A post should appear every Sunday.

Sunday 6th November 2022

Isis swishes past me as she leaves the kitchen and stalks into the hall. When I check her dish, I observe that the food is untouched.

I open the following conversation.

What’s the matter with you? You’ve left your delicious meal.

You needn’t think I’m eating that.

Why not, you ungrateful animal. Did you order it with a parsley garnish?

Those kibbles and that mince are very expensive. Many a hungry dog would be grateful for that meal.

Give it to them then.

Isis! What is the matter with you?

You’re trying to poison me.

Don’t be ridiculous.

I peer into the dish. There, beneath the kibbles, and scattered cunningly among the curls of mince, are  little bits of NexGard Spectre. Not only will these tablets eliminate ten different species of parasites – all drawn in revolting detail on the front of the pack – they are also, I am assured, chewable and palatable to most dogs.

I don’t read out the Latin nomenclature of all the nasties, although it’s quite fascinating, since Isis hasn’t studied Latin, and would find it confusing.

I’m not being reclidious. There’s something very nasty in my food. I can smell it from here.

It’s a special tablet to get rid of worms.

What worms?  I never eat worms. Do you think I’m stupid? And you hid nasty stuff in my bowl without telling me.

Well, hook worms, eye worms, heart worms, round ……

I just told you – I haven’t eaten any worms.

You don’t have to eat them. They just sort of …… get inside you.

Why don’t you stop them? You’re supposed to be looking after me.

I can’t see them because ……

There you are. I knew they weren’t any worms. Liar.

Isis!

Well, I’m sick of being aboosed. Just because you’re a human and I’m only a dog. I’m being x plited.

(Oh dog! That Brummy accent.)

Oh, for goodness sake. You’re not being exploited. Or abused. Just tell me one time you’ve been abused.

When I’d only just come to live with you, we were in the car and you kept smacking me right on my muzzle. For nothing.

Yes, I did. You bit me and you wouldn’t take your teeth out of my thumb.

You were strangling me. You tried to kill me!

I did no such thing. You twirled round and round until your lead was wrapped round your neck, and I was trying to untangle you.

Huh! Liar. And then you took me to Wales and tried to poison me twice while we were there.

What are you on about?

You did. You did. You did. One night you fed me a whole sweet potato with its soil still on.

I most certainly did not. You found it in a shopping basket and ate all of it while I was asleep.

But it shouldn’t have been there. I got bad tummy ache. It was very cold outside, and you had to keep taking me out into the garden. I had to keep shi-

(Human hurriedly interrupts)

Yes, yes. I remember it very well, thank you.

And then the next day, you forced me to eat Krismus cake. And all the time you knew it had things in it that could kill an inner sent dog.

Absolute rubbish. You snitched it.

Well, you shouldn’t have left it on the floor when you you went into the kitchen. It’s negglee jens.

I did NOT leave it on the floor. I put it on the table.

Huh!

And as soon as I went out, you sprang up onto the arm of my chair, put your paws on the table and snaffled it. You’d swallowed it before I got back.

Well, S. was there. She should have stopped me.

You were so quick, she couldn’t get out of her chair in time. We had no idea a small, blind dog could do something like that.

I’ve got a nose, haven’t I?

Yes, dear. We just didn’t know you could leap onto a chair, launch yourself from the arm and stretch your legs and neck out that far.

Oh, and I nearly forgot. Once, when I got wet running into the sea, we came home and you tried to suffickate me. You dropped something over my head. I couldn’t breathe.

Yes, I covered you with a towel, and you were hysterical. I did say I was sorry. I didn’t realise that you hadn’t been dried before.

You’ve always got an x queues. You still do nasty things to me all the time. Like when you put my harness on, and you’ve got your speck tickles hanging round your neck, and when you bend down they bash me on the head.

Sigh.

It’s nearly as bad as trying to poison me again. And tonight’s not the first time you’ve given me nasty things to eat. You’re trying to get rid of me, and it’s not right, and I’M NEVER, EVER, GOING TO EAT THIS FOOD WITH POISON IN IT, AND YOU NEEDN’T THINK I AM.

She jumps up onto the day bed, and turns her back on me.

SIGH.

I should have known better.

I go back into the kitchen, bend over her bowl, and begin picking out all the fragments of NexGard (chewable, and considered very palatable by most dogs). The medication has become very sticky, and it’s extremely difficult to dislodge the pinky- brown remnants of it from between my fingers and under my nails.

At last her bowl is medication free.

I transfer the mince and kibbles to a clean bowl, and serve her meal again. This time, she polishes it all off without a murmur.

When she leaves the kitchen, I remove a pack of strong cheddar from the fridge, make little claggy balls of cheese, painstakingly insert a fragment of the tablet into each one and plug it with a little more cheddar.

Somehow, by now I’ve gone off the idea of eating a meal, and decide I’ll just have some toast.

I perform my ‘something very tasty is coming your way’ routine before hand feeding her each of the balls.

She accepts them all, dances and twirls a little, grabs Old Polar Bear, drags him into her bed and mouths him thoughtfully for at least an hour.

This is her ‘very contented dog’ behaviour.

Thank dog for cheese, I say.

Isis came from Aeza cat and dog rescue in Aljezur, Portugal. For information about adopting an animal from the centre, contact kerry@azea.org or go to http://www.dogwatch.co.uk.