Sad news.....

I have some very sad news.

We had to say goodbye to our beloved little Lucy last Thursday evening.  We are beyond heartbroken and I'm writing this through a blur of tears.

I wrote at the beginning of the month that she had had a recurrence of the abscess, and initially she seemed to be responding to the antibiotic treatment.  However, after a few days she was eating less and less and was very lethargic, sleeping almost all the time.  We hoped that she would slip away gently in her sleep but her fierce little spirit was still there and she wouldn't give up.

Last Thursday, she wasn't able to drink, and seemed to be a bit lost.  She kept looking at us as if to say 'What's wrong with me? Please help me' and we knew that the time had come.

We were with her as she went to sleep.....Pam was holding her in her arms and I was stroking her little head.  We were able to spend some time with her afterwards, before we left to come home without her.

We feel unmoored and cast adrift. The three of us were always together, almost every single day since she first came home with us.  She came everywhere with us and our lives largely revolved around her.

The house is simultaneously echoingly empty and yet so full of her.  Her beds, her blankets, her harness and lead, her little waterproof coat, her fleecy jumper, her food and water bowls.  

All the little rituals which framed our days together are missing.  

Waking up with her in the mornings and her waiting till the last one of us came downstairs.      Her trotting into the kitchen for her breakfast, before heading out to check the perimeter in the garden.                                                                                                                                                         Her little vocalisations.... the sigh as she laid down in her bed, the 'harrumph' if she sought attention and it wasn't granted (that didn't often happen), the little excited squeaks as her dinner bowl descended.

We keep thinking we hear her paws on the floor, or scratching at the kitchen door to be let inside.  

We miss her little nose, appearing round the office door as she came to greet us when we came home from even the briefest time away.

I miss her appearing in the workroom almost every day at 5pm, and sitting staring at me, or poking me gently with her paw to let me know it was time to stop.

When we make up the fire in the afternoon, I miss her coming to sit beside me on the hearthrug to supervise and claim some strokings.

Racing upstairs ahead of us at bedtime then waiting while her bed was made up for her.  Leaving the bedroom door ajar for her, just so.  The sounds of her digging up her smoothly made bed and turning round and round to find the most comfortable spot.  Her little snufflings and snorings through the night.

I've been sleeping snuggled beside her blanket, which still holds her familiar scent. 

At some point we will be able to think of her and smile, but for now it's mostly tears and the pain of missing her. We want her back.  Our little family will never be the same without her.

She was the best dog ever and we will miss her every day.  

Sleep well little Lucy.