We have been Pets As Therapy volunteers for a long time, most of her life really.
Now though she is getting older, getting more tired and it's time for us just to be together. She loves her people and is still ready to go, having collected her jacket and lead, for every session, always ready to meet someone new. But I still think of it as her job, one she loves, one she would do until she can't get out of bed...but still work of a sort. It's time to have the happy retirement she deserves.
Which all made perfect and logical sense until yesterday - I cleaned her jacket for the last time, I opened her new birthday and thank you cards and letters and put her old ones from the shelf into her box. Letters from some of the people whose life she has touched profoundly, who sometimes had few others, dc she assisted in reading schemes, patients at the hospice, bright crayoned cards from the children in hospitals and schools, all written to her (and never read by me without permission).
Families of her people greet her in the street or grounds, they tell me that she has been mentioned at gravesides and funerals, as important in her way as carers sometimes 
, we have even been invited to some funerals too over the years.
Today I will take her to say goodbye, to people that love her, I will enthuse that they are luckily getting a wonderful new dog and we will try not to cry. A few members of staff already know (obviously) and have gone wobbly voiced - we're all hard as nails really! - and then it will be over.
If you think you and your dog or cat can offer your services to Pets As Therapy, or even just donate or spread the word, please look at their website and consider it. I didn't comprehend the deeply touching experiences we would have, or the difference to people one battered little rescue mongrel would make.
I'm off to practice my brave face because it looks like this atm .