My friend has a very high energy dog. It's one of these border collie crosses which lives in a perpetual state of agitation. It won't sit still - it whines all the time. I'd have sunk the thing to the bottom of the Tweed in a burlap sack with a builder's brick a long time ago. The dog has a young woman who loves it though, and her little boy loves it even more and so I understood long ago that she was a package - and that this package included the world's least obedient dog.

The dog wanders the house at night. Up the stairs, down the stairs, in the bedrooms and back downstairs again. Hopping up on the couch to look out the window lest a cat be walking by. Back upstairs to get a better view from the upstairs window. All night - every night - up and down and round about. When my friend is at work the dog sleeps. It makes it easier to be up and active and vigilant during the night. To make her joy complete my friend decided that she would baby-sit her friend's dog as well for a few days. A large and very dense chocolate lab. Together these dogs would wrestle and tussle the whole night through - glad of each others' company - glad to do things in tandem.

I tried to help. I loaned my friend a pair of really effective ear plugs made of cotton and wax. A good night's sleep would ensue and so it did. She slept like a log. The dogs whined and tussled and she slept. The dogs ran around in circles and she slept. The dogs dug away at the wall of the living room until there was a hole in the plaster four feet high which exposed all the wiring and still she slept.

It is perhaps unfortunate that her dog never discovered the joy of chewing those electrical wires. To have uncovered so much and not to have tasted the joys of copper wiring - to have stopped just below the crest of the hill but to have proceeded no farther seems a strange and self defeating thing.

My friend will phone her insurers. She will no doubt be told that the damage is not covered due to the fact that it constitutes an Act of Dog.