My spaniel has been pronounced ‘too thin’ by a lady who rescues dogs from Greece. I had stopped to chat with her in the park, as I often do, because I like the lady who rescues dogs from Greece. I’m not one of those people who say, ‘Well, how disgraceful. Fancy spending all that money rescuing dogs when the people are starving.’
No. I say that if a soft south Londoner wants to spend thousands of pounds importing waifs and strays from the collapsing Eurozone, rename them Bunty, feed them up until they are fit to pop and take them for a waddle around Tooting Common, good on her. There is enough misery in the world that can’t be solved. It makes a nice change for a mongrel who was begging outside a supermarket in Faliraki to have a happy ending.
So I always stop to talk to this lady who usually has several of her adopted Greek orphans by her side, including the odd newbie with a bemused expression on its face, as if wondering: ‘I’m sure I was sleeping outside the Carrefour Marinopoulos in Halkidiki this morning. I feel like I’ve lost a day somewhere. What’s this thing round my neck? Aagh! Why is there a woman attached to the end of it? Oh, my god! Look at my stomach! Why am I so fat?’
On this occasion, for some reason, as she has seen her many times and never made a comment before, the lady looked disapprovingly down at Cydney and said: ‘My goodness!’ And then bending down to her, and speaking in that slow, deliberate voice some humans seem to think makes them intelligible to dogs, said: ‘Hello, sweetheart, you’re very thin, aren’t you?’
Cydney, who was panting from a 20-minute sprint through the undergrowth chasing rabbits, looked back up at the Greek dog lady and then went entirely berserk.
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