Our Oscar

Before we say anything else we just want to say thank you so much for the unbelievable number of messages, emails, cards, prayers and tributes to our darling Oscar. We are completely overwhelmed by how many people loved and cared about our boy, and how many of you are there to support us. It has been a great comfort to us to know that we have such a great network of people out there from our next door neighbours to the furthest corners of the globe. We will reply to all your emails and tributes, but it's going to take us some time so bear with uis and know that we are very grateful for all your support.

When we set up Oscar's website, we wanted to share the joy and laughter brought into our lives by our fuzzy little clown. We are feeling upset now that so many people have been saddened by the death of our darling boy. When we started his blog, the thought of losing him was not in our mind - we just assumed he would be a part of our lives for 10 or more years rather than 10 months.

On the one hand we feel quite guilty at feeling so devastated by his death after him only being a part of our family for such a short time when lots of people have to deal with the loss of their beloved pet after many years together, but then we think that to lose a seemingly healthy puppy so quickly and unexpectedly is just as much of a shock.

We have spent the last 5 days doing lots of crying, talking about Oscar, looking at his blog, photos and videos, reading your emails, messages and tributes and realising that we had many, many people to tell the awful news about Oscar. He certainly was a popular puppy and had definitely packed a lot into his 13 months.

It is clear that Oscar was a one-off and touched the lives of people with his sweet looks and nature, clownish personality and eagerness to do anything asked of him. We were so blessed that David and Martin his breeders trusted us into our care after he had already had one home, and we will be forever grateful to them.

I hope Oscar enjoyed every second of his time with us. We always tried to make sure he had the best of everything - care, attention, what we thought was the best food for his poor delicate little tum, visits to lots of different places, training, having fun at agility, lots of toys, friends to play with every day, good walks and most of all more love than you can imagine.

At the moment it is hard to imagine life without him. The house is desperately quiet. It's so strange to come downstairs in the morning and not see him still snoozing on the sofa or his bed not wanting to get up (he was never a morning dog), or to hear his claws tapping around on the wooden floor and his tags jingling. When we came home from work we used to be able to hear his tail bashing against the radiator in the hallway as it wagged like mad in anticipation of us coming through the door. Not hearing that is very strange. So much of our daily routine revolved around him - meals, walks, training, agility, grooming, visits to meet up with new friends we had made since getting him - it's as if we have lost a huge chunk of our day to day structure. I suppose in time we will work out what we used to do before, but at the moment it feels very strange.

We do know that Oscar was such a little ray of sunshine that he would not want us to be sad for a long time, so we have tried to look to doing some nice things to remember him in a happy way.

We have arranged for Oscar to be cremated, and we have decided to scatter some of his ashes over at Seven Fields which must surely have been his favourite place as he played there every day with his pals. We will keep the rest and are going to get a nice garden planter to bury them in. His pal Poppy's mum bought us a lovely rose bush which you can see in the photo, and we will plant that in there too. We are going to have a boulder memorial made to put in the garden.

We have spoken to Tracey who ran his obedience and agility class and asked her if we can create an award in his memory to be given out at their annual prize night. She thought it was an excellent idea, so we will start looking for a nice trophy and think up a fitting award title. Any suggestions are welcome.

On the day that Oscar died, Martin's sister-in-law gave birth to a premature baby boy. They have named him Leo after Martin's middle name. Though small, Leo is perfectly healthy and is at home already. We are going to visit them all on Monday. We thought maybe Oscar gave Leo his place here and made sure he was safe and healthy.

Since Oscar died, all the awful rain we have had for months has disappeared overnight and we are left with glorious summer days. Perhaps Oscar is sending that sunshine down for us to tell us not to be sad.

We are going to print out all the pages of Oscar's blog along with all the beautiful tributes and create a special book which we can look at always and remember the very happy times we spent with our precious boy. I hope everyone who reads his website will be able to do the same.

We will continue to visit the other blogs and look forward to seeing all the adventures Oscar's pals get up to.

We will update Oscar's blog again when we take his ashes to Seven Fields.

Well, we could talk forever about our precious Oscar, but I want to leave you happy not sad. Here are a selection of our favourite photos of our fuzzy little clown that we hope will make you smile.

Katy and Martin xxx

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