From the day we met you we loved you.
You showed us your sweetness as we circled your litter, your mother watching you away, our ruby-red puppy chosen that day from the laps of Michael and Kate.
To the heart of Family we brought you home, our birthday gift for Sarah; little red-collar Cleo, eight weeks frowning, new heart racing, old soul settling.
Down the New England Highway our Youngbrook Liberty, papers perfect, Guyra Girl, a bundle of surprise for Sarah's dream.
And you belonged with us and the South Hill world into which you came.
Running as the wind whips low and fast across the earth; you had the gallop of a racehorse and the daring of a new-found land.
Chasing kangaroo clans across frozen paddocks with hazy Duval views and flying with cockatoos your stocky-strong body over dams, ice-covered, red clay and reed-ringed, crashing and splashing to swim.
Under barbed wire, Spring-flowered fences to follow scents of darting rabbits and roll in wet or crusty cow pats, greening and steaming your delight.
The gentle dawn mist your friend, sunshine in your amber eyes smiling over hills. A burr or two pulled from your toughened paw and grass seeds from your beautiful golden ear.
Charcoal skies and yellow-rutted land your dreaming.
Standing strong for hosing on your return you would pant and we would clutch your shaking coat to rinse it clean on the lush green patch of lawn where manure ran clear.
The deck was yours; your place of day's rest beyond the cedar doors. And there old PP's friendship did unfold close to terracotta pots and yellow flowers.
Your territorial nature had you deep- barking at fence lines, launching long-nailed from the high deck of Bona Vista.
A Warrior girl!
Too masculine for a litter of your own but a mother in the making of the future.
You would push past our angled legs at doorways to be free to run.
Running down roads and neighbourhoods we chased you with our love. Take the Magna to pick you up. Take you home, out of breath, out of body. Flight of freedom for you, Liberty girl.
Impetuous you! Safe in our arms again. Back in your yard of crimson-leaf cushions of AutumnÕs claret ash and ornamental grape.
You braced yourself against our hugs, our strokes, our love. You took our affection with tense patience. Not one for ear twirling or neck nuzzling cuddles, not until the day your head was softly held and whiteness whispered goodbye good girl.
When Steven came and PP left the old earth turned your way and instincts stirred. Little tail wagging, droopy-eyed pup, and you became mother.
You taught him well and he loved you. Pressing his body against you, looking to you, listening for you, holding you esteemed.
Tapping you with playful paws. Stepping wide for your will. Resting his chin upon your rump and taking your nips to his naughty ears.
Learning from you of the dangers. Stretching and basking and sleeping with you. You two were the blanketed two-fold bundle of the coldest Armidale Winters.
And together, years later ... you discovered the Summer's ocean spray.
You had found your truest role, Old Cleo, your soul's delight, with soft ear, soft heart Little Steve, Sarah's Willow.
You loved the sandy, fish-laced forage, coastline of Forster. The ocean and the sea-grass lake you bravely swam.
You loved the people who walked the beach and the sea loved you as its kin.
When it saw you coming it hissed and puffed to play with you and it held you in its waves and tossed you to and fro and at last delivered you ashore to stagger, trot and shake.
You learnt to surf, like Mitch, brown belly pressing. To read the waves, to trust the final surge to shore and your paddle-hard buoyancy.
Your confidence and dare to take a stranger's ball, to snap it off at throwerÕs end and run with squeaky sound now yours.
Sarah's gift, Queen Cleo Estelle of the Beach.
We miss you.
The Summer frangipani suited you, white and golden, velvet thick, gently falling to the ground.
You healed from deep-body surgeries, consecutive years, and then your thinness, stoic in your pain, malignant, bare frangipani days.
The big tree shady front you loved with outlook from the verandah to the street, toward the water that you knew.
You loved to watch and wait in leonine stillness, proud and handsome and knowing.
But did you know your end was near that Winter Tuesday?
Did you know the weight of love we lost, the press of grief we felt?
We want you back to run with us, our dear Cleo Estelle.