“Come too!” is all I ever hear from Pepper as she squirts out of two catflaps, jumps the garden gate and arrives beside me while I am walking to my car trying to leave for Lerwick.

I have choices – I can either put Pepper back in the house, which seems very cruel after the mahoosive effort she made to get here, or take her with me.

I opted for having some companionship along the way. It’s always nice.

We had three places to go and some shops don’t mind dogs. I do always ask beforehand though, as Pepper and lurk at the doorway.

At the Agricultural Feed Merchants, we met a very nice doodley-dog and they both instantly made friends.

Then to Commercial Street where Pepper didn’t drag me along as she is now wearing a Halti (anti-pull method) which looks horribly like a muzzle.   We delivered sheep to Jamieson’s Knitwear and a lovely random stranger offered to hold Pepper’s lead while I counted up the sheep and wrote a delivery note.

We stopped and talked to tourists off a cruise-ship and was shown photos of their dogs.  We concluded leaving our dogs behind during holidays was worse than leaving family!

And shops in Lerwick are pretty tolerant of dogs, which is wonderful. I do appreciate that very much.

Pepper’s behaviour was much improved since last time. She even sat in her crate with all the car windows wide open while I did a quick shop around Tesco’s. I kept checking there were no small orange dogs running around in the car park and, when I returned to the car, I gave her half my lunch (mini-Cheddars and a bowl of water).

She slept all the way home.