I was rather surprised with the speed at which the motion was seconded, voted upon, passed and entered into the minutes. Suddenly the meeting was over and I was being hugged by Monomer.

I had always objected to owing a dog because I knew who it would be who would end up having to take it for walks. Yet suddenly here we were having a dog, it was official it was in the minutes seconded and approved.

We decided, naturally, to do the good thing a give an orphan dog a home rather than have a new puppy form a shop. We were getting a dog. I was still trying to work out how this had happened as the children were telephoning the local stray dogs home, they did not even have to look up the number.

I was still trying to work out how I had been tricked into agreeing to have this dog when next Sunday morning I was turning my very clean car into the muddy lane leading to the local stray dogs home.

If I had known then about Digger I would have driven straight on to the airport, bought a one way ticket to Peru and become a Trappist monk on the top of some remote mountain. Even then, deep down in my heart, I have the feeling that even if I had done that, eventually Digger would have found me.

Choosing a pet dog from the dogs home was a better idea in the comfort of our own living room than it was here in the dogs home, confronted as we were with hundreds of stray dogs. They came in all shapes and sizes. There were big dogs that would look down on you and snort through their noses. There were hairy ones that did not seem to have any legs. There were little noisy ones that ran around their cages at a hundred miles an hour.

There was one that looked like a floor mop. The dog warden told me it was a floor mop, he had been cleaning out the cage when we arrived. That was a pity really I quite liked that one.

We had a complete tour around the exercise yard looking in all the cages one by one. As we passed each cage and looked in the dog in there would hurl itself at the wire door barking at us. Eventually after the complete round trip we arrived back at the wardens office from where we had started. We all stood in silence somewhat stunned by the sight of all those dogs. I came to the conclusion that there was not a single dog that I wanted the same side of the wire as me let alone take home with us.

At this point we should have taken all the dogs names, written to all their parents for references and got a physiological profile of each dog. Then we could have made up our minds, discussed things with knowledge and confidence which dog would suite us best. I suggested it. It was the first time I had been shouted down out of hand without a proper discussion. The family were determined to have a dog and knew if they left there without a dog they might never get one. What really upset me most was that they were right.

We started to walk around the pens again. We crossed off all the big snarly dogs with ten foot teeth that looked as if they ate crocodiles for breakfast. We also rejected all the little ones on the basis that socially they were no better than owning a cat. This reduced the number to choose from by about half. We started another lap around the dog pound.

Why is it that the oddity always stands out from the crowd. They do not have to be flamboyant, noisy, bigger, just different. Common sense and reasoning tells you to leave the oddity alone, but curiosity makes you look closer and what was it that killed the cat.