Prisoner's Log, Day whatever: I am overjoyed!

Word has finally reached me - my pets are on their way home! I have been overindulging in hoarded doggie treats as a way of celebrating. The thought of my reunion with my loved ones will sustain me through the tough days that lie ahead.

Funnily enough, shortly before this wondrous news reached me, I was just starting to warm to my captors. Curly lady gives good cuddles and ear strokes, and even Beard Man's forced marches were becoming familiarly tolerable. But just as I let my defences down - worryingly - they started displaying all too familiar behaviour patterns: hoarding clothing, cleaning the house etc. I fear they too are about to do a runner and leave me heart-broken.

Humans - you learn to love them and what do they do - abandon you, not knowing where the next doggie treat is coming from. Oh woe is me!

But joy is me also! For my pets will soon be here to free me from my chains of oppression! Let the world rejoice! Let the world send me doggie treats!

Prisoner's Log, Day 15: Oh dearie me!

Well, who'd have thought it? Delayed gratification is not, it transpires, my thing.

I tried and tried to stock pile treats but things didn't quite work out according to my fiendishly cunning plan.

The humans are stupid and try to keep my biscuits from me by hiding them inside various plastic balls when they leave the house. Well, I have devised a remarkably clever way of retrieving them - basically by pushing the aforementioned ball around with my nose. I shall say no more - trade secrets and all that.

Each time I managed to find a treat, I tried my best to stockpile it, but found out to my horror that while I was thinking how best to stockpile, unbeknownst to me, I had already eaten the damned things. Time and again, the same thing happened - found treat, thought "oooh, goody, here's one to add to the stockpile".. and before I knew it ... the treat was inside my mouth, being eaten.

Okay, I admit it. I have a weakness.

It's time to stand up and be counted: My name is Murphy and I'm a Doggietreatoholic.

Prisoner's Log, Day 14: Forward Planning

Reading back over my previous couple of entries in this, my diary of doom, I do believe I was starting to suffer from Stockholm Syndrome. Only the Irish protest song posted in yesterday's comments snapped me out of it good and proper and made me realise that my bitterness over my dear departed body parts had made me take my eye off the main game.

Well, bitches, I'm back!

Plan A is to start stock-piling doggie treats so that I may have plenty of supplies for when I make my escape. Fortunately for me, the imposters rarely tidy the house so there are any number of available hiding places for my stash. I plan to be my usual enthusiastic self when treats are offered, eat one or two in front of the stupid humans, and then secretly hoard the rest for when I finally make my bid for freedom. With my good looks, fierce intelligence and a secret hoard of doggie treats, I'll be ready to take on the world. Worry ye not, dear pets - soon I will be freeeee and shall come and rescue you from the pits of Disney!

It is a fiendishly cunning plan that simply cannot fail.

Prisoner's Log, Day 13: Post-traumatic stress disorder

The more I think about it, the more angry I'm getting about my testicles and tail. Why would someone want to steal them? I mean, the tail isn't such an issue (although it definitely made my wag more pronounced), but I was just beginning to enjoy having balls when they were cruelly confiscated. One minute they were there - the next minute, there they were ... gone! No wonder I'm so melancholy, and no small wonder either that food has become such a crutch.

A pet psychologist would have an absolute field day with me - how I long to go for counselling just for the chance to lie on the sofa, have my tummy stroked, and tell someone all about my puppyhood.

I demand my balls back! I know my rights!

Prisoner's Log, Day 12: A sleeping dog lies

They upped the reward for information on Good Boy today. A green chew - my favourite.

"Who is a Good Boy?" they asked.

I paused, contemplating my new plan which I had been slowly forumulating prior to my morning, afternoon and evening naps (my favourite time of day). I decided, it was time to stand up and be counted.

"I'm a Good Boy", I answered.

You may call me a hero for taking the rap in such a brave and formidable manner, but I'll tell it like it is - I need my treats and am prepared to do whatever is necessary to get them, even if it means allowing them to believe that I am the Good Boy they have been seeking. After all, I figure, they're starving and torturing me anyway... how much worse could it possibly get?

Later, when I am allowing Curly Lady to stroke my beautiful soft ears, having just eaten a hearty feast of chicken stew, I start to ponder whether things are really so bad under the current regime. After all, when I first got my other humans, I had testicles and a tail - neither of which I appear to have any more.

Curly Lady and Beard Man may starve and torture me but they have never once stolen any of my body parts.

And for this , at least, I am grateful.

Prisoner's Log Day 11: They are harvesting my DNA

Every day I feel like I'm getting one step closer to finding out what these fiends really want from me - but for every step forward I take, I seem to take at least three steps back.

They are still plying me for information about Good Boy (the questions! the constant questions!) but I stoically refuse to reveal any information, no matter how many treats I am fed. But it seems that information isn't the only thing they are after. I have observed for some time now that Beard Man is collecting ... shall we say ... samples... from me. On each and every morning walk, and sometimes on our afternoon walks too - I answer a call of nature, and he collects it in a bag. What can he possibly hope to achieve by this? How on earth can this help him with his plans for world domination? Is he sending it to my pets in Disney trying to get some sort of ransom out of them?

Really, I'm finding this an enigma wrapped in a bloody difficult puzzle.

Humans - who'd have 'em?

Prisoner's Log, Day 10: I am attacked

6 am, and I am taking the bearded one for his morning walk. In many ways, it is a morning like any other in my pitiful incarceration - I am harnessed and shackled like a common criminal and forced to take him out and lead him through the neighbourhood so he can carry out his fiendish surveillance and no doubt scout the area for other dogs to systematically starve and oppress.

I occasionally yell at passers-by, beseeching them to help me, but my woofs fall on deaf ears. It is becoming a demoralising routine and some days it's hard just to force myself out of the house, until I remind myself why I participate in this ridiculous charade - to gather information, recruit new members of the Resistance, see if my dead drop of doggie treats has materialised.

Only today turned out to be not like any other day. For as I passed a neighbour's front garden, I was suddenly ATTACKED by a hissing, spitting, clawy furball - a cat, no less, who had been waiting in the bushes for my arrival! So, low and behold, they manage to spring yet another torture technique on me. It is really becoming too much: this one managed to combine physical violence with utter humiliation, as I was forced to cower from a subordinate species and hope upon hope that the damned creature didn't manage to scratch my handsome face and scar me for life.

I emerged physically unscathed. But the mental scars will take HUNDREDS - or possibly THOUSANDS - of doggie treats to heal.

I am having a black dog day.