Have you been out today?

I'm not sure if I've even mentioned the existence of our bonkers hound, Wilma, in this blog before now. I've written so little here over the last couple of years, and I don't tend to say much about my home life anyway. I remember I at least began a post about how she broke my finger while on holiday in Cromer (August 2012, spiral fracture of the proximal phalanx, ring finger of my left hand) but it got abandoned because I hadn't done it justice at the first attempt and then I left it too long to rewrite it and, well, it just drifted away and had to not matter (and my finger's fine now, thanks for asking). So I think you may not have yet been introduced, even though we first got her in April 2012. And now I'm here to tell you that we don't have her any more. Because the cancer we knew she had when we got her was developing, and The Lump that had started out as something you had to feel for beneath her skin was now an angry red thing the size of an apple and was starting to bleed. And the vet we had taken her to had said it was only a matter of time and there was nothing that could be done. We'd booked her in to be put down in a couple of weeks' time, thinking we'd try to make the most of our last bit of time with her, but then The Lump bled badly on the night of the 30th and, after I'd taken her for a last walk on the morning of New Year's Eve and she'd chased some seagulls on Jesus Green and barked at cars on the way home, we took her back to the vet and she was put to sleep with a dose of anaesthetic and then Put To Sleep with an overdose of anaesthetic. One moment she was chomping down the meaty treats that the Main Squeeze was feeding to her, the next she flopped over and conked out. It was swift and peaceful and so far as we could tell she didn't feel a thing.

We did though.