A flick of her tail
Shows 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
We shared, fleetingly. 

Times languorous, meandering puppy-walks,
Times of plunging in water in wild abandon
Times of rushing into the freezing Irish sea.

Walter Scott suspected
That dogs' short lives
Were lived fully 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 dear friend's grief.
For everyone can master a grief - 
Except, of course, he who has it.