The one with the waggily tail...

The young pet-shop assistant and I struggled for ten minutes or so with the wooden kennel but it wouldn't all fit into the car. The body almost fitted into the boot, but the detachable roof just wouldn't fit at all. Of course, I'd forgotten the rope that Herself said I should bring. So he did his best with some shop twine. The first bump we went over the twine snapped. The bus driver in the bus behind us tooted the horn a little as the rear door of the car was waving up and down distressingly.

"Pull over up here," I suggested. "I'll take the kennel out and you can go home for the rope."

So that's what we did.

As I'm standing there on the side of the road watching the traffic go by, drivers and passengers occasionally wondering what I'm doing beside a half-built kennel, a large woolly dog trailing a lead rushes out of a side road and into the middle of the road.

A car swerves and the one behind brakes heavily. The dog runs on in a blind panic, disappearing into the Watergate estate.

I resume my vigil by the kennel.

A red car pulls up.

"Excuse me," a man says through the open window. "Have you seen a grey dog...?"

I tell him it went across the road and into Watergate...

"Heading in the direction of the park," I add.

He thanks me and tries to drive out onto the main road, which is very busy. Eventually he rushes off down the road and the car goes into the estate.

Herself arrives and we wrap up everything like a B-movie heroine on a railroad line waiting for the chap to come to the rescue.

Herself drops me off and goes back out to get the roof section from the pet shop.

I muse as I struggle the big, expensive wooden crate through the house and into the cat's shed that I'm glad we don't have a dog. They're just too much trouble.