Monday 20 September 2010

I am beginning to think that the perennially lovely and wise Angie might have a point.  I saw my girlfriend, Candy (the chocolate Labrador), for the first time in ages a few days ago - and I was both stunned and distressed by her appearance.

I was walking with Maisie last Wednesday and encountered my belovèd, with one of her partners, at a favourite bridge over the river that flows through the town.  I was barkless.  Her fur had lost its rich, deep, velvety chocolate colour and had paled significantly.  She was thin - almost skeletal - and she sat with her bloodshot eyes closed against the sunlight as Maisie stopped to chat with Candy's partner.
"My dear love!" I gasped, running to my sweetheart's side and sniffing her over.  She bore a strange, medicinal, metallic scent.  "Whatever has happened to you?!"
Candy slowly opened her eyelids, almost as if they were intolerably heavy.
"Jasper..." she croaked, sounding like the very epitomé of a raddled old crone.
"What happened?!" I repeated.
"I just got out of the vets' yesterday." she replied.  "I've been staying there all week.  Gastroenteritis.  I was on a drip for four days.  I nearly died."
"Whatever is Gastroenteritis?!" I yelped.  It sounded awful.
"A whole heap of 'you-do-NOT-want-to-know'..." replied Candy.  "I'll be fine, given time..."

I bade her farewell, shocked and distressed at her appearance.  And I haven't seen Harvey in ages, either.  Apparently, he has been grief-stricken by the death of his best friend, Starsky.

I am working on ways to pull myself and my saddened friends from our shared despair.  Time is a healer - and it will help us all, in due course, I daresay.

Good night.