Face closeup of a black and white dog outdoors with a pink flower in the foreground

She was fine in the morning. Being a Saturday, I wake up about 9 am, then go downstairs to make Aeropress coffee, Molly follows me back upstairs, and I put an LP on the record player. I can’t remember what it was we listened to this morning.

I climb back under the covers with mrs Rutland and Molly sits on the top while we watch birds out of the window. It’s Saturday morning routine, and we love it.

Later we went for a walk. At 5.30 (ish), Molly ran downstairs. It looked like she wanted to be sick, and she was staggering.

She dropped and started seizing. It was an hour before we could find a vet that was open, and two hours before we made it to the out-of-hours at Sandersons’s in Heswall.

Despite everything, they couldn’t save her, and only extremely heavy use of Propafol, Phenobarbital, and, I think, diazepam, managed to stop her fitting. At about 9 pm, when she had been runing a 41C temperature for three hours, we called it, and the vet stopped her heart.

While that was the immediate cause of death, we still don’t know what actually happened. Brain tumour is one possibility.

Molly was an Border Collie / English setter cross, and was given to us by her previous owner when she was around 18 months, as she needed more attention than was available.

She used to climb trees, lug huge branches around, and swim out into the Irish Sea.

She was a classic example of “Live fast, die young.” and Molly lived very, very fast.

We still have Bill Bailey - a Jack / Poodle who was given to us by the sister of Molly’s previous owner. I’m not sure that he knows what’s going on.

black and white dog on the beach with a large stick

black and white dog descending vertically from a tree

black and white dog descending racing a scruffy Jack through the surf

black and white dog standing on a frosty bluff at dawn, with the sun rizing through fog in the background