Poor little thing, he's disconsolate, dejected, feeling oh so-hard-done-by. He lives for his creature comforts. To eat, to snuggle, to bask in the sun. He is not terribly fond of exercise and feels quite disaffected by our insistence that he have daily recreational exercise. In the heat of summer, the cold of winter, he would simply far prefer to remain ensconced in his home, eating, sleeping, cuddling with us when we're available.

Not his fault, he must snuffle, that in his 11th year, his constitution has taken such a turn. So that from time to time his gut rebels and his stool become gelatinous in nature, signalling a tummy upset. Which necessitates are restricted diet. Not that he minds his kibble suddenly turning into boiled minced beef and rice. Sprinkled over with a packet of bacterial culture to restore the flora to his intestines.

But it does assault his sense of the rightness of things that he is denied an important portion of his diet, and his companion is not. That so-delectable minced-fresh-vegetable salad that always follows their main course. Now denied him, but not her. She is older than him by 7 years, and in her dotage, although remaining a delicate eater, has an iron constitution. Where he is tiny and on the stout side, she is slightly taller, rangy and a bag of bones...which is how she presented in fact when she was just 6 weeks old.

And today, to make things even more difficult to endure, there is no sun to warm the lowering late-winter sky. Simply no way at all to welcome nascent spring and the comfortable aspirations of a pining little dog.