Poor Molly, that rings a bell

One of the many benefits of sharing with animals is that they never sigh and roll their eyes when they are hearing a story for the umpteenth time.

They don't shrug or pull faces behind your back and they are never embarrassed by being seen with you.

So walking away from an encounter with a bicycle and a Yorkie (Animal Antics, The Standard, August, 16) gave me the opportunity to relive one of the many "events" that make up life with Jack the Yorkshire nipper.

After a month of getting Jack used to using a collar and leash (yet another story!) when we first adopted him, we sashayed out into the big world of village life to walk beside mentor Sassoon, the ex-building site mongrel.

The first thing Jack saw was a neighbor on his ancient bike.

No problem, as Mr Ho said good morning and mounted his bike, but as he shakily pushed off and drew away from us, Jack went mad.

Barking, bouncing, pulling at the leash, as he tried to chase down the cyclist.

Whatever we did to correct his behavior, it started all over again with the next elderly man on a bicycle. After a week, it was clear that Jack's reaction to bikes was more intense when the rider was an elderly man.

If a pretty young woman cycled by, he would bark a little, but not go into angry chase-down mode.

Friendly neighbors accepted our repeated apologies and even tried to help by cycling near us and round us to get Jack used to bicycles, but to no avail, for each time we managed to get him to not react to a bicycle, the next one along was fair game.

Telling the story to Molly mongrel was ironic.

She had her own issues with bicycles when she first came to us, but her response was to get as far from the bike as possible, silently, but unlike Jack she did learn control.

Almost home, I told Molly I would tell her how we partly solved the Jack/bike problem on our next walk.

Molly stood quietly at the gate, watching my face, then dashed inside to sniff Jack Yorkie and possibly moan to him that I was telling his life story yet again.

Georgina Noyce is an equestrian judge, and has a menagerie of adopted four-legged waifs and strays.

gnoyce2009@gmail.com