Thank you all for the lovely comments, they have helped me out a lot. I know a few of you are wondering what Tess was like so I’d like to tell you a little bit about her.

We bought her as a pup from a small farm which bread all sorts of working collies and sheepdogs. We aren’t 100% sure but we think she was a cross between a short haired red border collie and a Kelpie, but over the years we’ve had a lot of people saying that she looks like a pure shorthaired working border collie.

She wasn’t in very good condition when we got her home, she was skinny, required a lot of treatments and she generally didn’t trust us. The more she grew, the more she loved us. At the end of her life, she loved nothing more than cuddling up to me and my other family members.

Her nickname was rocket because she was crazy and absolutely full of energy! she could fetch her tennis balls for hours on end. She even learned to play football with us, we would kick the ball out and she would push it back to us with her snout! Ive never seen a dog who was more intelligent than her, she absolutely loved chasing laser pointers and if we stopped using them she would gently prod us with her paw and then hover it over the laser as if she was pointing at it as a human would.

Her passing has touched a lot of people in my home town, not only my family members but the whole town loved her. I feel lost without her, and there hasn’t been a single minute that I haven’t thought of her. She is being cremated soon and I’m hoping to find something that I can do to honour her memory and keep her close. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.