A flick of her tail

Showed more uncluttered love

Than a lifetime's worth of  empty 'Hellos'.

As Aeschylus implied so-long ago

There is no type or condition

Of suffering or pain

Which is not made worse

By re-calling the good times

Times languorous,meandering puppy-walks,

Times of plunging in wild abandon

Into the freezing Irish sea.

Walter Scott suspected

That dogs' short lives

Were lived with compassion

For their human friends.

Imagine the grief

If she had lived to be fifty.

Dogs teach us about

The intimate connection

Between love and loss.

These words will not amend

My friend's grief.

For everyone can master a grief

Except, of course, he who has it.