In the days before my father-in-law’s funeral, my wife and I drive to his cottage in the country with the dogs. Our schedule – shredded and hastily reassembled around events – has a window just big enough to go down there, check on things, do the front hedge, weed a bit. It seems important, even if it probably isn’t.

Shortly after we arrive a visitor remarks on the decline of the old dog.

“Really?” my wife says. “I guess we don’t notice.”

Since we were last here the old dog – now nearly 16 – has certainly become more wobbly, more incontinent and more prone to falling asleep suddenly, in strange places. But