Penny's garden of remembrance

Penny's ashes are buried in her special spot, outside the glass door where she liked to lie and watch the world go by in her last months. 

 At last it's time to plant the packet of seeds that came with those ashes - everlasting daisies. 

Now the  ground is prepared. We won't feed the soil, because they're Australian native plants and don't like a rich soil.

Hopefully, a beautiful garden addition in memory of a beautiful companion.

Life without Penny

Life goes on, after Penny's death, but we still miss her. Walking has stayed as a part of our daily routine, because of the Covid pandemic and the lockdown that says we can only leave our home for an hour a day. Of course, if we can only go walking for one hour, we want to do it! We did think that without Penny to galvanise us into action, we might not walk, but the pandemic has motivated us to get out.

Gardening is one of my great loves, and in many ways we are keenly aware of Penny's absence. For one thing, I can put down compost and not worry that she will be there like a shot to gorge herself on the delicious half-rotted stuff.

But... the rats have realised that Penny-the-Killer isn't around, and they are munching our plants to the ground.

We walked in one of Penny's favorite places the other day. (Well, every place was loved by Penny.)

Way back in 2012 we felt irritated that one of our short-cuts had been fenced off at Quarry Park. Well, now we see that it was a great idea to fence the area off, because the boring expanse of grass has been replaced by a lovely planting.

A timeline of grief for a beloved dog

I has been a long time since I could even think of adding to Penny's blog, but today seems to feel right.

Here's a recap of our grieving for Penny, in the hope that if another bereft dog owner stumbles across this post, it might help in the first sharply sad days and weeks.

Initially, it was a great comfort to hear from our friends and from those who had loved Penny. We left her ashes on the front table.

 We received a beautiful gift of a wood-block print of her, and roses.

As the petals fell, we left them beside her ashes and photo.

 Then came the sad decision to bury her ashes. We came up with the idea of making a new garden in a spot that had been neglected, but which was just outside the unused doorway where she had taken to sleeping most of the time in the last few weeks of her life. She liked that spot because it gave a view of the driveway and the front street, and was just beside the computer where one of her humans worked.

Here's one of my favourite photos of her in that spot:

 So we covered over the hole that held her ashes, and waited...

...because another friend had promised to give us a gift of a plant - a hellebore called 'Penny's Pink.' But it wasn't available in nurseries yet.

 Over the next few months we had to learn to walk in the places where we had always gone with Penny - without her. Sad, but filled with loving memories of a wonderful dog. This spot is Heide Art Gallery kitchen garden, where Penny strolled in her old age and I browsed the interesting plantings.

 And we visited some of the places where she had swum so often.

 We walked to new places, ones that had no memories of Penny, but brought her to our minds - she would definitely have plonked herself into that puddle!

 Finally, Penny's special plant arrived.

Now 'Penny's Pink' hellebore is growing in Penny's memorial garden.

And Penny is remembered with love. No regrets, though, because she had the best care all her life from the team at our vet and from us, and knew she was safe and loved. But her time had come.

A good dog has gone free

Penny's training release command to do as she pleased has always been, 'Go free.'

Tonight, as the vet euthanised her, her two humans stood on either side of her, stroked her and whispered into her ear, 'Good girl.'

I believe, as she faded, the last words she would have heard were her two humans whispering, 'Go free.'

We've been blessed to have such a marvellous dog in our lives. Even in this last week, she was calm through everything, the rush to the emergency vet only to discover a large mass in her abdomen; the visit to our own vet three times in the hope it might be benign and operable; today's last visit when she must have begun to bleed internally and had not even the strength to stand up.

I'm ending her story with two photos from today:

Out into the garden in the morning for a wee, and a lie down in the sunshine...

Gone free in the evening...

Changeable weather makes it hard for an old dog

It's difficult to feel positive these days, with the tragedy of the bushfires here in Australia, and the terrible loss of life - too many humans and an estimate of a billion animal deaths.

But we keep on trying to have a normal life here, fortunately living in the safety of a big city. Penny's missing her regular walks the last couple of days, because the air is smoky for an old dog (and her old humans). And sometimes it's too hot for her. She struggles if the temperature is higher than about 20°C.

Yesterday we didn't go out early because it was too hot. Here she is briefly visiting the front yard, where some of our plants are protected by our newly purchased beach umbrellas (only useable if the wind isn't blasting like a furnace).

 And then, when we thought of going out in the late afternoon, it was cold and raining.

Hooray for the rain. Here's hoping the exhausted fire fighters can get a bit of an advance on the flames while the cooler weather is here.