Today was another hard day. The little love woke up and immediately remembered the trauma she was still facing, that her Bertie was in a basket in the lounge. She became extremely distressed very quickly again. I received a difficult phone call as we were dealing with this. It just all became a day that I found too much.

I took Katie to band, it felt sensible to try help her find something to distract her and gave me the time to deal with some consequences. She gave Bertie her final cuddle, knowing she’d have gone when Katie got back from band. Neighbours spent the morning coming round to check up on us and things. When Katie came home from band, some neighbours brought gifts to try help my very sad little girl. By the end of the afternoon, Katie had a little fairy garden at one end of the garden, a small memory plant & pebble to remember Bert and inside she had a whole selection of lovely treats from the couple who’s dog it was.

She spent the afternoon very tearful but by bedtime she managed to go to sleep with a few sad tears, rather than absolutely heartbroken panic of the rest of the day and previous night