Posting days: Sunday and Wednesday and, sometimes, maybe, extra bits in between.

Wednesday July 25th 2018

A.L., you got it in one! Isis very rarely loses her treats in her bedding but she is convinced that there is still at least one lurking there among the folds.

Even when I’ve searched between her paws for the phantom delicacy and demonstrated that she’s not missed a crumb, she remains disgruntled.

Let’s make things more predictable, I decide: same number of treats in same place every single night.

I don’t know whether dogs can count, and I must admit I don’t believe for one second that the new strategy will work.

Nevertheless, I give it a go. In the face of head ringing  yaps, anything’s worth a try.

I follow a very rigid routine. While Hairy One is in the garden taking a final pee, I plant four gravy bone halves in her main dog bed. That’s the snake repository,  and the first place she’ll check when she comes in.

Next I divide a Schmacko into three and the three pieces into quarters.

Four fragments are set out along the rim of her main dog bed, four arranged on the base of my office chair and then the remaining four are dropped into her bolt hole bed under my desk.

My last task is to break another two gravy bones into four and place them on her pillow on the day bed.

By the third night she is sniffing out her bedtime treats as calmly as the proverbial cucumber. Not a snarl, not a growl rents the air. She doesn’t execute furious twirls. She doesn’t nip her back legs. She doesn’t attack her tail.

She crunches happily on her gravy bones then settles down to sleep.

And we’ve had calm, uneventful bedtimes ever since.

Who’d have believed it?

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