Walter '“ the fastest four-legged delinquent

Last week Walter stuck his long, beaky nose into daughter #1’s massive shoulder bag, rooted around in it, stole her big bar of chocolate and ate the lot.

Chocolate can be poisonous to dogs so there was a panicky phone call to the vet who asked some very specific questions, such as what brand of chocolate was it, how big was it and how much had he eaten?

Dairy Milk, 200g and all of it.

The vet did some calculations based on cocoa levels, the amount he’d wolfed down and his weight, and said that because Dairy Milk’s cocoa content (that’s the stuff that’s toxic to dogs) is pretty low and our gangly lurcher is a big strapping lad he’d be okay.

While all this was going on, daughter #1 was doing her best to get the wrapper out of the dog’s mouth, who by this time thought it was a game of chase and legged it around the garden in circles at 35mph.

Then he yakked it all up.

So no harm done.

We thought we were over the hump of World War Chew after a few weeks of no wallpaper being ripped off, TV remotes left alone and carpet unchewed, but no.

He devours books with the same appetite as kids tore into Harry Potter stories when they went on sale at midnight.

His latest act of vandalism was to destroy a copy of One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest (how appropriate) which I’d had for 30 years.

Just picked it off the shelf and ripped it to bits along with a photo frame but with the picture of our daughters and their cousin left intact.

That was nearly the last straw.

There’s a reason why there’s a lot of one-year-old saluki/whippets in dogs’ homes, their owners have had enough of their houses being destroyed.

It was only daughter #1’s rare display of emotion that saved him, that and the cathartic thrashing he got with what was left of the book he’d chewed to pieces.

She tearily blubbed: “If you get rid of Walter, I’ll never speak to you again.”

So that was that.

We’re stuck with him.

On the plus side, he sleeps from 8pm to 7am every night and has stopped using our porcelain-tiled kitchen floor as a toilet.

That and he’s the fastest dog I’ve ever seen.