Quotes from Sheila burnford

He broke into a run, faster and faster, until the years fell away, and he hurled himself towards Peter. And as he had never run before, as though he would outdistance time, Peter was running towards his dog. John Longridge turned away, then, and left them, an indistinguishable tangle of boy and dog, in a world of their own making.

Lying awake in the dark that night,unable to sleep, he thought he would have given anything to feel the heavy thud on the bed that used to announce the old dog's arrival. How extremely unloving and intolerant he had felt so often , waking in the middle of the night to the relentless shoving and pushing of his undesirable and selfish bedfellow.

Loss of life was an accepted gamble that men took when they went to war. But no animal went to war: caught up in man's lethal affairs, they were an irreconcilable aberration.