of very thorny teasels which were  meant for the goldfinches’ winter seed collection and picks the tops off the daisies which stand stood five feet high.

Sigh.

 

 

But at last, by the end of Saturday, her fence obsession seems to be subsiding a little.

Thank goodness for that.

When she goes out to do her duties just before midnight, she is away for rather a long time.

Suspicious, I go into the garden. No. Surely not. That can’t be a white shape I see behind the fence. Can it?

As I race over the ex-lawn, I notice that the gate is firmly shut. Isis is standing on the putative vegetable patch sniffing absorbedly in the soil.

I do not approach her gently. I snatch her up, making her jump and tuck her under my arm.

“No, no, no!” I hiss into her ear, simultaneously tapping her firmly on her head with my index finger.

She growls crossly.

This time her entrance point remains a mystery. There is no sign of white hair anywhere along the fence. I can only think that I didn’t close the gate properly and it swung shut behind her.

Time will tell.

 

Naughty little 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