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

Sunday February 3rd 2019

Well, we’re using the iPad today. Still getting used to it so goodness knows what silly mistakes will appear. Wait until I try adding an image: now that really will be fun.

Little dog has lived a lot since she last posted so where to begin?

Just made mistake 1. My wandering fingers took me elsewhere. This happens often on the iPod. I’m not good at keeping my hand still, which, of course, doesn’t matter so much on the desktop.

Illogically, I’ll begin with a few days ago when something rather lovely happened. Isis is running about on the lower bowling green when, much to my surprise, she stops and walks towards me.

She does, as we know, come and check me out nowadays but this is almost always when I move from one spot to another, or when she is walking in front of me.

I’m even more surprised when she sits down at my side and waits for all the world like a small hairy statue. It’s as though she has been commanded to come to heel.

I stand and wonder, running all possible explanations through my mind. She looks perfectly confident so she’s not come to me because she’s afraid. She’s interrupted her play after only a few minutes so she’s definitely not ready to go home. The bowling green is empty except for the two of us and it’s a dull, damp day. Exactly as she likes things to be.

I know she’s not hoping for a treat. Outside the house she never does.

At last a most unlikely thought enters my head. She couldn’t possibly need help, could she?

I look down at her. There’s a long, thin, twangy twig caught in the hair of her left foreleg. I remove it, give her a little pat and a touch which means ‘off you go now’.

She stands. She promptly sits down again.

Oh well, it was a long shot anyway.

She waits in the same alert, expectant position as before, close to my side.

She couldn’t really have come to ask for the twig to be removed, could she?

There couldn’t be another one, could there?

There is. It’s stuck across her chest.

We go through the same routine as before: I carefully detatch the stick from her hair, give her a second comforting pat and then encourage her to run off and play. As before, she stands. As before, she immediately sits down again, the perfect demonstration of the finish to a perfect recall.

This is becoming ridiculous. I examine my Hairy One  from head to toe.

There, between her thighs and curling among the sparse hairs of her pink belly is the nastiest twig of all. Long and sinuous, it must be causing her extreme discomfort.

Poor little Isis.

I stand her up and slowly, slowly, hair by hair, I disentangle the long twig with its many ensnaring buds and off-shoots and lift it away from her skin.

This time, she pauses only for the briefest of  ‘all clear’ pats before racing off to resume her play.

I am amazed. And very impressed. I am also very touched.

Who could possibly believe that dogs can’t think?

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