A post should appear every Sunday

Sunday March 17th 2024

Isis, who, on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday is a pain in the backside on her walks, stopping, refusing to move, turning back, and all of her other unendearing little teases,  transforms herself into a fluffy little spotty-nosed paragon of a dog on Thursday. True, she faffs about for the first ten minutes, but then she trots along happily, appreciating all the scents she comes across, the very essence of contented dogdom.

What’s the secret?

She’s walking with Nancy

(Nancy later tells Bev she believes Isis thinks she can wind Human round her smallest toe).

Hmmmm.

Anyway, all my thoughts of being much more aware of Hairy One’s limitations, and only taking her for very short walks now that she is  approaching eleven (at least) sail out of the window. As Bev says, Isis is happy when she is where she wants to be, and doing what she wants to do.

Isis proves the point the very next day, when, yet again, she moves round Highbury at the pace of a disconbobulated snail.

Yes, I know very well where Isis would love to be – walking along the narrow ribbon of mud by the side of the now swollen and fast running river Rea – but I am not about to expose her to that danger; nor do I really fancy careening up and down the mud slopes myself, before taking a dip in the river to rescue Isis.

What a spoilsport.

She might like a trip to Earlham Lakes, or even the Licky Hills, but I question the feasibility of driving further than the very local parks with only one correctly functioning eye.

We’ve not been to Kings Heath Park for a couple of weeks, so I take her there on Saturday. She loves this park, but becomes bored if we go too often, and tries to sneak across the field to take a short cut back to the car park.

But today she makes her way round the park, sniffing along the much marked walls which contain the shrubberies, moves onto the green stretch parallel to Vicarage Road, then follows her nose along the grass abutting Avenue Road, past the gates, and up onto the wide bank, rich with scents, which spreads itself between the fence and the children’s playground. From here, she makes her way to the wood, and weaves her way through it, still snuffling and snorting at all the little mammal traces.

From here, we slurp through the soggy grass, and follow the path down to the lovely corkscrew hazel, where I pause to gather fallen twigs.

It’s a great walk.

I love football because everyone else seems to spend Saturday afternoon watching it, so the roads and shops are virtually empty.

On the way back, I leave Isis to rest in the car, and spend about thirty minutes gathering supplies in Lidl’s.

Isis is rewarded with a twist of Rodeo which she finds very tasty.

We next stop briefly at the Co-op on Vicarage Road, before making our way home.

When we reach home, she walks up the path with a very weird gait. Oh dear, her harness is twisted tightly round her body, and appears to be inside out. How the heck did that come about? We struggle for half an hour, but there is no way I can squeeze out her head or a leg, and the clips which allow for shortening or lengthening the harness straps are inaccessible, being buried deep in her hair.

She is obviously in great discomfort, as I twist and turn the harness, trying to extricate her. Then, just as I am thinking that I’ll have to fetch scissors and cut her out, I manage to access what feels like one of the clips which allow the strap to be altered. Then I feel another one. It’s very difficult to lengthen the straps as there’s no space at all between the harness and her skin, and all my tugging must be painful for her.

But amazingly, she knows that I am trying to help her, and she doesn’t even growl at me. At last, I am able to lengthen the straps enough to slide the harness – still grotesquely twisted – over her leg, then over her head. We are both very relieved, and she even leans into me when I pull her towards me to give her a big hug.

Her weekend troubles are not over yet though, and today something much worse happens.

I let her out into the garden. She doesn’t make a sound, but when she returns I notice that the portable step has small pools of blood on it, and as she walks into the kitchen, I can see that her left forepaw is bleeding profusely.

What on earth has happened? She’s been out for less than five minutes, has only moved a few feet from the house, and I know that there’s nothing sharp on the ground. There are brambles, but she circumvents them, and anyway, a thorn wouldn’t produce this much blood.

I put wetted cotton wool beneath her pads, until the blood has stopped dripping, then smear Sudocreme on more cotton wool, and place her foot on it. She growls, but doesn’t bite me.

It’s clear that she is in a great deal of pain. Although her breakfast is down for her, she doesn’t want it, and escapes onto the daybed.

Isis never whines or whimpers when she’s in pain: she just barks continuously. I try to interest her in her breakfast, but she doesn’t want it. She just lies there barking. I can’t see what’s going on with the foot, and she’ll not let me examine it.

After a while, stroking her head, I hold her dish under her chin, and she eats her breakfast in bed.

Then she licks her foot and barks, barks and licks her foot.

She wants to come with me to visit Jim, is keen to play her hunt-the-treats game, but then continues to lick and bark until, exhausted, she falls asleep.

When she gets up, she’s limping.

She is a very stoical little dog, and doesn’t react to bumps or scratches. I suspect that she caught her nail in something, and fractured the nail bed. She did this some years ago, and barked for hours through the night. The next day, the vet discovered the fractured nail bed, which, he said would be extremely painful.

She’s sleeping now, and when I join her on the daybed with my Kindle, I’ll see if I can spot exactly where her injury is.

But I fear it’ll be a visit to the vet tomorrow.

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.