quote 6 with a big ouch!

"its better to have loved and lost, then to never have loved at all"

Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Poor Millie Moo had to go and have a tooth out, shes now lost all of her front teeth but there is hope, we have some catty mouth wash that should solve the problem.
Getting it into her mouth however is another story, as soon as she sees the bottle shes off. It needs to be sprayed directly onto her tongue and you would have thought that they would have made it taste like smoked salmon so she would just lick it right off my hand but it is the foulest stuff that i would object to having sprayed into my mouth daily, so we have no chance with Moosance Nuisance. She is very cross with us!

She is so good at the vets but as soon as he had pulled out the tooth she turned and looked directly at me as if to say "what on earth did you let him do that for!" I tried to telepathy back that it was very necessary but she had already slunk back into her cage and refused to speak to me until some time later when she felt I had been thoroughly punished. Animals break your heart sometimes!

My friends Great Dane died suddenly at only two years old last week, such a shock. An adorable dog, so gentle for his size and utterly adored by the whole family. It reminds you once again how short life is and how we should make the most of the moments we have with the ones we love. It upset me very much not only because of how I felt for my friend and his grief but also because its that 'powerless to stop it happening' thing again.
It was a gastric twist and the vet could do nothing to help him, they just had to watch him go. It brought back a lot of memories. Yes I know Forrest was just a dog but he was a loved soul and one that they had to say goodbye to, when they didn't want to at all.

We tried to get my Grandma to have a dog when she had spent some time living on her own. We had always been an extensive doggy family and my grandma loved to doggy sit all of ours at various times so it seems only logical that she would warmly welcome one of her own. It was later on in her life, all of our dogs had been and gone and her response was "i don't want one, I've had enough of death, i don't want to say goodbye to another dog"
At the time I found that a hideous attitude, why deny yourself all the joy of something for years just because your so scared of something right at the end. Lately I'm beginning to understand what she meant. When we studied Tennyson at school I use to puzzle over the quote above. Surly if you played your cards right Love would never be lost? But I was very young then and hadn't experienced that sometimes Love is taken away through absolutely no fault of your own. Sometimes as my Grandma had said, it is an inevitable conclusion to events.
But i think after puzzling it over again, I still believe even after what has happened to us this year and what continues to happen to those around me, that it is better to have Loved. Even when you have to suffer the enormity of pain when Love is lost, if we don't leave ourselves wide open to those moments of wonderfulness in life and grasp the opportunities to experience them because we are scared of the outcome, then have we even really lived at all.