Forgot to say last time that before I went out I had to get our dogs back in from the garden. Merrill came around the corner with a sort of knowing smile on her face and, when I went around tofind out why, there was Sweeny pinned down beneath the stranger who was trying to have his wicked way with her. Sweeny certainly wasn’t resisting but I don’t believe she would have had the strength anyway. I wonder what was going through her mind. Was this the experience of her life? Were all her fourteen birthdays being repeated and coming at once? Whatever, she was taking no chances and her twat was placed firmly on the ground. I tried to get him off her with a singular lack of success and eventually managed it by thrusting the end of my bastoonie into his throat and pushing him off. Now he did show his teeth for the first time but anyone being so rudely objected to coitus interruptus would be bound to get a bit narky. Eventually a sharp rap on the head saw him off and Sweeney was rescued from a fate worth than death and swept into the house.
The big question is not where this hound might have come from. Greece is full of stray dogs. The big question is how on earth did he manage to get into our garden? It is surrounded by a high stone wall topped with cast iron railings. We had it erected at E-Nor-Mous expense to keep our own animals in. There is a spot right next to the house where my bedroom roof is quite close to the road. Perhaps that was his means of entry. (He couldn’t get out that way though when he attempted it). Anyway, I decided I would go and have my siesta and if he was still around when I got up I would turn the hose on him. The agricultural water has quite a strong jet. He was there. I opened the garden gate, opened the hose and directed it straight at him as he sat by the garden door. He fled around the corner, I followed, He leapt a six foot high embankment, ran along beside the wall and out the gate. I shut it and also the doors to the wood shed so that he couldn’t get back into the courtyard if he should return, though I thought that was the last I would see of him. Wro-ong! I posted off yesterday’s blog and was reading it to see if was okay when I happened to glance over my shoulder and who should be sitting right outside my study door, not four feet away and gazing at me with mournful eyes but that damned dog It is now coming up to five o’clock and, shower or no shower, he was determined this was going to be his home. Now how on earth did he get into the courtyard when both woodshed doors were firmly closed? This dog was an escapologist. There was only one thing for it, give him another dose of the same medicine. I didn’t enjoy what I had to do. I hate to see any animal cringing but there is no room in this house for a fully mature male dog and he had to be made certain in no uncertain terms that he was not wanted. In England I would probably have called the RSPCA and had him removed but Crete is not England. So out into the courtyard I go and turn on that hose. The first jet hit him and he was off, down into the lower garden and cowering against the far wall. I kept the hose on him until, in desperation, (he held out for quite a while) he jumped onto a huge boulder that lies there and was up and over another six foot high wall. Not only an escapologist but an Olympic athlete yet. Maybe that was the way he got in. He hasn’t been seen to-day and hopefully that is the end of this shaggy dog story or, as the Princess Spitzkaya would have said, shabby dog story. Shame, he looked pretty shabby too, soaked to the skin but, as the Greeks say, ti na kanoume?