By Muddy Madam (AKA - Karen Lee Turner)

As I am writing this it has been almost a month by since the lovely Lilly graced Muddy Towers with her presence, and what a learning curve those days have been.

I haven't owned (or should that be, been owned by) a dog for almost 30 years. My last dog was a German Shepherd, or Alsation as she was then, and since then I have been mum to numerous rescued and rehomed cats.  The nearest I've gotten to possessing a dog was when we had our neighbour's dog, Giz, a big Labrador, for a week when she went on holiday.  He had a lackadaisical style, but he could also wolf down his food in about 0.01 seconds. It's partly his fault we now have Lilly, as he'd lulled us into a doggy way of life, and when our neighbour moved, and took Giz with her (how dare she!), we had a little animal shaped hole.

I was hankering after another cat, and perused the rescues frequently, but I would also have a sneaky peek at the dogs too.  Although I looked, I was adamant that a dog wouldn't fit our laissez-faire, self employed lifestyle, so never took the jump.  Then on the 17th of July I announced on Facebook that we were ready for a new cat, but fate intervened, and by the 12th of August Lilly, the non-cat, had arrived.

She is a weird one, unlike any other dog I've come across. She doesn't gobble down her food, she'll eat a bit, then wander away for a snooze, then a few hours later she'll have another bite. Very odd.

She is also an absolute tart for Damian.  You should see how she greets him, even if he's only left the house for half an hour, it's like she wants to re-enact the lift scene from Dirty Dancing the way she launches at him. I do get a bit of loving, but nothing on the scale of the adoration Damian gets. He is rather happy about this, as all the cats we've had have preferred my squishy thighs to snuggle up on.

She's pretty much perfect in every way, but she has one inbuilt flaw - she is a typical sighthound, which means when she locks onto her preferred prey - SQUIRRELS - nothing will break her will to chase those bushy tailed creatures.  As we live next to the biggest park in Bolton, which also happens to have plenty of trees, wild areas, and those pesky aforementioned squirrels (who also like to taunt dogs by just sitting in the middle of the paths playing with their conkers), it means that she cannot be trusted off the lead in the park, EVER.  We learned this during her second off-the-lead play when she decided that the ball chasing wasn't enough, and that a fast run past her 2 unfit humans was the way to go, and she kept on going!!

So now the plan is to go to enclosed fields to play, and whilst there start whistle training to get some kind of recall instilled into her squirrel obsessed brain.

Wish us luck, I think we're going to need it.