Sunday May 26th 2024

I have an enduring picture of our Isis from this week.

She is in the orchard, where we meet Yasmin, Blitzi and John K. They are sitting on a log, and I am standing up talking to them, when a group of youngsters with profound learning difficulties approaches with their carers.

Blitzi, who loves children, tries to engage with them, hoping for a fuss. He wags his tail and takes little jump steps towards them, but they are afraid and back away, shrinking close to their carers.

Hairy One walks over, and to my surprise, stands just in front of the children. One by one, each child bends down and gently touches Isis’s hair. Even one boy who, his carer afterwards tells me, is terrified of dogs, gives her a quick stroke. One lad has to be restrained from grasping a bunch of her hair, but she stands still, allowing them to touch her.

The carers thank us and say that this has been a very good experience for the children. She even says a special thank you to Isis!

I am very impressed with my Isis. This is very unusual behaviour for her, as usually she avoids being touched, however gently, except by Bev and Human.

It’s as though she senses that the young people are vulnerable, and I remember my friend Maureen, who visited me last year when I’d just had my hip operation and was on crutches, remarking, “Do you realise how careful that dog is being around you, waiting for you to walk through the doors in front of her, and leaving space around you?”

I hadn’t realised, but she was right. Isis was being very careful, and continued to be until I was able to abandon the crutches.

As I mentioned last week, she is not so careful of my hands when I am placing her left foot, then the rest of her into her harness. I thought that she had got the message that we don’t dive at Human’s hands, but no such luck. Although as soon as I drop the harness, and “I-SIS” her, she becomes compliant.

Now I always put her harness on in the hall rather than the porch because, historically, the porch pre-walk has always been the signal for leaping around and feinting hand nips. It’s just that nowadays there’s more nipping and less feinting.

To be fair, I think it’s my fault: you may remember that the first time she wore the harness, I made a mess of putting it on her, and tangled her up in it to such an extent that it took almost thirty minutes to extricate her.

I need to use this particular harness because it’s the only one I could get which serves as an anchor in the car, and as a walking harness.

It’s quite heavy, and I’ve left it in the car for our last few walks, just using the lead. She likes this, and since she doesn’t pull, it’s an easy thing to do. True, I can’t tug her if she does one of her stand up or sit down strikes, but a nudge of the bottom serves as a reminder that we are supposed to be walking.

We go to all our usual haunts this week: Kings Heath Park, Highbury Park, Holders Woods and the winding lanes around Jasmin Fields. We also have a merry stop-sniff walk around the block.

Yesterday, and it’s not raining – no, really it isn’t. I decide to give my shaggy front hedge a quick haircut, and get out the shears. But to my annoyance, I can’t find the my secateurs, which I need for the thickest stems.

They should be in the kitchen.

They’re not.

Alternatively, they are in the understairs cupboard, just near the door.

They’re not.

I become very annoyed and frustrated, and throw all the stuff, accumulated and unsorted over many years, out into the hall.

I still don’t find the secateurs, and the hall is piled with unspeakable rubbish. There are mouldy shoes, disintegrating mountain walking boots, dozens of shoe laces, spare bicycle inner tubes, dead flourescent bulbs, covies of deceased woodlice, and a few mummified flies. There are strips of what look like counter edgings, brittle and discoloured, screws, nails, plastic bags, new paint rollers, a sealant gun, a workshop vacuum, a wallpaper stripper, and merrily rolling tins of shoe polish. Firmly interwoven among this revolting miscellany, is a tall metal shoe rack, whose shelves drop off as I look at them, and weave themselves firmly into the surrounding mix.

I have to walk over the undulating heaps in order to get in and out of the cupboard, thus risking breaking my neck.

At the height of the chaos, Isis naturally, decides that it is imperative to walk up and down the hall from the back room to the front room. I quickly remove the saws and screwdrivers which are projecting from the piles, and she strolls confidently over the rest as though nothing has happened.

It’s good to have a calm dog when everything else is falling apart.

 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.