The worst thing about living with animals is that their lives are so much shorter than ours, which almost inevitably means that we are faced with losing them. The one positive in this is that your average human lifespan accommodates a number of companion animals. One passes away, but there is room to give a loving home to another animal.
This week a colleague forwarded me an email describing the way a six-year-old justified the short lifespan of animals: (apologies to the author/s - there was no credit on this)
"He said, 'People are born so that they can learn how to live a good life -- like loving everybody all the time and being nice, right?'
The Six-year-old continued, 'Well, dogs already know how to do that, so they don't have to stay as long.'"
