Peppa has joined our family

 It was a long trip home in heavy traffic, last Thursday...

and the driver was taking great care, because there was a very special new family member on someone's lap.

Peppa! 

Her name was meant to be 'Pepper', but the breeder spelled it this way, so that's what we will call her.

It feels sad to be writing on Penny's blog without Penny lying asleep in the house, but we've finally made the decision to try to find a new little soul to live with us. It's been more than fifteen months since Penny died, and though we have more grieving to do, Peppa is bringing us joy.

And she's brining us visitors. The cat next door came into our house for the first time in his life on Friday, when his human visited to meet Peppa. He was nervous of Peppa, but he's a cat used to dogs, so we thought we'd try to get off on a friendly footing with him. Peppa was most interested to see him, but he didn't want to be friends. Yet. 

She has turned out to be a calm, confident little girl. Here's hoping we can give her the wonderful life she deserves.

Dogs all around

 I went for a walk today and it seemed there were  dogs everywhere. 

But were there dogs all around me? Or is it that I'm starting to attend to every dog I see, because we're almost ready to bring another dog into our lives? I think that is the truth.

So we've started looking online for puppies. 

Or maybe a dog will somehow enter our lives from left field. Who knows? We're open to that new family member now. 

I wanted to post today to keep this blog alive, and in writing I realised the truth of our readiness to meet another dog.

 

Penny's anniversary of death

 One year of life without Penny and people ask, 'Do you think you'll get another dog?' 

Well, maybe. But it will not be a substitute for lovely Penny. 

We toasted her memory at dinner tonight and remembered how lucky we were that she entered our lives. Her calm personality enriched our household and her love of fun so often made us laugh. 

Thanks, Penny.

Life goes on without Penny

 I've been feeling low the last few days, and it's taken me until today to realise it's probably because yesterday was  the tenth of what we call the 'Monthiversaries' of her death on 11th March 2020. 

So I'm posting this, mainly for myself, to remember her:

best of dogs

beauty queen

agility dog

doggy dancer

lure courser

beach goer

lounge lizard towards the end of her life

friend

lazy bones at times

ball chaser par excellence until her cruciate ligaments let her down

eater of anything - meat, vegetable, you name it

companion

best of dogs.

 

Her 'tennis ball' tree is in full fruit, but with no Penny to protect the crop from the birds, we've been reduced to covering the fruit with bags. 

 

 But every walk is a reminder of how in her long lifetime she introduced us to the beauties of nature all around us. 

Thank you, Beautiful Girl.

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.