A Sad Time

Our dear friend has just lost her dog.  We are all very sad, she being the saddest.  I suggested we, The Tutor and I, send her some flowers with the following quote attached:

Upon walking a moonlit field after a great battle, Napoleon Bonaparte, on finding a dog beside the body of his dead master licking his face and howling:

"This soldier, I realized, must have had friends at home and in his regiment; yet he lay there deserted by all except his loyal dog.  I had looked on, unmoved, at battles which decided the future of nations. Tearless, I had given orders which brought death to thousands.  Yet here I was stirred, profoundly stirred, stirred to tears.  And by what?   By the grief of one dog."

Perhaps it is best that our beloved pets pre-decease us for the alternative is just too grim to contemplate

I think it quite consoling.