I stared at the man. The fact that he might easily have been confronted by a noseless veterinary surgeon did not seem to weigh with him. I looked, too, at his wife standing behind him. She was laughing just as merrily. What was the use of trying to instil reason into these people? They were utterly besotted. All I could do was get on with the job.
‘Mr Whithorn,’ I said tautly, ‘will you please hold him again, and this time take a tight grip with your hands on either side of the neck.’
He looked at me anxiously. ‘But I won’t hurt the little pet?’
‘No, no, of course not.’
‘All right.’ He placed his cheek against the dog’s face and whispered lovingly, ‘Daddy promises to be gentle, my angel. Don’t worry, sweetheart.’
He grasped the loose skin of the neck as I directed and I warily recommenced operations. Peering at the interior of the ear, listening to Mr Whithorn’s murmured endearments, I was tensed in readiness for another explosion. But when it came with a ferocious yap I found I was in no danger because Ruffles had turned his attention elsewhere.
As I dropped the auroscope and jumped back I saw that the dog had sunk his teeth into the ball of his master’s thumb. And it wasn’t an ordinary bite. He was hanging on, grinding deeply into the flesh.
Mr Whithorn emitted a piercing yell of agony before shaking himself free.
‘You rotten little bugger!’ he screamed, dancing around the room, holding the stricken hand. He looked at the blood pouring from the two deep holes, then glared at Ruffles. ‘Oh, you bloody little swine!’
I thought of Siegfried’s words and of his wish that these people might take a more sensible view of their dogs. Well, this could be a start.
It is an extraordinary fact that some owners always have nice dogs and others nasty ones. The vast majority of our clients produce generation after generation of friendly little tail-waggers, while others, down through the years, have brought dogs into our surgery whose only ambition seems to be to take a piece out of the vet. And these latter owners do not always spoil their pets – it isn’t as simple as that. I do wish I knew the reason.
50. The Dustbin Dog
In the semi-darkness of the surgery passage I thought it was a hideous growth dangling from the side of the dog’s face, but as he came closer I saw that it was only a condensed milk can. Not that condensed milk cans are commonly found sprouting from dogs’ cheeks, but I was relieved because I knew I was dealing with Brandy again.
I hoisted him on to the table. ‘Brandy, you’ve been at the dustbin again.’
The big Golden Labrador gave me an apologetic grin and did his best to lick my face. He couldn’t manage it since his tongue was jammed inside the can, but he made up for it by a furious wagging of tail and rear end.
‘Oh, Mr Herriot, I am sorry to trouble you again.’ Mrs Westby, his attractive young mistress, smiled ruefully. ‘He just won’t keep out of that dustbin. Sometimes the children and I can get the cans off ourselves but this one is stuck fast. His tongue is trapped under the lid.’
‘Yes . . . yes . . .’ I eased my finger along the jagged edge of the metal. ‘It’s a bit tricky, isn’t it? We don’t want to cut his mouth.’
As I reached for a pair of forceps I thought of the many other occasions when I had done something like this for Brandy. He was one of my patients, a huge, lolloping, slightly goofy animal, but this dustbin raiding was becoming an obsession.
He liked to fish out a can and lick out the tasty remnants, but his licking was carried out with such dedication that he burrowed deeper and deeper until he got stuck. Again and again he had been freed by his family or myself from fruit salad cans, corned beef cans, baked bean cans, soup cans. There didn’t seem to be any kind of can he didn’t like.
I gripped the edge of the lid with my forceps and gently bent it back along its length till I was able to lift it away from the tongue. An instant later, that tongue was slobbering all over my cheek as Brandy expressed his delight and thanks.
‘Get back, you daft dog!’ I said, laughing, as I held the panting face away from me.
‘Yes, come down, Brandy.’ Mrs Westby hauled him from the table and spoke sharply. ‘It’s all very fine making a fuss now, but you’re becoming a nuisance with this business. It will have to stop.’
The scolding had no effect on the lashing tail and I saw that his mistress was smiling. You just couldn’t help liking Brandy, because he was a great ball of affection and tolerance without an ounce of malice in him.
I had seen the Westby children – there were three girls and a boy – carrying him around by the legs, upside down, or pushing him in a pram, sometimes dressed in baby clothes. Those youngsters played all sorts of games with him, but he suffered them all with good humour. In fact I am sure he enjoyed them.
Brandy had other idiosyncrasies apart from his fondness for dustbins.
I was attending the Westby cat at their home one afternoon when I noticed the dog acting strangely. Mrs Westby was sitting knitting in an armchair while the oldest girl squatted on the hearth rug with me and held the cat’s head.
It was when I was searching my pockets for my thermometer that I noticed Brandy slinking into the room. He wore a furtive air as he moved across the carpet and sat down with studied carelessness in front of his mistress. After a few moments he began to work his rear end gradually up the front of the chair towards her knees. Absently she took a hand away from her knitting and pushed him down, but he immediately restarted his backward ascent. It was an extraordinary mode of progression, his hips moving in a very slow rumba rhythm as he elevated them inch by inch, and all the time the golden face was blank and innocent as though nothing at all was happening.
Fascinated, I stopped hunting for my thermometer and watched. Mrs Westby was absorbed in an intricate part of her knitting and didn’t seem to notice that Brandy’s bottom was now firmly parked on her shapely knees which were clad in blue jeans. The dog paused as though acknowledging that phase one had been successfully completed, then ever so gently he began to consolidate his position, pushing his way up the front of the chair with his fore limbs till at one time he was almost standing on his head.
It was at that moment, just when one final backward heave would have seen the great dog ensconced on her lap, that Mrs Westby finished the tricky bit of knitting and looked up.
‘Oh, really, Brandy, you are silly!’ She put a hand on his rump and sent him slithering disconsolately to the carpet where he lay and looked at her with liquid eyes.
‘What was all that about?’ I asked.
Mrs Westby laughed. ‘Oh, it’s these old blue jeans. When Brandy first came here as a tiny puppy I spent hours nursing him on my knee and I used to wear the jeans a lot then. Ever since, even though he’s a grown dog, the very sight of the things makes him try to get on my knee.’
‘But he doesn’t just jump up?’
‘Oh no,’ she said. ‘He’s tried it and got ticked off. He knows perfectly well I can’t have a huge Labrador in my lap.’
‘So now it’s the stealthy approach, eh?’
She giggled. ‘That’s right. When I’m preoccupied – knitting or reading – sometimes he manages to get nearly all the way up, and if he’s been playing in the mud he makes an awful mess and I have to go and change. That’s when he really does receive a scolding.’
A patient like Brandy added colour to my daily round. When I was walking my own dog I often saw him playing in the fields by the river. One particularly hot day, many of the dogs were taking to the water either to chase sticks or just to cool off, but whereas they glided in and swam off sedately, Brandy’s approach was unique.
I watched as he ran up to the river bank, expecting him to pause before entering. But instead he launched himself outwards, legs splayed in a sort of swallow dive, and hung for a moment in the air rather like a flying fox before splashing thunderously into the depths. To me it was the action of a completely happy extrovert.
On the following day in those
same fields I witnessed something even more extraordinary. There is a little children’s playground in one corner – a few swings, a roundabout and a slide. Brandy was disporting himself on the slide.
For this activity he had assumed an uncharacteristic gravity of expression and stood calmly in the queue of children. When his turn came he mounted the steps, slid down the metal slope, all dignity and importance, then took a staid walk round to rejoin the queue.
The little boys and girls who were his companions seemed to take him for granted, but I found it difficult to tear myself away. I could have watched him all day.
I often smiled to myself when I thought of Brandy’s antics, but I didn’t smile when Mrs Westby brought him into the surgery a few months later. His bounding ebullience had disappeared and he dragged himself along the passage to the consulting room.
As I lifted him on to the table I noticed that he had lost a lot of weight.
‘Now, what is the trouble, Mrs Westby?’ I asked.
She looked at me worriedly. ‘He’s been off colour for a few days now, listless and coughing and not eating very well, but this morning he seems quite ill and you can see he’s starting to pant.’
‘Yes . . . yes . . .’ As I inserted the thermometer I watched the rapid rise and fall of the rib cage and noted the gaping mouth and anxious eyes. ‘He does look very sorry for himself.’
His temperature was 104°F. I took out my stethoscope and auscultated his lungs. I have heard of an old Scottish doctor describing a seriously ill patient’s chest as sounding like a ‘kist o’ whustles’ and that just about described Brandy’s. Rales, wheezes, squeaks and bubblings – they were all there against a background of laboured respiration.
I put the stethoscope back in my pocket. ‘He’s got pneumonia.’
‘Oh dear.’ Mrs Westby reached out and touched the heaving chest. ‘That’s bad, isn’t it?’
‘Yes, I’m afraid so.’
‘But . . .’ She gave me an appealing glance. ‘I understand it isn’t so fatal since the new drugs came out.’
I hesitated. ‘Yes, that’s quite right. In humans and most animals the sulpha drugs and now penicillin have changed the picture completely, but dogs are still very difficult to cure.’
Thirty years later it is still the same. Even with all the armoury of antibiotics which followed penicillin – streptomycin, the tetracyclines, and synthetics, and the new non-antibiotic drugs and steroids – I still hate to see pneumonia in a dog.
‘But you don’t think it’s hopeless?’ Mrs Westby asked.
‘No, no, not at all. I’m just warning you that so many dogs don’t respond to treatment when they should. But Brandy is young and strong. He must stand a fair chance. I wonder what started this off, anyway.’
‘Oh, I think I know, Mr Herriot. He had a swim in the river about a week ago. I try to keep him out of the water in this cold weather but if he sees a stick floating he just takes a dive into the middle. You’ve seen him – it’s one of the funny little things he does.’
‘Yes, I know. And was he shivery afterwards?’
‘He was. I walked him straight home, but it was such a freezing cold day. I could feel him trembling as I dried him down.’
I nodded. ‘That would be the cause, all right. Anyway, let’s start his treatment. I’m going to give him this injection of penicillin and I’ll call at your house tomorrow to repeat it. He’s not well enough to come to the surgery.’
‘Very well, Mr Herriot. And is there anything else?’
‘Yes, there is. I want you to make him what we call a pneumonia jacket. Cut two holes in an old blanket for his fore legs and stitch him into it along his back. You can use an old sweater if you like, but he must have his chest warmly covered. Only let him out in the garden for necessities.’
I called and repeated the injection on the following day. There wasn’t much change. I injected him for four more days and the realisation came to me sadly that Brandy was like so many of the others – he wasn’t responding. The temperature did drop a little but he hardly ate anything and grew gradually thinner. I put him on sulphapyridine tablets, but they didn’t seem to make any difference.
As the days passed and he continued to cough and pant and to sink deeper into a blank-eyed lethargy, I was forced more and more to a conclusion which, a few weeks ago, would have seemed impossible: that this happy, bounding animal was going to die.
But Brandy didn’t die. He survived. You couldn’t put it any higher than that. His temperature came down and his appetite improved and he climbed on to a plateau of twilight existence where he seemed content to stay.
‘He isn’t Brandy any more,’ Mrs Westby said one morning a few weeks later when I called in. Her eyes filled with tears as she spoke.
I shook my head. ‘No, I’m afraid he isn’t. Are you giving him the halibut-liver oil?’
‘Yes, every day. But nothing seems to do him any good. Why is he like this, Mr Herriot?’
‘Well, he has recovered from a really virulent pneumonia, but it’s left him with a chronic pleurisy, adhesions and probably other kinds of lung damage. It looks as though he’s just stuck there.’
She dabbed at her eyes. ‘It breaks my heart to see him like this. He’s only five, but he’s like an old, old dog. He was so full of life, too.’ She sniffed and blew her nose. ‘When I think of how I used to scold him for getting into the dustbins and muddying up my jeans. How I wish he would do some of his funny old tricks now.’
I thrust my hands deep into my pockets. ‘Never does anything like that now, eh?’
‘No, no, just hangs about the house. Doesn’t even want to go for a walk.’
As I watched, Brandy rose from his place in the corner and pottered slowly over to the fire. He stood there for a moment, gaunt and dead-eyed, and he seemed to notice me for the first time because the end of his tail gave a brief twitch before he coughed, groaned and flopped down on the hearth rug.
Mrs Westby was right. He was like a very old dog.
‘Do you think he’ll always be like this?’ she asked.
I shrugged. ‘We can only hope.’
But as I got into my car and drove away I really didn’t have much hope. I had seen calves with lung damage after bad pneumonias. They recovered but were called ‘bad doers’ because they remained thin and listless for the rest of their lives. Doctors, too, had plenty of ‘chesty’ people on their books; they were, more or less, in the same predicament.
Weeks and then months went by and the only time I saw the Labrador was when Mrs Westby was walking him on his lead. I always had the impression that he was reluctant to move and his mistress had to stroll along very slowly so that he could keep up with her. The sight of him saddened me when I thought of the lolloping Brandy of old, but I told myself that at least I had saved his life. I could do no more for him now and I made a determined effort to push him out of my mind.
In fact I tried to forget Brandy and managed to do so fairly well until one afternoon in February. On the previous night I felt I had been through the fire. I had treated a colicky horse until 4 a.m. and was crawling into bed, comforted by the knowledge that the animal was settled down and free from pain when I was called to a calving. I had managed to produce a large live calf from a small heifer, but the effort had drained the last of my strength and when I got home it was too late to return to bed.
Ploughing through the morning round I was so tired that I felt disembodied, and at lunch Helen watched me anxiously as my head nodded over my food. There were a few dogs in the waiting-room at two o’clock and I dealt with them mechanically, peering through half-closed eyelids. By the time I reached my last patient I was almost asleep on my feet. In fact I had the feeling that I wasn’t there at all.
‘Next, please,’ I mumbled as I pushed open the waiting-room door and stood back waiting for the usual sight of a dog being led out to the passage.
But this time there was a big difference. There was a man in the doorway all right and he had a
little Poodle with him, but the thing that made my eyes snap wide open was that the dog was walking upright on his hind limbs.
I knew I was half-asleep but surely I wasn’t seeing things. I stared down at the dog, but the picture hadn’t changed – the little creature strutted through the doorway, chest out, head up, as erect as a soldier.
‘Follow me, please,’ I said hoarsely and set off over the tiles to the consulting room. Halfway along I just had to turn round to check the evidence of my eyes and it was just the same — the Poodle, still on his hind legs, marching along unconcernedly at his master’s side.
The man must have seen the bewilderment in my face because he burst suddenly into a roar of laughter.
‘Don’t worry, Mr Herriot,’ he said, ‘this little dog was circus trained before I got him as a pet. I like to show off his little tricks. This one really startles people.’
‘You can say that again,’ I said breathlessly. ‘It nearly gave me heart failure.’
The Poodle wasn’t ill, he just wanted his nails clipping. I smiled as I hoisted him on to the table and began to ply the clippers.
‘I suppose he won’t want his hind claws doing,’ I said. ‘He’ll have worn them down himself.’ I was glad to find I had recovered sufficiently to attempt a little joke.
However, by the time I had finished, the old lassitude had taken over again and I felt ready to fall down as I showed man and dog to the front door.
I watched the little animal trotting away down the street – in the orthodox manner this time – and it came to me suddenly that it had been a long time since I had seen a dog doing something unusual and amusing. Like the things Brandy used to do.
A wave of gentle memories flowed through me as I leaned wearily against the door post and closed my eyes. When I opened them I saw Brandy coming round the corner of the street with Mrs Westby. His nose was entirely obscured by a large red tomato-soup can and he strained madly at the leash and whipped his tail when he saw me.
James Herriot's Dog Stories Page 49