My wife and Jai: A long last walk

This might be part of a cover of a book one day of my wife's poems and I produced this image to show  her taking our dog Jai for a last slow walk in this hazy reconstruction of my first memory.

Jai was an Irish Wolfhound, and a spirit of such good nature that when she died last week it was a sad day for us all.

They don't live to a great age those big dogs; the heart doesn't have the strength, and they start to weaken and lose weight dramatically, then the appetite goes and they give up and that's it. We started mourning her decline a little prematurely as it happened; a sausage revived her appetite (endless, gigantic) and then after six or seven more she rose from her deathbed and two days later almost pulled me off my feet as she went for a rabbit.

We buried her last week when the light finally left her and we knew she'd had six weeks of stolen time. But it was a time we knew we had to savour, and we did, greedily.