The Puppy That Came for Christmas

by Megan Rix

  “Don’t put her down on the floor,” the receptionist said when we signed in at the vet’s and she realized how young Emma was. “Not until she’s had her second vaccination; you wouldn’t want her to catch anything.”

  No fear.

  Nevertheless, Emma was very interested in the much larger and older dogs that came into the vet’s. I wasn’t sure if she was allowed to say hello to them or not so tried to keep my distance, although Emma really wanted to clamber out of my arms and over to them.

  When the vet finally called out “Emma Rix” it gave me a little thrill to hear her name. We went into the treatment room and I put her onto the treatment table.

  “Hello,” said the vet. “Aren’t you lovely?”

  She checked Emma over and listened to her heart through a stethoscope. Then she frowned and listened again.

  “She’s got a bit of a heart murmur,” she said.

  Our little puppy had a heart murmur. I didn’t really know what it meant, but it sounded terrible.

  “It might not be bad at all,” reassured the vet when she saw panic in my eyes. “Quite often young puppies grow out of them. But we’ll have to keep an eye on her. Don’t let her get overtired.”

  She gave Emma her injection and checked the microchip that she’d been given before she came to us, and we were free to go.

  I carried Emma out to the car and put her into her crate in the back. Our little girl had a heart murmur. Please let her be OK, please let her be OK, I kept repeating to myself as I drove home.

  I soon got used to the endless rounds of forms, forms and more forms. Every week I had to fill in a progress diary to show how Emma was getting on and to highlight any areas that we needed to concentrate on. These were then collected by Jamie at class each week and forwarded on to the head office.

  One of the more fun forms to fill in was the “What has your puppy seen and who has your puppy met?” form. I liked ticking off the boxes.

  “Has your puppy seen someone wearing a hat?” Tick.

  “Met a baby?” Tick.

  “Seen a person with an umbrella?” Tick.

  People wearing hats and people carrying umbrellas are often confusing to dogs. A person wearing a hat can suddenly look quite different and someone putting up an umbrella . . . that must look really bizarre to an animal. Other forms asked how well the puppy was eating, if she’d had any tummy upsets or if she’d shown any fear and aggression. Helper Dogs puppies are taught that they must give up their toy on the word “give,” with the usual pats and praise when they do. Some dogs growl if an owner goes near their food bowl when they’re eating, but aggressive possessiveness is never allowed. We had to be completely sure that everything we did reinforced positive behavior, and that any bad behavior was studiously ignored.

  Puppies naturally want to do well and make their owner happy, and good early care will give the dog the temperament and skills it needs for a long and useful life. A Helper Dog partner can put their absolute trust in their dog, expect their behavior to be excellent and for them to adjust to all sorts of situations. When the Helper Dog first comes into the disabled person’s family, only the person they’re partnered with feeds, grooms and exercises them, to strengthen the bond between them. I met Vicky, a Helper Dog partner, at the center one day, and over the months we became friends, often chatting after Emma’s class. Vicky was a bright, bubbly eighteen-year-old who’d been knocked off her bike by a speeding driver when she was twelve and left fighting for her life in the hospital. After months of operations, grafts and intensive rehabilitation, Vicky and her family had been told to face up to the fact that Vicky would need to use a wheelchair and would require care and twenty-four-hour supervision for the rest of her life.

  “Before I had my Helper Dog, Whoopi,” she said, “it was always me that other people were doing things for. If I dropped something, I had to wait till someone picked it up for me. When it was my birthday, I couldn’t even pick up my own birthday cards off the mat and had to wait for my mum to come back from the shops and give them to me. My mum didn’t feel like she could leave me alone in the house for more than an hour, in case something happened or I needed even something minor done for me.

  “When I got Whoopi, Helper Dogs told me that she was my dog and my responsibility—not my mum’s or anyone else’s. If I didn’t give Whoopi her food and water, then Whoopi would be hungry and thirsty. If I didn’t groom her, then her coat would get all matted and if I didn’t take her for a walk then she wouldn’t get a walk—and Whoopi loves walks, she really really loves them! It was a lot of work at first, which I wasn’t used to doing, but eventually it started to make me so happy to take care of her, and I started becoming more active and taking pride in things again. And she does a thousand times more things for me than I could ever do for her. Every day I do everything I can for Whoopi and every day she does everything and more for me. Some things I don’t even ask her to do—like she’ll push the footplate on my wheelchair down for me and put the pillow back on my bed if it falls off. She’s my very best friend in the whole world.”

  Still, the puppy progress forms seemed to take up a lot of time, especially as I tried to use the space for comments and requests to give as much helpful information as possible. Jamie also suggested including a photo or two of her. I told him about the blog Ian had set up for Emma the day after we’d got her, in which we wrote a little diary, explaining how the world looked from a puppy’s point of view—what she’d seen, what she’d learned and how she felt about her new puppy parents. It was fun to write; Ian had even taken a photo of tiny Emma at a laptop, to go at the top.

  Ten days after her vaccination, Emma was able to go for her first proper walk down by the river. The long, damp grass excited her and she sniffed at everything, encountering a thousand new smells, tastes and sensations for the very first time. But back home after our short (ten-minute) walk she started crying, rubbing her paws on the carpet and running to me for help.

  Somewhere close to home, she’d run through a patch of stinging nettles and discovered for the first time that there was bad as well as good out there in the world. Her tender baby’s paws were stung and she didn’t know what to do. Ian and I didn’t know what to do either and were almost as panicked as she was. She needed us to help, but we weren’t doing our jobs, we weren’t being proper puppy parents. We put her in a bath and the water soothed a little, but then the stinging came back and she started crying again.

  I phoned Helper Dogs, but Jamie wasn’t there, so I made my way down the list of volunteers’ numbers until finally Julia answered: “Put some Savlon on,” she said. “Their little paws are very sensitive. If you have any baby socks, put them over the Savlon so she doesn’t lick it off and make herself sick.”

  But by the time I got off the phone, the stinging had worn off and Emma was having a cuddle on the sofa with Ian.

  “Poor little puppy girl,” he said.

  And Emma did look like she was feeling very sorry for herself. I sat down next to her on the sofa and she crawled over to me and buried herself in my lap. When somehow she managed to force down a little treat Ian offered her and then looked up hopefully for another one, we knew she must be OK.

  I felt lucky that I knew the other Helper Dogs puppy parents, all of whom I could count on and trust, and who were far more experienced than me with puppies. I also realized that I was counting on them increasingly for companionship and counting on them as friends too. The Helper Dogs volunteers and all the other dog walkers at the river were making me feel at home in the village for the first time. Initially, I’d felt isolated and hated it. I missed my friends and my family who were all back in London. Ian worked such long hours and sometimes I didn’t see anyone besides him from one day to the next. There were no other writers or writers’ groups anywhere near, and when I told people what I did for a living, they reacted like I was an odd, exotic butterfly, a specimen to be examined but not quite trusted.

  When we first decided to get married,
we’d talked about moving to the south coast, but that idea had never really taken flight. Ian came from a family that, once they’d bought a house, seemed to live there for the rest of their lives, sometimes generations. I couldn’t understand it, but because he was bringing home most of the money and working such long hours to provide a home for us, I didn’t like to be too grumpy about it. I consoled myself by making our house look as nice as it could. At least then it’d be ready to be sold when he was ready to move.

  Now, though, I was firmly embedded within the dog-walking community. Ian’s choice of home seemed perfect and I didn’t have time to think about moving. There were Jenny and Karen with their dog, Butch, and Mike with his dog, Trudy. Liz and Eddie lived only a mile away, and Jo and Elvis and Len and Daisy were even closer, so we started to arrange to meet up once a week or so. And, even when I didn’t make special arrangements, I knew that at just about any time of day, every single day, all I had to do was step out to the river and I’d find some fellow dog walkers with whom to laugh, chat or moan, a little community united by our dogs.

  Everyone reacted differently toward me now that I had a puppy. They were much, much friendlier and were always stopping to talk. Even the postman, who I used to just smile and nod to, would now make a second trip to our house if I wasn’t in because he knew I’d probably just popped out for a walk with Emma and would be back soon.

  Each week Emma’s walk got a little longer, until we finally made it all the way down the river path to the meadow for the first time—an open, flat piece of land, which in the summer would be filled with flowers and walkers, but in February was the sole preserve of dog-lovers and canine types. There we met an elderly lady called Florence with three elderly dogs—Brutus, a German Shepherd, and Cleo and Caesar, two small mongrels. Emma tried to play with them, but they weren’t interested in playing with an exuberant puppy. It’s hard for puppies to understand that older dogs don’t always want to play. I didn’t trust the German Shepherd much, even though I knew that when he barked at her all he really meant was “Back off, young un!” I told Florence how we’d be keeping Emma for about six months, and then she’d be leaving us to continue with the next stage of her training. Usually when I said this, the other person would sympathize: It’s going to be so hard to give her up, they’d say. I know, I know was my stock response.

  Although, of course, I didn’t really know anything about it, as I’d never had to give a puppy up before.

  I told Florence that eventually Emma would be going to help a disabled person.

  “That’s terrible,” she said.

  “Pardon?”

  “It’s not much of a life for a dog, is it, stuck inside all the time. Her keeper’s not going to be able to take her out for a walk like this.” She opened her arms wide to indicate the meadow and the wooded area. It stretched for miles with the river running along beside it.

  No, I supposed they wouldn’t, and I didn’t have a ready reply.

  I asked Jamie about it.

  “The dogs don’t go to just anyone who wants them,” he said. “The person has to live in a place with a garden and the dog must be able to be taken for walks. Usually there are friends and family to help with the walking too. And the dog is checked up on regularly. We have people whose job is to provide the after-care and to check up on the dogs and to remove them if everything isn’t OK.”

  I couldn’t forget what Florence had said. I already had a small inkling of the wrench it would be to give Emma up, and I knew that it would break my heart twice over if I wasn’t totally convinced she was going on to the best life possible for her. I wanted Emma to have walks and fun, and not just work all the time. I simply wouldn’t be able to let her go, if that was the case, and began dreading the day I’d be asked to do so.

  6

  Emma barked as the doorbell rang. She was always excited to have visitors; all guests, in her mind, came solely to see her.

  “We’ve got news!” my brother, Jack, had said to me on the phone, but he’d refused to go into any more detail without being face-to-face. So here he was, with his girlfriend, Carmel, on a rare visit.

  He walked in, full of pent-up energy, barely able to contain himself, pecking me on the cheek as he thundered past down the hall and into the living room; Carmel looked pleased. Barely were they inside and the kettle on than it exploded out of him.

  “Carmel’s pregnant!”

  Carmel beamed with delight and out poured the story of how this had happened. I kept a smile on my face and hoped no one would notice that I was in shock. Of course I was pleased for them, but I was jealous too.

  When Jack and Carmel had moved in together, more than five years previously, they hadn’t mentioned wanting to have a baby. I’d had no idea whatsoever that it was part of their plans, although, given he was now forty years old and she forty-three, I’d perhaps been naive in thinking it wasn’t on the agenda. It was just something that in our family we didn’t seem to think about—in the same way that, before I’d met Ian, I’d been happily without kids myself. Carmel had talked to me once or twice over the years about having fibroids, but fibroids were a nuisance—and sometimes plenty more than that—to many women, regardless of whether they were trying to conceive.

  Now, clasping hands on the sofa, they revealed that they’d been trying for a baby for years and had been living the agony of not being able to conceive alone, without telling anyone at all, even their nearest and dearest. Carmel had undergone more than one operation, and they’d had repeated IVF treatments without success. Only a few months previously, their specialist had warned that it was highly unlikely ever to happen, at which news Jack suggested they abandon the treatments, and Carmel agreed, though it broke her heart to do so.

  “I used to hate tea before I got pregnant, but now I can’t stop drinking it,” Carmel said, looking flushed with health as she sipped at her mug and devoured the cake I’d laid on. She carried on with her story.

  “And it was only a week or two later that I started to feel a bit funny. I wasn’t sick, not vomiting, but I was feeling a bit off. I wasn’t myself. All the way to the chemist’s, I was telling myself I was being stupid, but I went and did it anyway. I went and bought a pregnancy test, without telling Jack because he would have said I was just wasting money.” She gave him a rueful look.

  “So I took the test and there was the faintest of positive lines. You had to look really closely to see it. But it was there.

  “And so I went to my doctor and told him and do you know what he did?”

  We shook our heads. Emma showed Jack her latest toy.

  “He shook his head like I was mad and said it was sometimes very hard for women like me to accept that they couldn’t get pregnant. And maybe he should refer me for counseling!”

  Jack and Carmel laughed. I didn’t know what to say.

  “But I was pregnant—three months pregnant—and he was wrong! And then I was worried because if I’d known I was pregnant—really pregnant—I’d never have been drinking wine and I hadn’t been having the extra folic acid you’re supposed to . . .” She bit her lip, concerned. “The fibroids are still inside me, but when they did the scan they said the baby had somehow managed to find a place in between them and is growing fine . . .”

  “It’s a miracle,” Jack said.

  “Yes,” Carmel agreed.

  “I’m so pleased for you,” I said.

  “What fantastic news,” said Ian.

  I lay in bed that night asking myself why I hadn’t opened up to them then about our anguish. Ian was fast asleep beside me, catching Zs before his early train, but I couldn’t let the day go. There had been ample opportunity for me to talk to Jack, and I’d seen Ian look across at me meaningfully, over the table crowded with mugs, cake and the teapot, but he’d kept mum, leaving it to me to broach the subject with my relatives. Perhaps I’d been too stunned, or I’d obscurely felt that to let the secret out would decrease the chances of the magic working. So I hadn’t said anything, a
lthough I knew that I should have. Why hadn’t I said something?

  Ian started to snore softly. I stared up at the ceiling, unable to sleep. Downstairs in her crate Emma made a sound and I went to see her.

  “Hello, little girl,” I said.

  She wagged her tail as I opened the door and trotted out into the garden after me.

  I couldn’t get Jack and Carmel out of my mind. It felt like an opportunity had passed to share our burden. I was genuinely pleased for them, and, after all, it offered up grounds for hope for Ian and me. If she could get pregnant with all her fertility problems, then surely I could.

  “Please let it be our turn next,” I whispered. “Oh, please let it be our turn soon.”

  We were doing everything we could. I’d been taking some herbs, agnus castus and black cohosh, which were recommended on the Internet, and had changed my diet to take in more foods rich in folic acid, like asparagus. I’d also contacted a charity called Baby Makers, who support people having difficulty getting pregnant, on the advice of a friend, Sam, who had finally conceived with their help. Sam had taken a lot of advice from what they called their Preconception Program on food and supplements, and had undergone hair analysis to see if she had the right nutrients to enhance her fertility and promote the growth of a baby. It also showed if there was too much of a mineral or metal that would harm her chances. Sam also enjoyed their newsletter, which featured many people who’d successfully had babies against the odds.