Bins raided, scarf ripped - the delight of a new dog

She is a Staffordshire bull terrier crossed with something rather longer-legged, brindle, with dissonant white patches; her head is disproportionately large and, full-face, she has something of the monkfish in her looks, not helped by an eye that wanders far further to the right than God intended. To perfection she played the hangdog role of the cowed and beaten cur, the rejected mutt - as indeed she was, for she had been found tied to the railings of the rescue home. She was so fearful that it was only with much patience that I was eventually allowed to fondle her. As Winck showed no evident objection, we came away with her. She was sick in the car. And when we reached home, Jack the whippet took one look and disappeared in a sulk. Not a good beginning.

I wanted to call her Schadenfreude, but friends decided that she should be Lottie. Recovered from her nausea, she raced like a mad thing around the garden and plunged into the deep end of the pond - eight feet deep. In the house it was immediately clear that she had not been trained and I marshalled my resources of soda water, newspaper, old cloths and understanding. She stood on her hind legs and pawed chocolate from a shelf and butter from the table. She gnawed old Nusch's basket. Then she stole my glasses and, with a single clench of teeth, crumpled the steel frame (strong enough to withstand the foot of an elephant, the optician claimed) and scarred the lenses. My favourite scarf she rent in ribbons.

She is a very handy dog in the sense that by turning her forepaws inward, she can grip a handle and pull back a door; twice by this means she has raided the dogs' larder and eaten enough dry food for a week - of which the consequence has been a stomach swollen as tight as a drum, almost continuous silent but foul farting, and intestinal emergencies for which I have always been a moment late. Yesterday she discovered that the kitchen bin can be opened by the slightest pressure of a paw and ate an egg-box, chicken bones and a stale head of broccoli. Today she trapped her head in railings. But she has not yet eaten a book, as Winck did, often, in her first month here. Lottie she is and Lottie she answers to, but Schadenfreude would have been a better name, except that my delight is in my own misfortune.