The Wind and The Willies.

I know people are fed up to the canine teeth with talk about my dogs and so I promise this will be the last. Something doggy, however, has been driving me mad today and so needs to be Granthamed.
Readers of this blog will be familiar with three of my four rescue hounds. The fourth, my alsatian, had yet to feature, until now.
His name is Padfoot. Not my choice. The choice of my soon-to-be ex-wife who decided that the Harry Potter character Padfoot, a giant, snarling beast which turned out to be a real softy, suited him down to his huge paws.
Pad, as he is known around the house, came to me after he was rescued by the fire brigade having fallen through the ice over a canal. It's thought he had been in the water for around an hour and unable to clamber out when he was going down for the third time and a passer-by who spotted him raised the alarm. I did a story on his rescue, kept a check on his progress and, after discovering that he could not be re-homed and faced a lethal injection, took him on. Pad weighs in at seven stone and is, by anyone's estimation, a big lad. His jaws could exert a pressure of 2,000lbs-sq-inch (we looked it up) and he has a growl and a bark which makes the blood run cold. The teeny problem about him is...............he is a total and utter wuss.
He is bottom of the pile round here (Pither excluded), even being regularly bullied off his tea by my away-with-the-fairies jack russell-cross Tilly. He is scared of all the others, scared of most of my friends (mind you, so is most of the rest of the world), scared of the postman and even scared of the birds (work that one out!). There is one thing, however, which scares him more than any other....................the wind! The wind makes curtains, blinds and doors move without apparent reason, it makes a noise, it makes pieces of paper leap about and it ruffles your hair! It is indeed a terrifying force - when you have the brains of the average educationally disadvantaged tree frog.
Today, as everyone in Britain is no doubt well aware by now, has been a tad on the blustery side of hurricane force. The result was that I have not been able to move so much as an inch without finding a large alsatian glued to my leg, looking up pitifully and afraid. Try going to the toilet with a wolf holding on to your leg!!
Bless. So, to conclude the essays on my dogs, I am sending bashful, nervous and ultimately spineless alsatians to Grantham.