Saying goodbye to Hex

The last few weeks have been awful, as Bernadette and Dennis Bay lost their young little dog Hex (Agility Champion Obay Truly Wicked) to poisoning by toxic fungi. Bernadette's posting makes my heart ache: http://obayshelties.blogspot.com/
I know only too well that a long time after such a loss, you realise that you don't just 'get over it', as some people promised me I would, but eventually you learn to live alongside the sadness.
I am still struggling to believe that fit, young, amazing, naughty, agility champion Hex is gone, and am full of greif and sorrow for their loss. Each time I finally motivate myself to get out for a run as I look forward (with great trepidation!) to my biggest event of the year, Olympia, I remember that Bernadette was also in the middle of preparing to taking Hex to that Big Event herself..... and there my heart stops for a moment every time.

This poem is Proud Songsters by Thomas Hardy, it was read at a friends funeral and gives me much to reflect upon in such times of sadness:

The thrushes sing as the sun is going
And the finches whistle in ones and pairs,
And as it gets dark loud nightingales in bushes
Pipe, as the can when April wears.
As if all time were theirs.

There are brand new birds of twelve-months growing,
Which a year a go, or less than twain
No finches were, nor nightingales
Nor thrushes
But only particles of grain,
And earth, and air, and rain.