My friend didn’t understand how this could prevent our conversation, until we had been speaking for a few minutes.

Every other word was punctuated by a piercing squeak, as Zahli, intent on getting my attention away from the phone, squeaked her toy of the moment, a green furry crocodile back-pack with a squeaky ball inserted, about ten centimetres away from the receiver.

Grabbing the crocodile from her jaws and throwing it as far as I could gave me a brief respite as Zahli crashed and tumbled after it, but in a few seconds she was back again, playing a squeaky symphony in one ear while I tried to hear what my friend was saying with the other.

Zahli likes her toys to squeak; but her large teeth and powerful set of jaws mean the squeak mechanism doesn’t last very long.

I don’t believe in spending a lot of money on dog toys, and discovered that I could buy a pack of four squeaky balls for a couple of dollars. Inserted into soft toys that she has ripped apart, they make acceptable toys; and they stop her from trying to chew Thistle up, who also obliges with a squeaky noise.

One of her favourite toys is an old calico rice bag filled with dried up chestnuts and a squeaky ball; the combination of crunchiness and squeaking gives her periods of concentrated stimulation.

The advisability of giving her quite so much stimulation is something I do consider. My sister often comes to have a cup of tea with me in the afternoon, and we catch up on a daily soap opera.

Zahli, finding our attention on the screen instead of on her, sits herself on the settee alongside us, and drowns out the protestations of unrequited love with ‘squeak-squeak-squeakity-squeak squeeeeeeeek!’

She plays the squeaky balls like instruments, and seems to do it in time to the script. When the ads come on she stops; but the minute the intriguing conversation is back, off she goes again. She can keep it up for quite some time. She managed to do it for the whole half hour that the serial was on, and I apologised to my sister for the fact that she had heard barely any of the dialogue.

  “That’s all right,” she said. “I could lip-read it.”

As one squeaker gives up the ghost, I replace it. At any one time, she might have half a dozen on the go, and seems to prefer the more piercing ones.

As evening playtime can extend beyond the seven o’clock news at night, our understanding of the World situation can get a little skewed.

I can’t help thinking that Zahli’s version of anything that Donald Trump might say makes more sense than what actually comes out of his mouth.

But as time goes on, and she settles down in other ways, we think it’s time we tapered off the squeaky balls.

Rather than replace them all at once, I buy a stock and revive one toy at a time.

Zahli saw me come in with a new pack one day, and sat and watched as I took the ‘dead’ ball out of the crocodile backpack and put a new one in.

I tossed it to her, and she responded by galloping after it as usual while I put the rest of the pack on top of a bookshelf, out of her reach. Or so I thought.

There was, for once, peace in the house. Zylka and Thistle were asleep in front of the fire, and the Moth was nodding off – ‘resting his eyes’, he always claims.

 I could ring my friend, and chat to her without having a finger stuck in one ear to drown the noise out.

I did so, and had barely finished apologising for the appalling noise that had resulted in her cutting her conversation short last time, when a dreadful scream erupted next to me.

They must have put some particularly powerful squeakers in that last batch. Zahli had climbed onto my computer desk and pulled down the pack, from which she had helped herself. As well as the one in her mouth, she had one underneath her paw, and had managed to squeak the two simultaneously.

I dropped the phone on the floor, while the Moth and Zylka, also rudely awoken, swore and growled.

My friend must have thought I phoned her up to play a trick on her; by the time I had restored order there was no-one at the other end.

She’s a good friend, and has forgiven me; but we’re definitely cutting down on the squeaky toys.