Night-time fun

Aha! Thought that title might attract some attention. Now for the disappointment. It's all about Paddy and it really wasn't fun at all, for him, for us or for the unfortunate object of his attention.
The bedtime routine is that I send Paddy out into the back garden to do what he needs to do before settling down for the night and usually, this works fine - except when he becomes aware that the garden is host to night wildlife, some of which he almost certainly has never encountered before. I can only assume that this is the reason why I went out to investigate a sudden bout of frantic barking to find him poised over a hedgehog, doing what hedgehogs do best and curling himself up into a nose-destroying ball. Being Paddy, of course, he just had to test that out for himself, for no way in the world was he going to give up and walk away.
Hence I had to drag him forcibly back into the house while I turned my attention to the poor hedgehog, who was not so poor actually, as he seemed quite happy curled up, patiently waiting for the mad dog to go away and leave him in peace.
It seems that Keith has a lot more sympathy and compassion for hedgehogs than he does for cats (he's very much with Paddy on that one), and he scooped up this little fellow in the dustpan so that I could take him down to the little lane nearby and release him into comparative safety. Because Keith likes hedgehogs, he made it very clear to Paddy that he had been way out of order, an offence compounded by the fact that, in all the excitement, he had torn the lining under the pebbles, so painstakingly laid by your truly some weeks ago and the poor dog was sent to bed in absolute disgrace, nursing his sore nose.
But he still crept onto the bed in the early hours, as he always does. A dog's memory is short!