A few weeks ago, on an up-to-that-point uneventful Monday tea-time, my dog – a tricolour King Charles spaniel called Diesel, died – aged 15 years and three months.
He had lost his hearing and was on daily heart medication but he was still loving life and didn’t seem to be ill.
But at 15, an age that exceeded the usual life span of his breed, I absolutely knew losing him was imminent. I also knew that when it happened, I would be inconsolable.
I worried about it all the time, not least because unlike the loss of a person, I understood that the pain I felt would likely be a lot greater than the understanding or patience of others.
He was, after all, some people might reason : “Just a dog” – but if there is one thing I have learned from loving Diesel for 15 years and from living alone with him for a big proportion of that time – for a dog owner, your pet is never, ever “just” anything.
Being the type of person that I am, when a 12-week-old Diesel found his own way into my life, a few months before my wedding day, I already worried that a dog’s lifespan was shorter than a human’s…
