The other day, I was in the bedroom, digging through some baskets that I keep beside the bureau, looking for some running accessory or another. Arwen came up to keep me company. I finally found what I wanted, and when I rounded the corner from the bedroom to the hall, there was hedgie, Mira's toy, looking mournfully up at me. Call me maudlin or sentimental, but I've kept a favourite toy of dogs long departed, and these items are (usually) safely hidden out of reach and sight of the current canine denizens. Arwen must have quietly absconded with it while I was otherwise preoccupied. From Tilly, I have a little blue and yellow horse. I remember tucking that toy inside my shirt for a few hours, before we took her to get her leg surgery, so that she would have something with my scent on it while she was at the vet's. I remember the vet tech giving it back to me, mere hours later, and clutching it to my chest after having to put our girl to sleep, and coming home with nothing but that little forsaken toy.

From Mira, it's hedgehog, version I-stopped-counting. She loved these hedgie toys, and she had a propensity for yodeling right through them as she held them in her mouth and did her cock-a-doodle-do bark. She and Soleil shredded innumerable hedgies in their 4 years together, to the point that I tried to keep a reserve stock on hand so that Mira was never without.

When I saw him on the hall floor the other day, transported there by Mira's successor, all those memories surged back. There was a wave of sadness, but I also realized that I was smiling.