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

Wednesday October 12th 2016

Monday. It’s shopping day and my ex-neighbour, who usually accompanies me in the car, is unable to leave her bedroom as she has done something very painful to her back. I shop for both of us and she kindly tells me to buy a tarte citron for us to share. She loves chocolate eclairs – and so do I – so I buy us one each.

Back  at my neighbour’s house, I share out the spoils, stowing away her portion in her fridge and dropping my eclair down the side of the tarte citron box.

Slurp! Yum! Can’t wait to get home. The front door is closed so it’s safe to leave the first shopping bag in the porch while I fetch the rest from the car.

Having dumped the bags on the kitchen floor, I go into the back room and place my hand in front of the slumbering Hairy One’s nose to let her know that I’m back. Warm and (I hope) cuddly, she awakes, arises, stretches and then allows me to give her careful little hugs. Her tail wags. It’s so lovely to be greeted like this by Isis that I am still leaning on the futon, smiling sloppily when I realise that she has popped into the kitchen.

Aaaaaaargh!

Only a few seconds behind her, I am just in time to see her whisk the foil dish containing the so delicious tarte out of the cardboard box. Determined to retain her prize, she grips  the dish very firmly between her teeth. She does not appear to notice when, as she turns away from the shopping bag, she tilts the dish slightly and out slides my mouth-watering tarte.

She licks the dish clean as I remove from the floor as much as I can scoop up in two cupped hands, and, reluctantly, drop it into the bin. No time for delicacy. I don’t know what effect half a tarte citron might have on a dog’s stomach. Since the stomach in question belongs to Isis, probably none, but one can’t take risks. Isis, naturally, is totally unconcerned about risks to a dog’s health and happily licks the remaining lemon filling from the floor.

“What’s happened to the eclair?”, I wonder aloud. Oh my god: it has a thick slab of chocolate on top. Isis might be one of those dogs for whom chocolate is toxic. I dive into the bag. Luckily, the eclair is still wedged down the side of the otherwise empty cardboard box.

Luckily, too, since she extricated the foil dish by grabbing the front end of it, she hasn’t licked the eclair.

It’s my consolation prize.

Sigh.

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