The house is strangely quiet.

I say it’s strange as the house is usually quiet anyway. We’re not a noisy household [except when I forget to sedate the Missus], and noise is generally confined to such times when the Grandkids, and in particular Granddaughter the Younger are here.

Today it’s the quietness of absence. Penny isn’t around. I dropped her off to the vet at the crack of dawn for an operation on her leg to remove a suspicious lump.

Penny is not a noisy dog. In fact she is the quietest dog I ever met. The only time I ever hear her bark is very late in the evening when she’ll suddenly bark at nothing that she imagines to be invading the garden. There’s never anything there and the sudden bark always makes me jump. The only other sound she makes is the click of nails on the wooden floor when she heads off on one of her security checks where she examines every room in the house, just to be sure there are no intruders.

Most of the time these days she’s either lying at the doors to the estate, gazing at nothing or else she’s asleep on the couch or her bed.

So what I’m hearing now is the absence of her lack of sound. There is just a little void in the house that isn’t filled by a slumbering pooch.

I have to collect her later this evening [all going well].

Tomorrow hopefully we’ll return to a normal silence.