A post should appear every Sunday

Sunday March 25th 2024

We didn’t have to go to the vet. By Monday, Isis seems fine. She doesn’t bark, she gets up with her usual enthusiasm, she doesn’t limp, and is not in pain. She’ll not allow me to examine her paw, but later on, while she’s asleep, I can see that her dew claw is missing, but the nail bed is clean and not bleeding any longer.

All seems well.

I am not surprised, after last week’s incident with her new harness, that she will now have nothing to do with it, and promptly trots off when I take it from her drawer in the hall. Fair enough, I’ll use a soft harness for a couple of weeks, hope the trauma will fade and then try the new one again.

Isis is an absolute pain, refusing to walk in Highbury, so I decide we’ll walk in Kings Heath Park for the rest of the week. This works well, although she isn’t so happy today, I think because it’s very bright and sunny, and probably very alarming, since we’ve not had a rainless day since I can remember.

On Thursday, after her walk, I park in Silver Street to nip into Lidl’s for a few items. When I return to the car, I wonder whether the reluctant walker will come with me across the car park to the back entrance of the pet shop. (She likes the pet shop.) We amble across, walk through the shop, and emerge in York Road as I need to buy a tin of shoe polish from the key cutting and shoe repair man.

Unfortunately, we miss him by a whisker, as, apparently, he shuts up shop at 3.30.

Sigh.

To get to Clark’s shoe shop, where I know they’ll have polish, we’ll need to go over the zebra crossing, and walk further along the High Street. I can’t imagine that Isis will be happy with this; I expect that we’ll have to go back to the car, so we turn right towards Silver Street.

But I’m wrong.

Isis appears to be perfectly happy walking along the High Street. She crosses over on the zebra crossing without a pause, whereas usually she prefers to stop in the middle of roads and refuse to move – perhaps she feels safer on a crossing! Actually, it’s just struck me that  this isn’t such a silly comment as it seems: she likes following paths, and she’ll be able to smell the hundreds of feet which have been on the crossing today.

We turn right and walk down a long stretch of pavement to Clark’s. She accompanies me through the door, and takes in the leathery smells of new shoes and boots as she waits patiently while I buy my polish.

We recross the road, and begin to walk back down Silver Street to the car. It’s not a very interesting street, and I’m still waiting for her to balk and refuse to move. It’s a long way to hustle her back to the car.

But I’m overlooking the fact that I am not a dog, and that what looks boring to me is quite different from what smells interesting to her. She’s not walked this way before, and her nose whiffles along the verges and the edges of buildings almost as enthusiastically as it does when we walk past the entrance to the Wildlife Centre in Cannon Hill Park.

Once home, and replete with her supper, she sleeps contentedly until dog’s bedtime.

How I underestimate my Isis.

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.