I'm guessing I've painted close to 700 different animals during the last 3-1/2 years. So it's bound to start happening more frequently - the emails and letters sharing the sad news of the passing of one of my muses. I got two of them just this last week. I can't get over is how little time we actually have with our pets. We're lucky we get a decade, and even more time is like winning the lottery, but there is no guarantee we'll even get a year. Yet we willingly jump in with both feet. Over and over and over again. Last year when I lost Miah, the original black cat and studio muse (pictured above), it was devastating. I was still struggling with Turtledove's (her sidekick, also pictured above) death a few months earlier, and the entire house seemed like a shell. It was the community of Dog a Day readers - you! - who gathered around and shored me up with tears, stories, and hope. I wasn't alone, it would get easier, and wasn't I...