It is a daily ritual, sometimes as early as 7.30 a.m., seldom later than nine o'clock - and that's on Sunday. Woman and dog issue from a house near the beach. At the edge of the sea, the woman takes off her bathing robe and the dog, an Alsatian or German Shepherd, if you like, digs quickly in the sand as if to mark the place, or maybe just from joie de vivre. The woman goes into the water. Temperature on land is, and has been for a couple of weeks, 25 or 26 Celsius. The water is warm.
The woman takes off at a tangent to the beach, swimming gently, the breaststroke. The dog watches for a short while, then follows her into the water. He swims more quickly than the woman and so circles her continually. Maybe when he thinks they have gone far enough, the circles become very tight around her. After, say, 150 metres, the pace changes. She turns towards the starting point, but now swimming the backstroke. This makes her, it seems, as fast as the dog, who anyway doesn't like the splashes. So he gets into the lead and usually hits land while she, enjoying her outing to the last, treads water or generally potters around for her last few minutes.
The dog's eyes, from land now, never leave her. Eventually she comes back in, and now and then he digs a bit more in the sand for a few seconds. Not to warm up, for, even early in the morning, this Mediterranean area is enjoying an unusually long period of sun and heat. After a few minutes, usually, or sometimes after a longish breathing space, the woman rises, puts on her bathrobe again, and walks up the beach, Alsatian leading. The dog has been referred to as "he" in spite of the fact that it has never been seen but from a third-floor balcony. Expert advice says it definitely is a he. No one dares to intrude on the pair.
One observer, looking at the dog's paw marks on the sand, thought back to the Hound of the Baskervilles and his great tracks. "Look, Holmes," as Dr Watson might have said. But the size was due to the wetness and sloping nature of the beach there. Just a handsome, well-looked-after, well bred Alsatian.