We told her

We waited until Saturday morning to tell her, but we didn't want to sit her down and say, "We have some bad news." So we were all in the playroom sitting on the floor, and I started telling her about the pet fish I had when I was younger. I told her how fish don't live very long, and one of them died two days after I got them, some lived a couple of weeks, and 2 lived for almost a year. We told her how different animals have different life spans, and that people generally live lots longer. She seemed fairly interested and seemed to follow, so I took a deep breath and said, "And dogs usually live for about 10 years. I'm telling you this because Louie died this week. He was ten years old."

She continued nodding as she had been doing through the conversation and said, "Wow. So that means Grandma and Grandpa don't have a dog anymore." Then recognition spread across her face, she sat quietly for about 10 seconds, and then curled into a ball and put her head in my lap. And she just cried. For the next half hour, she would alternate between quiet tears to full-on wailing ("but I love Louie! I wanted to see him!"), and we just talked and let her get her emotions out. We told her that we all loved him, and it was okay to be sad.

After a while, she decided that the only thing that would make her feel better was to make a picture:

It's Louie on Christmas morning.

She did better after that, though she had a few more crying outbursts throughout the day. We decided we needed to do something fun, so we went to Plaza Fiesta for the playland some delicious Mexican food. We took Annabelle on the slide for the first time and she loved it. Unfortunately, it's the best slide ever, so all others will pale in comparison.

Mabes had a blast running around for an hour and at one point declared it her best day. While we were eating, she told us she had so much fun playing she almost forgot about Louie. She said she was still sad, but was feeling better.