The house feels awfully bigger this morning.

In the early hours, I drank a toast to Desdog - he died around midnight. He really didn’t suffer for too long: within an hour or so of becoming ill he was at the emergency vets and on opiates. My only regret was that in my last nuzzle of the fur behind his ears I couldn’t smell him properly because of the cleaning chemicals in the consulting room.

What a good dog. A constant through some troubled times, his unconditionally doting presence was comforting beyond words. “But that’s just what dogs do”, you might say; and you’d be right. But he was my dog, and that makes all the difference.

Start Slide Show with PicLens Lite