I wouldn't usually post this kind of thing here, but Wargrym knew this little character, and knows how I felt about her: I had her from a 6 week old pup until she was 19: she died on 04/11/04 and I still miss her every day

Sis

Watching the way that light retunes the
shapes and shadows of the valley, creating shifting
pools and lakes of apple, emerald, and sooty olive,
I feel the warm breath, sweet and salt against my cheek,
and laugh beneath the intoxicating blueness of the sky.

We walked the lanes after dark; she was all
barging eagerness and keen nose, tracking frog-paths
in the cool grass, wakening hedgehogs with little snorts
and challenging the night with growls, when it sniffed back.

At dusk and dawn we’d slip away to startle
rabbits with her good-natured bounding, and her love
of trees. I’d let the mist bathe my upturned face,
dawn freshness drawing new life from tired skin,
and fill my ears with wren-song, and the bright
“pink-pink” of chaffinches.

Our time was measured by our walks: the early morning
wading through damp woods; the midday strolls
shaded half by woodland, half by hills,
and her scrambling visits to the evening field
before the moon could send her to her bed

Remembering the sweetness of those days, and
the fox-loud forest darkness of the nights,
I watch her drowse, sprawled and lazy in the sun
and wonder if she sometimes runs,
tail-high and lop-eared to the sea; or if
the tumbling clumsiness of rabbit-kits
in panicked flight across a grey-green dawn
still makes her twitch and whimper in her dreams.

She’s older now, grey muzzled and dim eyed,
but remains, inside, the puppy she once was.
Eager, still, to play among the trees, but
stiffer, now, and much too quick to tire.
Although she’ll run until her playful legs give out
if all that’s left to her is going on,
she’ll dance defiance of her weight of years,
and draw me in, and laughing, lead me home