She’s not a very close friend now, but we go back a long way, to schooldays, and it’s nice to catch up now and again. I don’t invite her. It’s usually her suggestion that she comes here.
She isn’t alone, but her husband is much older than she is and disabled. I’m not sure that he could, for instance, feed the dog or let it outside if it needed to go.
She just worships the dog, and finds it hard to believe that anyone would be indifferent to it. She once said to me “I don’t how anyone could look at that face and not love it”. I can’t say it’s badly behaved, but it’s big (a golden retriever), hairy and a bit smelly, though she;
is quite unaware of that. If I ask her not to bring it, she makes me feel very hard-hearted, and she is the sort of person who takes offence easily.
I think on the whole I’m going to be hard-hearted and just say I’d be glad to see her, but definitely not the dog. There’s always the phone. She may never speak to me again!