When I was in 4th grade my pet guinea pig named Penny died of a lung disease. I was heartbroken; it was the first time I had dealt with death. We were all shocked and very depressed. From this experience, I learned that life is precious and you need to cherish it while you can.

When I got Penny in 1st grade I knew I was really going to like her from the start. For the first year my brother Sam and I would always take her out of the cage and play with her all the time. My dad would always make my brother and I feed her everyday and make sure she always had plenty of water. We also had to clean her cage every week or so because after that long it really starts to stink. She was always a very happy animal and liked to have fun and play with us. We kept her in the same room we kept our computer in so I saw her a lot. When I was younger I played a lot of online games with my friends. Everything was fine until my mom noticed that the sound of her “squeak”, as we always called it, didn’t seem the same. My mother tried calling the vet the next day but the vet said that they couldn’t get her in for at least three weeks because they were booked. So my family and I had to wait and just hope that it wasn’t anything serious that was wrong with her. At this point I will admit I was kind of neglecting her because my brother and I hadn’t taken her out her cage to play in almost a year, but I was still feeding her and cleaning her cage on a regular basis. Unfortunately, one night after coming home from a delicious dinner at my grandmothers house, we came home and I went strait to her to see how she was feeling at I noticed she was laying down. Me, only being in 4th grade, didn’t realize she was dead until my parents told me she wasn’t just sleeping. I was devastated. At that moment I realized that I should’ve paid more attention to her in her last days, and played with her more. We held a little ceremony for her in my backyard to honor her life. We put her in a little box and buried her under the tree that she used to like to play under. I put a weather vein over where she was buried to remember where we put her and to use it almost like a gravestone. I feel a lot of regret because I wish I paid more attention to her on her last days on earth.

I know that losing her wasn’t a good thing, but it taught me a lot of very important life lessons. I learned that having a pet as a child prepares you for all of the realities of life. Also, that life is very short and if you don’t live it up while you can you will never know how fun things are until they are gone. I really miss my pet guinea pig Penny.