For all our dogpals

I wanted to do a nice fun post today - and dedicate it to my pal Oscar. Because I think he might have liked that.

But mistress can't do it at the moment.

Like everyone we have been very sad that Oscar died so suddenly. He was such a handsome, lively (and big!) dog, and he and Katy were always fast off the mark to come and make friendly comments whenever we had put up a new post.

We didn't meet him straight away. We actually met at the chat pawty, and then we started visiting each other's blogs most days. Oscar and Katy were probably more diligent than we were.

This is as much of a tribute to Katy as to Oscar. Not only did she take Oscar to all his training and help him win all his awards (or maybe the other way round?), she regularly wrote an excellent blog, and on top of that, found time to visit us all.

And now we have discovered another dog has died - in totally different circumstances, but equally distressing to read about. We didn't know Prince, and we visited a few days ago for the first time when we heard he wasn't feeling too good, but were so gutted to read the sad news on his blog when we went back today.

We think the reason we all empathise so much every time we read about the death of someone's dog is that either we have been in a similar position before (once or maybe more times), or we know it is going to come to us at some point. Ten months after Prince (our GSD) died, mistress still can't think about him without doing the watery eyes routine.

So this is a post, not just for Oscar, but to reflect on all the friends we have made over the past four months while we have been blogging, and remember those dogs who we didn't have chance to get to know.

Reuben (at Bella's blog) was one of our very first friends and we were so pleased to start being dogpals; Dakota (at Five Happy Hounds) - died a few days before we started blogging, we found their blog and wanted to say hello but couldn't find the words, we so felt for their grief, but it didn't seem the right time to say hello; and then Angus at Flossy's World - we, like others in DWB, sent well wishes to him to get better - and it seemed like he'd made it, but only for a short while.

Tomorrow we will write a proper dogblog post for Oscar - and for all our other friends out there at the Rainbow Bridge, and our own dogs too, of course.