James Herriot's Dog Stories

by James Herriot

  Having decided that I would finish work at teatime on Friday, I had a call from old Arnold Summergill at about three o’clock that afternoon; and I knew that would be my very last job because it was always an expedition rather than a visit to his smallholding which clung to a bracken-strewn slope in the depths of the hills. I didn’t speak directly to Arnold but to Miss Thompson, the postmistress in Hainby village.

  ‘Mr Summergill wants you to come and see his dog,’ she said over the phone.

  ‘What’s the trouble?’ I asked.

  I heard a muttered consultation at the far end.

  ‘He says its leg’s gone funny.’

  ‘Funny? What d’you mean, funny?’

  Again the quick babble of voices. ‘He says it’s kind of stickin’ out.’

  ‘All right,’ I said. ‘I’ll be along very soon.’

  It was no good asking for the dog to be brought in. Arnold had never owned a car. Nor had he ever spoken on a telephone – all our conversations had been carried on through the medium of Miss Thompson. Arnold would mount his rusty bicycle, pedal to Hainby and tell his troubles to the postmistress. And the symptoms, they were typically vague and I didn’t suppose there would be anything either ‘funny’ or ‘sticking out’ about that leg when I saw it.

  Anyway, I thought, as I drove out of Darrowby, I wouldn’t mind having a last look at Benjamin. It was a fanciful name for a small farmer’s dog and I never really found out how he had acquired it. But after all he was an unlikely breed for such a setting, a massive Old English Sheepdog who would have looked more in place decorating the lawns of a stately home than following his master round Arnold’s stony pastures. He was a classical example of the walking hearthrug and it took a second look to decide which end of him was which. But when you did manage to locate his head you found two of the most benevolent eyes imaginable glinting through the thick fringe of hair.

  Benjamin was in fact too friendly at times, especially in winter when he had been strolling in the farmyard mud and showed his delight at my arrival by planting his huge feet on my chest. He did the same thing to my car, too, usually just after I had washed it, smearing clay lavishly over windows and bodywork while exchanging pleasantries with Sam inside. When Benjamin made a mess of anything he did it right.

  But I had to interrupt my musings when I reached the last stage of my journey. And as I hung on to the kicking, jerking wheel and listened to the creaking and groaning of springs and shock absorbers, the thought forced its way into my mind as it always did around here that it cost us money to come to Mr Summergill’s farm. There could be no profit from the visit because this vicious track must knock at least five pounds off the value of the car on every trip. Since Arnold did not have a car himself he saw no reason why he should interfere with the primeval state of his road.

  It was simply a six-foot strip of earth and rock and it wound and twisted for an awful long way. The trouble was that to get to the farm you had to descend into a deep valley before climbing through a wood towards the house. I think going down was worse because the vehicle hovered agonisingly on the top of each ridge before plunging into the yawning ruts beyond; and each time, listening to the unyielding stone grating on sump and exhaust, I tried to stop myself working out the damage in pounds, shillings and pence.

  And when at last, mouth gaping, eyes popping, tyres sending the sharp pebbles flying, I ground my way upwards in bottom gear over the last few yards leading to the house I was surprised to see Arnold waiting for me there alone. It was unusual to see him without Benjamin.

  He must have read my questioning look because he jerked his thumb over his shoulder.

  ‘He’s in t’house,’ he grunted, and his eyes were anxious.

  I got out of the car and looked at him for a moment as he stood there in a typical attitude, wide shoulders back, head high. I have called him ‘old’ and indeed he was over seventy, but the features beneath the woollen tammy which he always wore pulled down over his ears were clean and regular and the tall figure lean and straight. He was a fine looking man and must have been handsome in his youth, yet he had never married. I often felt there was a story there but he seemed content to live here alone, a ‘bit of a ’ermit’ as they said in the village. Alone, that is, except for Benjamin.

  As I followed him into the kitchen he casually shooed out a couple of hens who had been perching on a dusty dresser. Then I saw Benjamin and pulled up with a jerk.

  The big dog was sitting quite motionless by the side of the table and this time the eyes behind the overhanging hair were big and liquid with fright. He appeared to be too terrified to move and when I saw his left fore leg I couldn’t blame him. Arnold had been right after all; it was indeed sticking out with a vengeance, at an angle which made my heart give a quick double thud; a complete lateral dislocation of the elbow, the radius projecting away out from the humerus at an almost impossible obliquity.

  I swallowed carefully. ‘When did this happen, Mr Summergill?’

  ‘Just an hour since.’ He tugged worriedly at his strange headgear. ‘I was changing the cows into another field and awd Benjamin likes to have a nip at their heels when he’s behind ’em. Well he did it once ower often and one of them lashed out and got ’im on the leg.’

  ‘I see.’ My mind was racing. This thing was grotesque. I had never seen anything like it, in fact thirty years later I still haven’t seen anything like it. How on earth was I going to reduce the thing away up here in the hills? By the look of it I would need general anaesthesia and a skilled assistant.

  ‘Poor old lad,’ I said, resting my hand on the shaggy head as I tried to think. ‘What are we going to do with you?’

  The tail whisked along the flags in reply and the mouth opened in a nervous panting, giving a glimpse of flawlessly white teeth.

  Arnold cleared his throat. ‘Can you put ’im right?’

  Well it was a good question. An airy answer might give the wrong impression yet I didn’t want to worry him with my doubts. It would be a mammoth task to get the enor­mous dog down to Darrowby; he nearly filled the kitchen, never mind my little car. And with that leg sticking out and with Sam already in residence. And would I be able to get the joint back in place when I got him there? And even if I did manage it I would still have to bring him all the way back up here. It would just about take care of the rest of the day.

  Gently I passed my fingers over the dislocated joint and searched my memory for details of the anatomy of the elbow. For the leg to be in this position the processus anconeus must have been completely disengaged from the supracondyloid fossa where it normally lay; and to get it back the joint would have to be flexed until the anconeus was clear of the epicondyles.

  ‘Now let’s see,’ I murmured to myself. ‘If I had this dog anaesthetised and on the table I would have to get hold of him like this.’ I grasped the leg just above the elbow and began to move the radius slowly upwards. Benjamin gave me a quick glance then turned his head away, a gesture typical of good-natured dogs, conveying the message that he was going to put up with whatever I thought it necessary to do.

  I flexed the joint still further until I was sure the anconeus was clear, then carefully rotated the radius and ulna inwards.

  ‘Yes . . . yes. . .’ I muttered again. ‘This must be about the right position . . .’ But my soliloquy was interrupted by a sudden movement of the bones under my hand; a springing, flicking sensation.

  I looked incredulously at the leg. It was perfectly straight.

  Benjamin, too, seemed unable to take it in right away, because he peered cautiously round through his shaggy curtain before lowering his nose and sniffing around the elbow. Then he seemed to realise all was well and ambled over to his master.

  And he was perfectly sound. Not a trace of a limp.

  A slow smile spread over Arnold’s face. ‘You’ve mended him, then.’

  ‘Looks like it, Mr Summergill.’ I tried to keep my voice casual, but I felt like cheering or bursting into hysterical la
ughter. I had only been making an examination, feeling things out a little, and the joint had popped back into place. A glorious accident.

  ‘Aye well, that’s grand,’ the farmer said. ‘Isn’t it, awd lad?’ He bent and tickled Benjamin’s ear.

  I could have been disappointed by this laconic reception of my performance, but I realised it was a compliment to me that he wasn’t surprised that I, James Herriot, his vet, should effortlessly produce a miracle when it was required.

  A theatre-full of cheering students would have rounded off the incident or it would be nice to do this kind of thing to some millionaire’s animal in a crowded drawing room, but it never happened that way. I looked around the kitchen, at the cluttered table, the pile of unwashed crockery in the sink, a couple of Arnold’s ragged shirts drying before the fire, and I smiled to myself. This was the sort of setting in which I usually pulled off my spectacular cures. The only spectators here, apart from Arnold, were the two hens who had made their way back on to the dresser and they didn’t seem particularly impressed.

  ‘Well, I’ll be getting back down the hill,’ I said. And Arnold walked with me across the yard to the car.

  ‘I hear you’re off to join up,’ he said as I put my hand on the door.

  ‘Yes, I’m away tomorrow, Mr Summergill.’

  ‘Tomorrow, eh?’ he raised his eyebrows.

  ‘Yes, to London. Ever been there?’

  ‘Nay, nay, be damned!’ The woollen cap quivered as he shook his head. ‘That’d be no good to me.’

  I laughed. ‘Why do you say that?’

  ‘Well now, I’ll tell ye.’ He scratched his chin ruminatively. ‘Ah nobbut went once to Brawton and that was enough. Ah couldn’t walk on t’street!’

  ‘Couldn’t walk?’

  ‘Nay. There were that many people about. I ’ad to take big steps and little ’uns, then big steps and little ’uns again. Couldn’t get goin’.’

  I had often seen Arnold stalking over his fields with the long, even stride of the hillman with nothing in his way and I knew exactly what he meant. ‘Big steps and little ’uns.’ That put it perfectly.

  I started the engine and waved and as I moved away the old man raised a hand.

  ‘Tek care, lad,’ he murmured.

  I spotted Benjamin’s nose just peeping round the kitchen door. Any other time he would have been out with his master to see me off the premises but it had been a strange day for him culminating with my descending on him and mauling his leg about. He wasn’t taking any more chances.

  I drove gingerly down through the wood and before starting up the track on the other side I stopped the car and got out with Sam leaping eagerly after me.

  This was a little lost valley in the hills, a green cleft cut off from the wild country above. One of the bonuses in a country vet’s life is that he sees these hidden places. Apart from old Arnold nobody ever came down here, not even the postman who left the infrequent mail in a box at the top of the track, and nobody saw the blazing scarlets and golds of the autumn trees nor heard the busy clucking and murmuring of the beck among its clean-washed stones.

  I walked along the water’s edge watching the little fish darting and flitting in the cool depths. In the spring these banks were bright with primroses and in May a great sea of bluebells flowed among the trees but today, though the sky was an untroubled blue, the clean air was touched with the sweetness of the dying year.

  I climbed a little way up the hillside and sat down among the bracken now fast turning to bronze. Sam, as was his way, flopped by my side and I ran a hand over the silky hair of his ears. The far side of the valley rose steeply to where, above the gleaming ridge of limestone cliffs, I could just see the sunlit rim of the moor.

  I looked back to where the farm chimney sent a thin tendril of smoke from behind the brow of the hill, and it seemed that the episode with Benjamin, my last job in veterinary practice before I left Darrowby, was a fitting epilogue. A little triumph, intensely satisfying but by no means world shaking; like all the other little triumphs and disasters which make up a veterinary surgeon’s life but go unnoticed by the world.

  Last night, after Helen had packed my bag, I had pushed Black’s Veterinary Dictionary in among the shirts and socks. It was a bulky volume but I had been gripped momentarily by a fear that I might forget the things I had learned, and conceived on an impulse the scheme of reading a page or two each day to keep my memory fresh. And here among the bracken the thought came back to me: that it was the greatest good fortune not only to be fascinated by animals but to know about them. Suddenly the knowing became a precious thing.

  I went back and opened the car door. Sam jumped on to the seat and before I got in I looked away down in the other direction from the house to the valley’s mouth, where the hills parted to give a glimpse of the plain below. And the endless wash of pale tints, the gold of the stubble, the dark smudges of wood, the mottled greens of the pasture land were like a perfect water-colour. I found myself staring greedily as if for the first time at the scene which had so often lifted my heart, the great wide clean-blown face of Yorkshire.

  I would come back to it all, I thought as I drove away; back to my work . . . how was it that book had described it? . . . my hard, honest and fine profession.

  I keep telling my young assistants that they must not become frustrated when receiving no credit for doing a brilliant job, because they will often get disproportionate praise for something easy. It is a strange thing, but I have reduced several dislocated elbows during my career and in every case there was only one unimpressed person to see it. A pity, because it does look so good. And yet, this single-handed piece of work seemed to epitomise my life before entering the RAF. It was a very fitting last visit.

  23. Cedric

  The voice at the other end of the phone was oddly hesitant.

  ‘Mr Herriot . . . I should be grateful if you would come and see my dog.’ It was a woman, obviously upper class.

  ‘Certainly. What’s the trouble?’

  ‘Well . . . he . . . er . . . he seems to suffer from . . . a certain amount of flatus.’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  There was a long pause. ‘He has . . . excessive flatus.’

  ‘In what way, exactly?’

  ‘Well . . . I suppose you’d describe it as . . . windiness.’ The voice had begun to tremble.

  I thought I could see a gleam of light. ‘You mean his stomach . . . ?’

  ‘No, not his stomach. He passes . . . er . . . a considerable quantity of . . . wind from his . . . his . . .’ A note of desperation had crept in.

  ‘Ah, yes!’ All became suddenly clear. ‘I quite understand. But that doesn’t sound very serious. Is he ill?’

  ‘No, he’s very fit in other ways.’

  ‘Well then, do you think it’s necessary for me to see him?’

  ‘Oh yes, indeed, Mr Herriot. I wish you would come as soon as possible. It has become quite . . . quite a problem.’

  ‘All right,’ I said. ‘I’ll look in this morning. Can I have your name and address, please?’

  ‘It’s Mrs Rumney, The Laurels.’

  The Laurels was a very nice house on the edge of the town standing back from the road in a large garden. Mrs Rumney herself let me in and I felt a shock of surprise at my first sight of her. It wasn’t just that she was strikingly beautiful; there was an unworldly air about her. She would be around forty but had the appearance of a heroine in a Victorian novel – tall, willowy, ethereal. And I could understand immediately her hesitation on the phone. Everything about her suggested fastidiousness and delicacy.

  ‘Cedric is in the kitchen,’ she said. ‘I’ll take you through.’

  I had another surprise when I saw Cedric. An enormous Boxer hurled himself on me in delight, clawing at my chest with the biggest, horniest feet I had seen for a long time. I tried to fight him off but he kept at me, panting ecstatically into my face and wagging his entire rear end.

  ‘Sit down, boy!’ the la
dy said sharply, then, as Cedric took absolutely no notice, she turned to me nervously. ‘He’s so friendly.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said breathlessly, ‘I can see that.’ I finally managed to push the huge animal away and backed into a corner for safety. ‘How often does this . . . excessive flatus occur?’

  As if in reply an almost palpable sulphurous wave arose from the dog and eddied around me. It appeared that the excitement of seeing me had activated Cedric’s weakness. I was up against the wall and unable to obey my first instinct to run for cover so I held my hand over my face for a few moments before speaking.

  ‘Is that what you meant?’

  Mrs Rumney waved a lace handkerchief under her nose and the faintest flush crept into the pallor of her cheeks.

  ‘Yes,’ she replied almost inaudibly ‘Yes . . . that is it.’

  ‘Oh well,’ I said briskly, ‘there’s nothing to worry about. Let’s go into the other room and we’ll have a word about his diet and a few other things.’

  It turned out that Cedric was getting rather a lot of meat and I drew up a little chart cutting down the protein and adding extra carbohydrates. I prescribed a kaolin antacid mixture to be given night and morning and left the house in a confident frame of mind.

  It was one of those trivial things and I had entirely forgotten it when Mrs Rumney phoned again.

  ‘I’m afraid Cedric is no better, Mr Herriot.’

  ‘Oh I’m sorry to hear that. He’s still . . . er . . . still . . . yes . . . yes . . .’ I spent a few moments in thought. ‘I tell you what – I don’t think I can do any more by seeing him at the moment, but I think you should cut out his meat completely for a week or two. Keep him on biscuits and brown bread rusked in the oven. Try him with that and vegetables and I’ll give you some powder to mix in his food. Perhaps you’d call round for it.’

  The powder was a pretty strong absorbent mixture and I felt sure it would do the trick, but a week later Mrs Rumney was on the phone again.