So, my week from Crapsville then. I’ve deliberated and cogitated as to whether I should blog about this, the likelihood of a happy, quirky outcome being increasingly unlikely, but because you’re my readers and I lub you, I’ve decided to tell you. But any comments that appear even remotely along the lines of ‘you berk’ or ‘what a pillock you are’ will be severely dealt with. You’ve been warned. So last week I’d offered to help J by taking in a little blue greyhound girl (a girlfriend for Bert, thought I) as she was struggling to take in a new greyhound because of full kennels. Off I went, then, down the unfeasibly wiggly N52 to pick up this pretty, teeny little thing who was wide eyed and terrified. She panted and cried and and pinged about like a little pinball in the back of the car all the way home, but I talked reassuringly to her and by the time we got home she was laying down and seemed a bit calmer. I got her out of the car (Bert with his nose pressed against the window trying to get a better look) and took her down the garden, talking quietly to her as she was a gibbering wreck. At which stage it all went wrong. She. Freaked. She did a half twisting triple looping forward somersault with tuck back, twisting my arm in a rather unpleasant manner and – worse – breaking one of my new gel nails. The Bitch. Then with a final pirouette she slipped neatly out of her collar and before you could say Olympic gymnast was legging it at a rate of knots down the road, leaving me sitting on my bottom in the grass saying exceedingly rude things.

So I won’t bore you with the details but basically this week has been a blur of driving rain, evil, freezing wind and trudging around countless fields after the wee girl. The neighbours (and faraway-bours) have been fantastic, but every time we got near, she scarpered, only to follow us as soon as we turned away from her. No amount of whistling, blowing kisses, tapping on food bowls or anything else made any difference. The only time she came to the door was to eat the food we put out, and then rush off if she so much as smelled us there.

So far I’ve tried the Gardai Dog Unit (‘no, we don’t use tranquilliser darts, madam, sorry’), the local Gardai (‘a farmer will shoot it before you get it back’), the vet (‘well, I’ve got doping gel, but you need to put it on their tongue and it takes 15 minutes to work’), Dublin Zoo (no reply), the dog warden (can’t help and don’t own a trap) and, least helpful of all, Little C from next door who came up with the ‘tie a piece of string around a bone and leave it in the front garden, then pull the string when she picks up the bone’ scenario. Oh, and bear in mind that the likelihood of her being shot by one of the local farmers is, indeed, incredibly high – a lot of the sheep are currently in lamb. That’s if she survives the farm lorries and tractors along our little one-track lane. Ferrrrk. It’s now been a week and, more worryingly, last night she didn’t even come back to eat the food. Any suggestions (no smart arsed ones, please, I’ve had a trying week) would be gratefully received.