I'm writing this on Saturday morning despite it being Friday's picture because shortly after this pic was taken we went out for the evening and you'll be pleased to know I left my melancholy behind again. It's the view from our front bedroom window as the sun set of a day of mixed weather.

For me the whole day was a mix up of good and bad. A good day at the office was followed by another drive home from hell - next week back to the train I reckon. The M25 was stationary so I attempted avoidance by trying the A3 - also stationary! I took another avoidance, going through Woking and ending up in the Purbright bends to Frimley.

Frimley is a place of great misery for me. It's where my brave Toby finally lost his fight for life at Elm Cottage Vet practice. I rarely go past it and never go there as it is one of a group of three practices and I usually use one of the others in the group. For whatever reason I found myself swept away by a flood of sadness for my loss and for the hole in my life that was once filled by Tobes.

That evening in 1999, after a two year battle for survival following a stroke in 1997, I came home from work to find Toby in the hall, not really standing but propped against the wall watching for me. He flumped into the sitting room, keeled over and lost his control of everything. My ex-husband covered him with a blanket while I called for vets and my parents. We took Toby to Frimley where the vet gave us two choices - either leave him overnight in their kennels and see how he was in the morning or put him to sleep. I could not bear to leave my companion of 13 years alone and unconscious in a strange place to die so we decided this was the time to end his 16 year old life. I like to think he waited for me to come home.

The vet was wonderful - he explained everything thoroughly, what would happen and what it meant. He also gave us time to say goodbye to Toby and gave us leeway to spend some time with his body, even though it was by now 9pm and I assume he'd rather have been somewhere else.

When I got home yesterday, in floods of tears, Jo and David did their best to console me but for some reason I took ages to shake off my melancholy mood. Jo knew Toby well, having been his helper and companion while he was old and frail. She'd come and see him every day, let him potter around for a bit, help him out of whatever trouble he got into then give him some fuss. She loved him too.

David knew Toby slightly and now seeing me so upset again this morning, he commented that he'd have loved to know him better. That was a very special moment for me.

It's not that I don't love Rosie and Archie - of course I do. It's just that he was special in an indescribable way. I first met and loved him when I walked into Stokenchurch Animal Rescue in 1986 and he bounced up and down licking my hand every time he could find a chink in the kennel that he'd been placed in. I loved him instantly and it will last forever. He was a Border Collie cross - Collie in size and shape but with tan where he should have been white. He used to jump over my head sometimes when I got home from work, he would be so excited to see me. Whatever went on he loved me. He wanted nothing more or less than to be by my side. When I was at work he'd rummage around and find my clothes then take them into his basket and look after them for me till I got home. If you've never had a dog, you'll never know how comforting it is to know someone loves you absolutely without condition and whatever sort of mood you may be in.

I've told you how much I miss him before but the sadness never goes away. It's there, under the surface, waiting for an opportunity to pop up and make me cry again.

I have to think hard to remember the good times - holidays when he got so exhausted with running around that he'd refuse to go out again, him eating a fisherman's sandwich while the fisherman was the other side of an umbrella contemplating life on a walk on the Thames, him getting accidentally shut outside the front door on New Year's Eve in 1992 when we all got so excited when we had a murder-mystery party and Hugh arrived in a full world war one Austrian Army uniform and me wondering where he was and why he wasn't in the kitchen with me scavenging....I eventually saw his shadow outside or a day, many years ago, when David volunteered to hold Toby's lead while I moved my car in C&Gs drive - all David knows about Toby is how much he hated being separated from me.........that's better - now I can go off to footie without getting misog again - that's good!