Dear Zak,

It’s been just over two weeks since we said goodbye to Miss Molly, as I liked to call her. I miss her. She was so enthusiastic about everything, including chewing just about anything within reach. Toilet rolls were a favorite and of course shoes. This was despite being supplied with plentiful chew toys. We added some favorite plastic boxes to her grave just in case she needed them. Daft of course but sometime in the future someone might find her and see that she was loved.

Burying dogs with trinkets goes back some 5,000 years, so far as we know, so I like to think we were just following tradition. I buried Kim, Cassie, Tina and Jenni on the farm together with their bowls and wrapped in a blanket. I could see the gardener thought I was daft but was too polite to say so. Cassie and Kim were old dogs and had lived a full life and it was time to say goodbye, but it was much more painful to say goodbye to Tina and Jenni who were both too young.

I’d nearly lost Cassie when she was just about a year old to a snake bite, probably a puff-adder. The bush around Chinhoyi was thick with snakes and I came home one day to my girl with a massively swollen face and copious watery blood leaking from the bite sites on her muzzle. Of course all the vets in the area were at a function out of town so in desperation I phoned a local pig and cattle farmer. He said in a strong Afrikaans accent, “Ag man, bring her over, it won’t be a problem – my dogs get bitten all the time”. It was only 10 minutes away and he gave her a shot of penicillin and told me to take here to a vet in the morning. The vet injected her still massively swollen muzzle with cortisone. Three days later the swelling started to subside and by the fifth day I had my happy girl back. To the end of her nearly 14 year-long life she had a very special panicky bark for snakes.

Poor Molly, I let her down in the worst way imaginable and she was so young and starting to get affectionate with me. We buried her in the doggy graveyard that now holds five special friends, too many by far.

That’s all I can write for now.

Love you