When she was a whelp, she refused to play with puppies and balls.
When an adult, it doesn’t take long in the canine world,
she showed a dislike for dogs and recoiled, in horror,
when they tried to greet her the way dogs do,
born as she was middle aged
and with a tendency to snobbery.

We fought a long battle about the sofa she wanted to sleep on it
and I didn’t want dog hair there.
When she was five, I gave up and to her credit
She desisted from showing triumph,
the way Maggie Thatcher did
when winning the Falkland war.

We moved into a town
and for a while I kept her on a lead,
which she hated, hung her head in shame.
Unluckily she was of the notion that cars should stop for her,
most did, one did not and she looked rather cross when she died.
Buried her where she was born, in the hinterland of Algarve.