My mum received a terribly sad card today.

[Slubberdegullion]

Late Christmas card from an old work collegue.

Just before Christmas my mum received a letter from this lady's son to say that she and her dog had been found dead under the ice in a nearby river.

The police believe the dog had run out onto the ice, fallen through and she had gone in to try to save it. They both died.

Her card had got held up in the post but when my mum checked the postmark she had posted it on the day she died. In the letter inside there was a whole paragraph about how much she adored her dog, and what pleasure he brought to her life.

Terribly, terribly sad.

I guess the lesson is to keep your dogs on the lead if you are walking near frozen water.

I can't imagine what I would do if I faced that situation, although I read on the Internet that dogs are generally much better at getting themselves out of ice covered water than humans are.

It is so sad but every year someone dies when trying to rescue their pet from a river or pond and almost always the dog gets itself out. I hope the letter has brought comfort to your mum that her friend enjoyed her dog so much.

She said she couldn't stop crying reading the paragraph about the dog. By the sounds of it the content was very similar to the thread running at the moment about unexpected pleasures of owning a dog.