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

Sunday May 14th 2017

Well, some of the things which Isis likes to do have changed. During 2015 and 2016 I seemed to spend a disproportionate amount of our outdoor time prising springy sticks from the roof of her mouth or from between her teeth.

In the winter, even when she was persuaded to search for her ball-on-a-string, I had to clear the area of sticks or she would settle down with these and chew them to pieces. She seemed to prefer sharp spiky ones, of course, and often pulled down long, thick, dead bramble stems to play with.

Even before I began experimenting with letting her off the lead in the park, she had lost her interest in chewing sticks. Unfortunately, she also lost interest in playing with toys, including ball-on-a-string.

Exploring, running and dancing are now the things she enjoys most off-lead. On her extension lead she most delights in running as fast as she can, which is very fast. Both off lead, and, unfortunately for me, on lead, wet stuff like rain, hail and snow falling on her are the sources of her greatest ecstasy.

As long as wet stuff falls, even if it falls for hours, she is crazy about leaping off all four paws and, apparently, attempting to catch it.

No wonder people stare and ask what she’s doing. Several times I’ve been asked if I am training her for performances!

Over the last two weeks, I’ve had fun documenting what other park dogs enjoy doing.

Many dogs, of course, love swimming in the pond and leaping in and out of the stream, but some appear to specialise in making themselves filthy.

Here is Archie whom we met a couple of weeks ago. Whichever way you look at it, it ain’t good!

Well, you see, there was this ditch and I thought ….

Now I’ve turned round, you can hardly see the mud. Can you?

As we know, Fergie and Dougie like to wrestle.

While Casey loves nothing better than rolling over to elicit a tickle or two  …….

and eighteen month old Marley has always been ambitious in his choice of ‘sticks’.

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