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

Wednesday March 1st 2017

It’s Thursday. Isis is fast asleep, a length of warm hairiness stretched across the duvet. I open the blinds and look out. Behind the car wash, the branches of the cemetery trees wave frantically. Yes, Storm Doris has definitely hit our part of the midlands.

On our way to the park, I wonder whether Isis will be afraid.

She makes her way quickly out of the car, and leaps up to sniff the air.

Afraid? Not in the least.

The wind parts her hair into dozens of little tributaries which ripple all over her coat. Trees sway back and forth violently, and branches and twigs snap. There is a thunderous bang as a tree falls somewhere close by.

Isis is ecstatic. No polite walking today. She tugs impatiently on her lead as she hurries down the slope to the lower bowling green. It’s deserted. As soon as she is set free, she runs onto the grass, whirling and pouncing, her ears streaming in the wind.

For well over an hour, she whirls and pounces, dances wild dances, and bites off mouthfuls of air.

Then, Isis safely attached to her extended lead, we begin a slow walk back to the car.

I am stunned to see that about a quarter of the huge fir tree at the pond corner of the old tennis courts has been torn from the main trunk and lies crookedly across the path. I guess this is the tree which we heard fall.

The top of the tree is tossing chaotically. I grip Hairy One’s lead very, very tightly, tuck my gloves under my armpits, and, from a safe distance, begin to video the scene. Inevitably, I lift my arms and away fly the gloves!

The same afternoon we are in Highbury Park. The wind is strong but not as fierce as it was this morning. Fractured branches are scattered across the paths and drifts of twigs lie on the grass.

Sadly, at least eight or nine trees have been fragmented or uprooted.

But for for one little podengo, it’s been a wonderful day.

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