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Phew! That was hard. Not helped by having a wrong answer at first for 19d
River animal (5)
Very poor clue, I think - my replacement answer might easily not be what the compiler was thinking of.

Not sure about the parsing for 17d
Dogs, eg, almost forced out to deceive (7)

My answer means "deceive".

Dogs could have been Man, four letter word for "forced" minus it's last to go round.

Thanks for your post, ixion. It took me more than one read to see what you meant (esp. "Dogs could have been Man"!)

Didn't want to make it too obvious and spoil it for others

Not at all - good clue. Co-incidentally I had tried, unsuccessfully, to fit "man" into 1d

Count surrounds island with warmth (9)

That "island" is much more obscure!

Just peeking in. Pleased there are no spoilers.
I also had the wrong river/animal (striped) for 19d. Have yet to find the correct one.
17d I also have a word for "deceive" which fits the grid but do not understand ixion's hint. Still a few more to finish.........

ixion's hint is as clever as his clues, jazzy!

btw neither of the animals I've tried for 19 is stripy.

not tiger !

I've solved 20 and 23 so I have two letters of the river/animal......

...and I found one in England which fits