wonderdogs

They had to make a 'newspaper' at school and this is what Olle did - a newspaper about dogs and specifically about Lot the wonderdog.

The inside story (revealing his atrocious lack of sentence structure):

Subtitles: Headline - Lottie the wonderdog

Story (with punctuation added): 1997: a cook packs up a restaurant with Lottie. Many years later, she dies - heart and kidney failure. But to this day she still haunts our house.

This is a slightly erroneous version of Lotte's life and death. She was indeed found by co-parent when she was at work in a resturant, not in 1997 (it was 1994) and not as a cook (but as a manager). But that's mere detail.

Moving on from this pencilled version, he then did a computerised page, which unfortunately I can't get to scan (it has photos and print on it and the scanner only 'sees' the photos.) But it's pretty funny - next to a photo of a dauchshund wearing sunglasses, he has the headline:

Celebrity daushound says no to Doggywood

I'm thinking about dogs today as a beautiful dog we know was put to sleep an hour ago - he had lymphoma, which our Harry died from two years ago. I have to admit that I find it hard to bring Harry's presence to mind nowadays. I can't remember what he was like. No such problems with Lotte. It's over six months now since Lot the wonderdog died of old age and I find myself increasingly thinking back to her youth, while simultaneously remembering all the ways in which she sat and lay and moved her head, her expressions and how silky her ears felt, how soft and stretchy her old doggy skin became towards the end.

Another doggy friend of ours - who was a peer of Lot's - died of old age two weeks ago. I'd seen him up the shops just a couple of weeks before, gamely carrying on though he looked like he'd rather be asleep on the couch. In the end he just stopped eating - time to go.

The owner of the dog who died today sent us this postcard a couple of weeks ago. The photographer was Sylvia Plachy in Budapest, 1976.

Comments

[Mikhela]

That's so sweet - obviously Lotte has had a huge impact on his life.

His journalism is no less accurate than most, I'd guess.

[Helen]

Amazing how dogs worm their way into your heart!
(Also boys)