It may look like Horace had been stood in a very localised rain shower. However, he seems unable to have a drink without scooping a load of water out. He must be very particular about the water level.

Horace in one of his quieter and reflective moments when he’s not attacking a leg.

Rather out of the blue, we lost Alfie on Sunday. We’d taken Tinkerbelle to the vet Friday morning for a revision as she’s had a cough. Before leaving, Alfie had coughed a few times, but not anywhere near enough to think about taking him with us.

We were back home by lunchtime and by mid afternoon, Alfie was starting to cough a lot more. I made a second visit to Zafra to have him checked out and they wanted to keep him in overnight.

I went back Saturday morning and he hadn’t improved. I asked if we should be considering putting him to sleep, but they wanted to give him a day or two to see if he could bounce back. Because his breathing was poor, they didn’t want me to see him and get him excited, but would call with an update on Sunday.

By then, I was preparing for having to put him to sleep, but at breakfast on Sunday, they called to say he’d died that morning. Obviously rather sad and I do wish I’d been with him, but being at the vets was obviously the best place for him.

He’d have marked four years with us in April and as we were told he was 12 when he came to us, he’d had a reasonable run. All the more so as late summer 2015, his sudden epileptic seizures made us all assume he had a brain tumour and probably wouldn’t be with us for that Christmas.

We’ll never know how he came to be a stray up in Palencia, but he’d obviously been cared for in his earlier life. Someone had his eye patched up and his back leg that he’d lost at the knee. Hopefully his time with us and with his previous home will have offset the bad things he went through.

I remember when we were driving away from the vets a few years ago having discovered he had an airgun pellet lodged by his lung.

I turned to Kate and started to say, “I can’t believe that someone would shoot…”

Then, “…oh actually, no I can!”

It was probably someone who’d tried to feed him some frankfurter. He had drugs twice a day and these were given to him in a chunk of frankfurter. I learned the hard way not to pass it to him, but to put it on the ground just in front of him and let him pick it up from there.

For such a little thing, he’s left quite a space. Along with Herbie and Millie, he’s played a big part in turning me into a bit of a Yorkshire Terrier fan. That’s something I’d never have imagined saying five years ago.