a little sad

i'm generally not sad. i'm generally angry. today i'm a little sad. the, full of life, young labradoodle from down the street is no longer. i'm just a dog, so i don't really understand the concepts of life and death. these are ideas that are so far advanced i have no way of putting my paws around these. i can't grasp what life is and i certainly can't feel death. but i can smell an absence. and there is something missing on my street. i smelled it when i went out yesterday for a walk. something vital was missing. i could almost feel it, but there is nothing to feel. how can you feel nothing? and the smell was one of a hole. the melange of my street was missing an ingredient. maybe that is a way to get a handle on this. we are all ingredients in the other's overall sense of the world. we make up a few molecules in the air that wafts through the dog down the street's nose. and that dog, while smelling our scent, adds his own to the mix. and now there is one less dog adding scent.
i don't want to go into the details. they aren't important. his family grieves. i grieve even though we didn't have much of a relationship. the occasional hump, but not much more. but his scent was everpresent in my nose, and it went away yesterday.
today i'm a little sad.