Last year, we acquired a Jack Russell puppy and named him Jeremy (Jerry). This morning, he got out of the garden and went on the road. He was run over by a car and was apparently killed instantly. He was just a couple of days short of his nine months.

He was due to go to the vet next week to be neutered and he was due to have his first group obedience session this coming Sunday. He was slowly making progress with house training and was still shredding everything he could get his teeth into. Jack Russells are known to be little terrors, but once they are trained and over the puppy phase, they are among the best companions among the many breeds of dogs.

He had got out of the garden several times, and each time, I carefully repaired the fence around the garden. It is a fence I specially put up to keep dogs in and safe. He was getting through cracks too small for even a cat! This morning was the last time.

It came so suddenly and Sophie and I are still under the shock. We will be burying Jerry in the garden this evening, the fourth pet grave as he takes his place with Rex, Sally and the adorable Chartreux cat Frimousse, nicknamed Doudouce. We now have our increasingly frail Cairn Terrier Seraphine (more than 14 years old and on all sorts of medications) and our two Chartreux cats Doucelin and Celestine. For the reason that happened this morning, we don’t let the cats out, and they have the life of town cats in apartments – that’s all they have known and they are happy enough. They have their litter tray and various parts of the house where they can look out of the windows and watch the birds.

We’ll have to get over it and wait before making any decision about another dog. We’ll let Seraphine live out her old age, and then we will see…

It is a bitter time. The man who was speeding in a built-up area obviously has no care about the pain he causes people. Next time, it might be a child. Only once have I killed a rabbit on the road, on a main road and without being able to do anything about it. Otherwise, I have always been able to avoid hitting an animal by slowing down or stopping, especially in villages. We truly live in a world of aggressive and callous people and the dictatorship of the machine. I wish I could live on an island or a remote place with only a rough track so that any vehicles would have to drive very slowly!

One might say that Jerry was “only a dog”, but that driver tore something out of the lives of two people.