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THERE was nothing special about the day when it dawned, the hot sun loomed in a white-blue sky as it usually does in the Middle East at this time of year.

The same sound of labourers on the house next door, the maintenance men in our compound washing the cars as they always do.

I even crept out of bed and left my wife sleeping, as I always do, to ready myself to leave for work at 6.30am. The Diplomatic Dog, 'DD' as we called him, lay on his usual mat in the kitchen, and greeted me with a usual flick of his tale.

I gave him a pat and a few words as I fussed with my breakfast. I knew that my wife was taking him to the vet that morning. He had not been eating properly for weeks and was listless. It was probably something to do with his liver. They would make an exploratory incision, just to check it out. So, I gave him an extra pat as I left, and he gave me an extra wag.

It was 6.29am and if I rushed, I would just make the BBC World News broadcast. But our dog died at 10.30am. For me it was the 'only' news that day, and our grief was profound.

I can see him still, in a dark concrete pen full of mottled light from the holes in the corrugated iron roof of the animal shelter. He was a 'rescue dog' who had done a year in solitary because abuse had made him aggressive.

Outside the sugar cane fields of Barbados swayed in the breeze, under an abundant sun, and his only relief from his pen was his twice weekly walk with volunteers, through a garden and along the cane tracks. No pedigree, a dash of this and that, Labrador and Ridgeback, a touch of Shepherd in his tail, but a handsome snout and big brown eyes, made mournful by his circumstance.

He was a 'cane dog', a mongrel variety born in the cane-fields of Barbados, probably spurned, and attuned to the whistle of the stones thrown at him. My wife and I took him, more out of sorrow, I suppose, because no-one wanted him, after first checking his 'returnability' if he proved unmanageable.

I was the Australian Ambassador to the Caribbean at the time, and when he came to our luxury residence, with its acres of gardens and Caribbean views, he probably thought that he had died and gone to heaven.

Yes, he bit my wife and snapped at me, and we were always a little on edge as he mixed with people. But after a while he seemed to realise that his lot was now wonderful, and was on his best behaviour. As for us, well, he had grabbed our hearts. There would be no going back. He was 'ours', as his collar showed.

When we moved to Bahrain, there was never any doubt that he, and another rescue dog, Miss Lucy, that my acquisitive wife had acquired, would accompany us to Bahrain even if the cost of air-freighting two dogs cost about as much as the GNP of a small state in Africa!

As the months, and then the years, went by, his body adjusted to the Middle East climate. Like a cautious sun-baker, he would lie outside puffing somewhat, until he would scratch at the door to signify that it was time to come inside. Then he would consume a veritable vat of ice-cold water, which my wife kept in the refrigerator, and he would lie on the cool marble floor to recuperate.

Life was good. There were people who loved him, the food was first-class, there were occasional outings to a soft-sand race-course, or a swim in the warm waters of the Gulf, and the prospect of retirement in Australia.

I wrote a book about his exploits, a quirky little tale of triumph over adversity, The Diplomatic Dog of Barbados, and he made an appropriate guest-appearance at the Bahrain book-launch. As always, he was a model of decorum, lapping up the attention with his generous smile, and what I am sure, was an occasional wink at the females. He looked strong and purposeful and I thought that he would live forever.

When the summonsing phone call from the vet came, my wife attached his lead and he jumped up with all the speed of a prize-fighter who has been surprisingly felled by a blow, and is determined to show both his fitness, and that the punch did not hurt.

DD trotted to the door with a quick 'see you later' glance at Miss Lucy and vaulted into the back of our car with all the agility of a high-jumper, limbering up.

There he assumed the 'command position', gazing around, that smile back on his face at the prospect of an outing. We zoomed down the desert highway, my wife sitting with him in the back, and telling him he was 'a good boy'.

He looked around casually, never once assuming that it would be his last ride. At the vet clinic, he tugged at the lead and then vaulted up the stairs and into the reception.

When the door to the surgery opened, he jumped to his feet and my wife, who is far, far, braver about these things than me, followed him into the surgery. The last I saw of him, was his wagging tail, and then he was gone.

When they opened him up they saw immediately that his liver and stomach were riddled with cancer. They could sew him up again, and give him cortisone injections. It would take him about 10 days to recover from the incision, and maybe he would have another two weeks, or a month. There was no prospect of remission.

The selfish side of me came to the fore: 'Yes, yes, let us have him back to spoil him rotten, to the end'. But then there was the speedy realisation that this was unbridled selfishness. It would be a lingering death, the sort of thing we would do with a human being because euthanasia is largely illegal, but here, we could be more humane and despatch him painlessly.

We loved him dearly, and there was never any real choice. He was given the final injection. Afterwards, my wife saw him lying serenely on a blanket, looking at peace, his eyes closed, his ears flopped down. I simply could not go in to look at him, I preferred to think of him as he was when I last saw him, his tail wagging.

We agreed to have him cremated and have his ashes scattered along one of his favourite walks, places where he spent an age sniffing an aroma, or where he chased a cat up a tree.

We drove home, suddenly empty, running tongues over teeth to remain composed, but eventually losing the battle with tears, great floods of them. We tried to buoy each other with happy recollections, but they served to worsen our lament, and for a while we drove in silence, breathing out audibly and sniffling as we fought for self-control.

It is, I am sorry to say, hard to maintain a sense of proportion when grief is so personal. Recently thousands of people suffered in Japan as a result of an earthquake and tsunami. They were people like us, people with relatives, and feelings; people mourning impossible losses. There are, I am sure, other people, rational and dispassionate in the manner (I would be if our grieving was not so intensely personal) who will say: 'How can you equate human suffering with the death of a pet?'

It is outlandish to even equate the two or talk about them in the same sentence. But it happens, and probably more than we like to admit. We love our pets beyond reason. For six years, DD was like a child. He had needs and wants, for which we catered, and he gave love and attention in return.

A lick here, a nuzzle there, loyalty unbounded, is it the same as the affection of a child, sibling, partner or friend. I fail to see a major distinction when both are living, loving, breathing, communicating entities.

Time, we are told, is a great healer. Today is supposed to be better than yesterday, but I cannot feel it as yet. I want to turn back the clocks. I want to hear the dog barking with the juicy bone. I want it to be yesterday, when he was still living and loving.

Hearts do really ache, eyes are raw and although the body is supposedly 70 per cent water, I had no idea that we had such a huge reservoir of tears.

We woke in the dead of night, because my wife 'thought' that she felt him at the bed-side, and then could not get back to sleep. We still 'see' him everywhere, the spots where he used to lie, and sit, at differing hours of the day or night.

We miss his 'being there' and all his mannerisms, the way he cocked his ear at a strange sound, the way he snapped at flies, the way in which he loved his bath and the rubdown afterwards, looking for all the world as though he was in the swankest of spas.

We miss the rise of his hackles when he saw a cat, although once a cat chased him, and big brave DD ran to us, wailing like a Banshee and sought our protection. In the end, of course, we could not protect him from the insidious, creeping cancer.

We miss his looks and expressions which conveyed so many meanings, and we miss the way that he 'talked' with us. We have the photos and memories, and here and there in the house, there is still a tuft of his red brown hair.

I drove the same road today, which was his last, and tears welled up. Tonight we will pack up his things and there will be more tears, I am sure, for he has gone.

Time will lessen the intensity of our sadness and temper it with the knowledge that we gave him a few good years, in which he lived a full and happy life, as a loved and valued friend. But my God, today and for days to come, we mourn his passing. In retrospect, Auden did get it right after all: 'I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong'.