Posting days: Sunday and Wednesday and, sometimes, maybe, extra ‘news flashes’!

Wednesday August 24th 2016

Well, this week I have a rotten time.

Sunday begins well with a nice long lie-in. At about ten o’clock Human takes me outside,  then gives me my breakfast before returning to bed with a cup of coffee. I do note, though, that she doesn’t bring one up for me. An oversight, I expect. She does lots of oversights. Her age, I guess. (I know she’s decrepit because she can’t run anywhere near as fast as I can. And when I slide vertically down the steep bank of the stream to have a drink, then shoot up the opposite bank, she scrambles after me. Yes. Scrambles. Pathetic, isn’t it?)

Anyway, here I am at home on Sunday, waiting for Ji. But in the end off we go to Highbury Park without him. I must admit it, I  do have a wonderful time for the first hour and a half  – the smells are fantastic. I run at a fast snuffle. This way. That way. Up a slope. Down a hole. Among the tall willow herb. Through the brambles.

Brambles. There’s another thing. She communicates, “No, Isis. You don’t want to go through those nasty, prickly brambles.” I ignore her of course. If a dog doesn’t wish to do something, it doesn’t do it. She should know that by now, after all, I show her several times a day. Humans are dim.

As I was saying, I am having a wonderful parktime. And now she wants me to go home. Three or four times she urges me on and I have to gallop backwards to show her I don’t want to leave. She has to gallop too, of course, because I’m on my Flexi-lead. It would be funny, if it weren’t such a serious matter for me.

I WANT TO STAY IN THE PARK, FOOL.

But Human reels me in, grabs the thick part of the lead and tugs. I am very angry now. I spin round, growling ferociously, and snap at the end of my tail. She hates that. I used to do it all the time until she learned to stop annoying me, but really this takes the biscuit. Talking of biscuits, she forgot to give me one when we left the house this morning, even though I sat nicely by the door and allowed her to lock it without dragging her backwards into the flower bed. I should have known things could only get worse.

But Sunday is nothing compared with Monday. We get up very early and are in the car by seven thirty. I should have known something bad was going to happen. By 8.10,  I can hear barking and she’s forcing me out of the car park and up the drive. I’m at RSPCA Newbrook Farm. Again.

Once there, I give up. I just step up onto that flat, wobbly platform in the waiting area, stand still, then am led off into the Nasty Smells Room. I have a vet inspection, a booster injection and an assault on my anal glands. I don’t even growl. What’s the point?

As if all this is not enough, when we get to the park, Kieko the Akita, without any warning,  jumps over me like a huge bird, and frightens me to death.

Then I’m taken home, and once I’ve eaten my Burns and a sardine, I am lifted up and put into the sink. My bottom is soaked, shampooed, rinsed and rinsed and rinsed. I even have bits of hair snipped off around my private parts. How low can a human get?

I’m so exhausted by all the traumas that I’m still fast asleep at 8.00 p.m. I’m even too tired for my evening walk.

I think I’ll go back to Portugal.

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