A life without my dogs seems imponderable. Yet we do keep going after losing the animals we adore | Paul Daley

One of my dogs, Olive, turned five years old this week and, while every minute for her holds unfettered joy, love and promise, the birthday was burnished with a little melancholy for me.

Memories of them, our shared experiences and individual emotional connections, cannot be replicated in just the same ways as our unique coexistences with people we love can never, after their deaths, be recreated with others.

An extension of one another It’s why, after Nari died and we buried her ashes under the back yard tree she was forever digging around and screwed her name tag into the trunk, I said “no – no more dogs’’.

‘A precious inner alchemy, a cadence of welcome, unspoken co-dependence that’s hard to explain.’ Photograph: Paul DaleyIt’s always assumed that people “own” pet animals.

And it’s true – we bestow them with names, make decisions about their welfare and diet and, in the case of dogs, determine when they exercise and with whom they play.

The old dog Nari, riddled with disease, lay calmly and fully conscious at the vet’s, our hands upon her, as the fatal green sedative coursed into her veins.