A Poynton Valley Sunday

We had an excellent meal in the Boar's Head last night and Sally largely behaved herself, though she did shout abuse at a King Charles spaniel she felt was Eyeballing Her in a Funny Way. Elanor dealt with that promptly and we had no further bother.

After the bustle of all the boating over the past week, it was pleasant to take our time getting going this morning. Minor jobs like dumping rubbish and recycling could be done (there are now recycling skips in the bin compound here). Elanor ran us down to Waitrose later to restock with enough stuff to keep us going until we sort out an Ocado delivery, very handy.

I'd taken Sal with me to the rubbish skips; she was excellently behaved with the various folk she met but then reacted very oddly to one of the fishermen casting into the winding hole. She'd been chatting to one of them no bother, hoping to blag a bit of his tinned salmon sandwich off him, but the other had a keep net lying on the ground beside him. It was a slightly odd one with a very long shaft and quite a small head, round and maybe a foot in diameter.

As we walked away from them, Sal glanced at this and totally panicked, towing me back to the boat as if pursued by demons. Sheila was sitting out in the well deck enjoying the sun and Sal leapt aboard and took cover behind her legs, shaking like a leaf. I let her down into the cabin where Elanor was pottering in the bathroom. Sal calmed a bit on hearing her voice, but was still very anxious for a good hour afterwards.

Elanor did some work with her, taking her back to look at the net and rewarding her with treats for doing so, but it wasn't wholly successful. Sally being a rescue dog, we only have a sketchy idea of the first couple of years of her life, of course. Elanor had been told by the RSPCA shelter staff that she had been part of a violently dysfunctional family break up, but now we wonder if there's more to it than that.

The keep net, which had a black shaft but a silver rim to the net, looked a lot like a dog catcher's pole and loop. We suspect that at some time Sal has been a stray and has had a traumatic encounter with such a dog catcher.

Elanor and Sal tore themselves away just before lunch – we're waiting for a text to say that they are safely home.

Tomorrow, into the yard...