Last night I was walking my dog around the local park, where there’s a soccer club and several pitches. A young women’s team was playing a practice match on one of them.

As we walked around this pitch, my dog noticed a player taking a breather from training. She was on the outside of the pitch, leaning her forearms on the waist-high fence and watching the match. He bounded off towards her, as he does when he sees anyone at the park — and as he’s a gentle, friendly hound, I saw no cause for concern.

Neither did the girl, at first. She turned around and gave him a quick pat on the head, then turned back to the match. And that’s when the trouble started.

Suddenly he registered an interesting scent. He began sniffing at the air around the oblivious victim, then gradually — cautiously — turned his attention to her legs.

I sensed strife but was about 20 metres away. I walked as briskly as possible towards them and began calling out to him to come to me — to no avail.

I was about five metres away by the time he threw caution to the wind and zeroed in on the source of the scent. And it wasn’t your dainty “what a lovely rose”-type sniffing either — it was like a vacuum cleaner sucking biscuit crumbs from between couch cushions.

It’s hard to say what startled her more — my yelling or a large dog’s snout up her arse. She was remarkably good-humoured about the incident, but I’m not sure who was more embarrassed as I clipped the lead on my dog, apologised profusely and dragged the dirty bastard away.

A short time later, when I’d judged that we were far enough away, I unclipped my dog’s lead — and, you guessed it, back he ran for one last desperate, lunging crack at her.

She was far less amused the second time around.