Yesterday I took puppy Rye to the vet for a routine vaccination. Before administering the injection the vet took her body temperature in a most ignominious fashion. The temperature was high; she had a fever. No vaccination; I was asked to bring her back the next day.

And today when I took her back, she was still running hot.

She’s going to spend a couple of nights at the vet.

Whisky and Rye have never seen eye to eye. He snarls at her when she comes close, whilst she loves to jump on him and bite his legs.

Now Whisky is sitting, looking at Rye’s empty crate and whimpering.

As Jodi Mitchell sang

“You don’t know what you’ve got ’til it’s gone”.

And I too am grieving with a sense of senseless loss for a different reason.

As Tolstoy wrote

“Each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way”.

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