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Okay, so the avid book fan is my Labrador puppy and she quite literally devoured the book, or at least part of it, whilst I was out at work yesterday. You can see the sorry remnants of the book in the photo.

I cannot turn this into anything other than a greedy naughty event. I can’t put a useful spin on this, pretend that she chooses her afternoon snacks in any discerning manner. Last week it was my camera case, my reading glasses and my walking shoes. The week before it was the TV remote, a pillow from the bed and a packet of highlighter pens. This week so far it has been a box of tissues, a DVD case, a pair of coasters and my book. That’s without even mentioning the obvious – the hall carpet, the wooden staircase, one or two areas of skirting, and wall plaster. We have had to politely ask the postman not to put packages through the cat-door as the naughty pup will eat them.

The most upsetting, strangely enough, was two weeks ago when my husband had bought two lovely fillet steaks for us to eat one evening. I had decided that Wednesday was going to be ‘the night’. I took the steaks out of the fridge and lovingly laid them out on my wooden chopping board, in order that they could ‘breathe’, and reach optimum temperature for cooking them.

Now, I know that you all realise where this story is going, but I’m going to tell it anyway.

So there were the two lovely steaks on my wooden board, waiting to be cooked. About an inch thick and lovely and lean. They cost my hubby about £7.50 per steak, this was going to be a real feast.

‘Oh,’ I thought, ‘I think chips would be lovely tonight with the steaks.’ But being a bit of an idle person I decided to nip out to the shop at the end of the road and get a bag of frozen chips.

Yes, yes, I know you know what’s coming ...

But we are still getting one or two bluebottles in the house, so being a very careful person I decided to cover the steaks, so I got one of those ‘umbrella’ type things out of the drawer and carefully laid it over the steaks. I hopped into the car and nipped to the end of the road for the chips.

Well.

I came back in and noticed immediately something was wrong. My older Labrador, the sensible (and well behaved) one, slunk into the back room. My little blondie puppy lab sat smiling at me.

I looked on the kitchen worktop and couldn’t believe my eyes. There was one steak, sitting on the bread board, all plump and succulent, and beside it was a damp oval where the other steak should have been. The umbrella had not moved.

At first I was a bit incredulous. For a start, she would have had to get under the umbrella and pull the steak towards her with her paw. I was stunned. I started looking all around, in case the steak had moved by itself. Well, you never know do you? Listen, I write books about fairies – stranger things have happened.

I looked on the floor, in the dog’s bed, in the sink. Silly me. Finally it clicked.

I turned to my sweet little blonde Labrador baby, pointed to the worktop, and in my most fierce voice said to her, ‘did you do that?’.

She didn’t say anything. She just licked her lips and wagged her tail.