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

April 14th 2019

It’s a good, sound, grey day. The sun emerges from the clouds very slowly and infrequently. It doesn’t stay out for long, either.

This fills Isis with confidence. She makes a bold decision. Today she’ll not bother to wind her way through the woody strip between the two meadows. Today the park is her oyster.

We cross the little road and stand on the meadow with our backs to the car park. My Isis potters around for a minute or two, then makes a decision.

She turns left and, trotting and twirling, makes her happy way across the meadow towards the old fallen tree trunk. She loves this spot. It’s where the burr weeds grow. Fortunately, it’s the wrong time of year for burrs.

Even worse for a dog, there’s no towering foliage to hide in and frighten Human witless. Oh dear.

Then she finds that branches which were lopped from the main trunk years ago, have been coated with a thick thatch of the meadow grass cut late last autumn.

This is more like it.

Hmmmm. This smells very interesting.

She jumps up onto the logs and gives the thatch an exploratory scrape. She pauses, and scrambles back down to ground level. She’ll have fun removing the thatch later. First, she’ll dig all the meadow grass out from under this trunk. There’s bound to be someone living under here.

She digs, and she digs and she digs, watched keenly by a little robin who keeps approaching to check on her progress. No doubt she’ll uncover a feast of bugs and worms.

What a lovely hole!

*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