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

Wednesday July 3rd 2019

On Saturday morning the car park is full of dog walkers: it will be much too hot to bring dogs to the park this afternoon.

It’s already eleven. We should have come earlier.

Again Isis chooses to play along the little wooded strip. She runs up and down as usual, leaping and twirling, seeking sticks and tossing them up in the air.

All seems well. But only for about thirty-five minutes. Then she retreats into the wood and lies down in the undergrowth.

Oh Isis, not again. But yes, it’s too hot for even Isis to want to stay in the park. After less than an hour she’s glad to go home. “What’s the matter with you?, I ask her, “You’re a Portuguese podengo. You should be enjoying the sun now and shivering in a little jumper in winter.”

The hairy lover of snow, sleet and driving rain ignores me.

On Sunday I persuade her to walk with me to the other side of the park. Up above the big pond, on the edge of the beech wood, is another of her favourite play areas. I think she likes it because it’s a corner created by trees, bushes, brambles and dense undergrowth. As I’ve noted before, she seems to feel at her most confident when she’s in partially enclosed areas.

Here she can break into uninterrupted gallops.

The area is also next door to the large patch of rose bay willow herbs which are exciting to snuffle through, and nice and cool to rest in.

After racing around happily in her corner, she makes her way towards the patch.

How beautiful she looks, I think, as she sets off, how amazingly clean. Running in the grass has removed all traces of the mud in which she insisted on standing on the way over here.

I try to take a photo of the fluffy magnificence as she approaches the patch, but she’s too quick for me.

At first I can ascertain her whereabouts from the waving plants, but now all is still. She must be having a rest.

It’s a long rest. After a while I step into the patch to track her down.

Ah, here she is …………………………………

dear little thing. What a sensible place to choose, soft and cool and clean.

She picks up my scent, stretches, and slowly rises to her feet.

SQUERGLE. GLUG.

What the hell’s that?

Oh.

*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