Coco's Corner: 7 September

The Dawnay family has returned from Burgundy. I was pleased – until I made an unwelcome discovery.

Not only did they park me with Mrs Courtier in the Chilterns yet again as they gadded about, trying to avoid the worst English summer that anyone could remember. But while they were glugging Puligny-Montrachet, gurgling the Meursault and knocking back the Mercurey with cries of 'this is drinking well' and 'one case or two, darling?' they were accompanied by a young dachshund bitch called Oona.

Yes. Imagine my joy.

While I crouched in my concrete cell, they were playing away with a dog that was both smaller and younger than me. All they talked about was how Oona White slept in her basket and ate scraps of beef from the table, and the time they went to Chateau Sully for dinner and the Labrador of the house made such an aggressive lunge for Oona that she leapt vertically into the air on the drawbridge and almost fell in the moat.

Luckily her master, Randle, had her on the lead, otherwise it would have been curtains for the precious sausage dog.

The moat scrape was some consolation, but not really what I wanted to hear. I love the family I look after, but they sometimes take their cue from the editor in chief, and exhibit a regrettable lack of sensitivity.

Coco

Office Dog

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