A post should appear every Sunday

Sunday November 12th 2023

No sooner does Isis (nearly always) forget to skiddadle over the kitchen floor where, weeks ago, a splosh of water had made a small slippery patch, than she decides to elaborate on her riotous pre-walk ritual. As I’m sure we all remember, this comprises leaping back and forth, and up and down while uttering shrill barks and threatening growls as I attempt to unite her with her harness. It’s all good fun, if a little frustrating sometimes, especially in the morning when Human is feeling fragile.

Until, that is, Isis decides to up the anti.

She has always had harnesses which go on over her head. These harnesses give her the perfect excuse to toss her head around and twirl, then to suage into a merry jig as soon as she feels Human’s fingers fiddling with the under paw-pits straps.

Now her very fetching new red harness is different. It has two cut-outs into which two front feet have to be inserted. This is a very easy procedure and can be accomplished in seconds. But Hairy One prefers to draw the process out a little. Day by day, she embellishes her performance until it reminds me of the well-known Oaky-Cokey song and dance:

As I struggle to reinsert the dear little creature’s paws, she dives at my hands, pretending to nip them. Despite the ferocious growls and yaps, her tail wags like a speeded up metronome.

Unfortunately, after a week or so, it dawns on me that the pseudo nips are becoming less and less playful and decidedly more grabby. When her teeth graze my fingers, I decide that enough is enough. I remove her from the porch, pick up a front paw, and as soon as she begins a growl, I drop the harness and stand up. After about seven tries, she gets the message, and off we go.

“Oh dear,” I say to myself, “buying this kind of harness was a stupid mistake. You know that she doesn’t like her paws being handled. We’ll replace it tomorrow.”

After a few minutes though, it dawns on me: I always take her harness off in the park, so that she can feel unencumbered, and when it’s time to put it back on, she wags her tail and stands angelically, without so much as a step forward, while her hairy little feet are popped back into the cut-outs.

It’s nothing to do with her feet being touched, and everything to do with her well established porch routine. It will be better to harness her in another area, then, once on her lead, she can jump up and down in the porch to her heart’s content.

I’ve never had a dog with a personality like Hairy One’s before. She really is the prototype of the old proverb ‘give her an inch and she’ll take an ell’. Over the years, experience has taught me that any deviant behaviour must be corrected very quickly, otherwise it will not only persist, but gain momentum until retraining becomes a Herculean task.

I look back on the pandemonium that used to be mealtimes, and how it was essential never to drop one’s guard, never to let the first screech go uncorrected.

We have become so used to each other, and so attached that it’s easy to overlook her beginnings and the misery and frustration she must have suffered.

This weekend, my niece Laura, an animal lover more used to cats than dogs, visited. She  was looking at Cães e Gatos da AEZA, and was amused to see that Isis was described as ‘Blind, deaf and with behavioural disorders’.

Behavioural disorders? Isis?

I told her about the dreadful nightmares that Isis used to have, and how sometimes she had to be woken up several times a night to be calmed down and reassured.

Laura fell in love with Isis, adored her spotty black and pink nose, and was delighted when on the second day of her visit, said Hairy allowed her head to be stroked.

“She’s so sweet,” Laura declared throughout the weekend, gazing at the fluffy white creature relaxing innocently on the rug.

She couldn’t believe my descriptions of the porch madness – until Isis obliged with a demonstration this morning.

Ah well. I’ve always been fascinated by delinquency.

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.