Jaye Marie and Anita Dawes

It was supposed to be a London getaway with my kids.

The dog and I had checked into our AirBnB the night before and gone for an early morning walk. I came out of the bathroom to find she had carefully removed each tissue from the brand new box and laid it out in a circle around herself.

“Peri?”

My dog just stared at me. Well, she tried to anyway. Her head was swaying slowly from side to side. She looked like she was trying to remember my name. Or hers.

“Peri!” I tried again, sharper this time.

She staggered to her feet, took a couple of stumbling steps, and fell over. This couldn’t be good. Was it a stroke? Heart attack? I thought longingly about our wonderful vets back in Scotland, but they were 450 miles from London. I reached for my phone, and Siri connected me to the…