By LIZ JONES, COLUMNIST, YOU MAGAZINE Updated: 16:36 BST, 27 June 2026
Three weeks after losing Mini, my column is published. From 6am, the emails start to come in. By the afternoon, there are over 500 and by Friday there are 1,500 and counting. I reply to every single one, thinking the whole time, just as I have been wishing Michael Jackson were still alive to see people dancing in cinemas, singing in Trafalgar Square, and how happy he would be, that Mini was still with me, black button nose on the edge of my laptop, so that I could read each and every one to her. That she would know how loved she really was.This, from David (not my David, who could only manage 'I am sorry for your pain; thanks for letting me know'): 'With my cancer treatment, my emotional empathy reaches dizzy heights, unlike a normal guy, and I really felt for you. Tears welled up and even though I didn't know Mini, I adore dogs and felt your pain.'From Georgina, who sent me a 'holding email' until she could stop crying and was able to write properly: 'You kindly wrote to me when I lost my darling Westie, Pickle. What a wonderful dog mum you were, and how very lucky Mini was to have you… You said that she made a strange shape near the end, and that's exactly what my darling Pickle did too, though the vet had no idea why. It will take a long while for your grief to settle. I was still primitively wailing and didn't stop until Pickle led me to a little Westie called Prince. You're still calling her name. I did that too. Huge, enormous hug.'From Mike: 'I wrote to you in 2023 about the death of my Collie, Gracie, a few months after my wife died. My life has moved on; I have a new partner. At 80, I need to enjoy the future. You will too.'June: 'You keep going to check on her, thinking she's still there. She is and always will be.'From Richard: 'Ten years ago I contracted a virus, which paralysed me from the waist down. My wife would bring our little Pomeranian, Foxy, to see me in hospital. I could barely walk when I was discharged but my physio got me walking in a fashion and I was able to take Foxy round the block and eventually along a path through the fields. He loved the walks and he gave me an incentive to get out. I was determined to give him his daily walk when I was able. We were inseparable. Just over a year ago, after he had suffered from kidney failure for years, we had to take the upsetting decision to have our vet call to put him to sleep. I miss him terribly and when I go on "our walks" I can visualise him with me and I talk to him. Many people don't realise what a great privilege it is to have an animal who loves and enjoys you as much as you do them.'Jean: 'How are you coping? I had to have my little dog put to sleep only last Wednesday. I am totally bereaved. It's like a knife inside my heart and stomach. He was 18 and a half and we'd had him at 11 weeks. I didn't expect to feel as bad as this. It's unbearable. How do you get through all this? Does it get better with time?'Jenny: 'I am so sorry and sad that Mini has had to leave you. My late Springer Spaniel's collar is still kept in a drawer, even though he died many years ago. I think of him often.'Hilary: 'I'm all choked up; you'd have thought Mini was a dear little dog I had personally met. My German Shepherd, Luke, died aged 11 of cancer. He was like the George Clooney of the dog world. I held him in my arms as the lethal drug took effect. I said I couldn't go through that again; it was like losing a child and I haven't owned a dog since 2001 because the pain was unbearable.'And finally, from dear, darling Brenda: 'I have just returned from Waitrose, my usual coffee and Mail On Sunday stop after church, and am sitting with tears running down my cheeks, feeling the loss of your baby, Mini. We have just suffered the loss of our 15-year-old Jack Russell, Delilah Bean: never just a dog but the heart of our family. I still hear her little claws pattering around the house, it's heartbreaking. I feel so much for you. God bless x'JONES MOANS... WHAT LIZ LOATHES THIS WEEKMy new carpet has developed a bald patch. I took a photo into the store that fitted it. 'What you have there is moths,' the man said. 'OK,' I said, 'it's six inches by a foot. Can you replace that patch?' 'The minimum we can sell is one metre by four metres.' Why do people whack you with bad news that had never occurred to you? And as a vegan, can I spray moths?
