Dear Meg in Diary

Meg, you were born on 4th August 1998, a wiggly squiggly border collie puppy. We first met you six weeks later, when we came to the farm where you lived and you came bounding out of the barn to see who we were. We loved you as soon as we saw you and the feeling was mutual.

Two weeks later we took you home and you stole our hearts. Being a border collie, you had more energy than anyone could deal with. When we took you for walks, you ran about three times further than the rest of us, running back and forth. And your herding instinct was strong; if one of our group lagged behind or split off, you would run back to collect them, running circles around the whole group until we were back together, like a flock of sheep. I lost count of the times farmers would stop us, asking to buy you from us. They could see you were potentially an excellent sheep herder. But you were a member of our family, and not for sale.

Living in the Lake District, you climbed more mountains than most people will in their lifetime. And you climbed them about three times every time we went up, running back and forth, getting excited about the sheep, and you never ever ran out of energy.

We had to be careful with this, because you got your energy from your dad. He would run and run and no one could make him sit down until one day, he ran so much, he had a heart attack and died. We had to force you to sit down to make sure the same didn't happen to you.

You loved spaghetti. If one of us was cooking it, we'd take a piece out of the pan and casually wander around the house with it dangling from our hand. Your spaghetti radar was always on full alert and you would run after us, snapping after the wobbly piece of delicious pasta.

You also loved chicken, but chicken didn't love you. It gave you diarrhoea so we couldn't let you have it. However, dad could never resist your doleful eyes, staring up when we cooked a roast. So he always gave you the skin off the chicken. We would shout at him, saying you shouldn't have it and he always said "Oh, she'll be fine!" Until you spent the rest of the day letting off the Most Disgusting Farts In The World, which caused us to run out of the room, dad would open the windows and waft cushions about, leaving you to slope off with a guilty look on your face.

Somehow you knew you were supposed to chase cats, but if they stood their ground and didn't run away, you stopped and looked confused, not sure what was supposed to happen next. In fact, you chased anything that moved: the vacuum cleaner, the wheelie bin, the laundry; you would chase after it all, biting, snapping and barking as we tried to clean the house or take the bins out.

You also loved it when dad fed the birds, literally doing somersaults to try and catch the bread as he threw it onto the lawn. You knew he fed the birds every morning after he finished his breakfast, and you would start whining when you heard his spoon scraping the bottom of his cereal bowl. The whining would get louder until you were barking so high pitched, it hurt everyone's ears. As soon as dad stood up, you would race to the back door and bark and bark, sprinting outside as if you were on an elastic band.

You loved playing with empty plastic bottle, biting them so they made crinkly noises. You also loved ripping up empty crisp packets for some reason, until the floor was covered in slobbery confetti. You would bring a few pieces for us, spitting them out on our laps, covered in slobber and wait for us to throw them for you to catch.

Playing in the river was another one of your favourite pastimes. You would stand there and wait for us to throw rocks into the water so they would splash your face, while you tried to catch the splashes.

You were always gentle with everyone and never even snapped when children sat on you or pulled your fur.

I moved out in 2000, when I was 18 and you were two, but I still saw you as often as I could and we had a great time together.

You started to get older and your eyes clouded over, we had to shout for you to hear us and you could no longer run up the mountains. But you still enjoyed a slow, leisurely walk along the river every day. Your olfactory system was still running at 100%, as you would walk along with your nose to the ground, looking for pee-mails from the neighbour dogs.

In the last few months, you starting deteriorating rapidly. Then you started having fits and couldn't get up. But you were determined to make it to 16 years, a grand old age for a dog. You saw the sunrise on your 16th birthday and then you went to sleep for the last time.

You brought us boundless love, joy and happiness, with a loyalty that only a dog can show. I hope we gave it back to you in equal quantities.

May there be rivers to splash in, plastic bottles to crinkle, mountains to run up and sheep to chase, all waiting for you over the Rainbow Bridge. Sleep tight Meggy Moo.

4th August 1998- 4th August 2014