I am distraught. It is with great sadness that I have to report the untimely and tragic death of ‘pig’. Pig has been my constant companion for a number of months. Ok so I still take my Miffy comforter to bed, but Pig has travelled all over Europe with me. There we were yesterday playing our usual game. I grab him in my mouth and present my mistress with a trotter to hold, while I tug. She has been so careful not to let me get a purchase on pig, so that nothing untoward happened to him, but yesterday I tugged before she was ready and that is when it happened. His whole little body ripped in two. Well as you can imagine, I just stood there. First I looked at pig, then I looked at my mistress. Then I stuck my nose inside him to see if there was anything there. Then I just sat down in disbelief. After a few minutes I picked him up as carefully as I could and took him to my mistress, tail wagging, saying “Of course you will be able to fix him won’t you?” It was then that my mistress sat me down and explained that pig had gone to the resting place for plastic toys in the sky and he wouldn’t be coming back. Pig was a present from Matilda the cat’s family. My mistress says she will try to get me another one if I can find out where it came from. So here I am faced not only with my loss but having to be nice to Matilda the cat so that I can find out where he came from. There are times as a dog that life just is not fair. I suppose I could just get my grief out of my system by finding and chasing Matilda the cat but I don’t know that that would have the same satisfaction in the long term.