Ever by My Side

by Nick Trout

  I should not have been surprised when my father acquired a broad Yorkshire accent almost overnight. It is worth noting that the folks who hail from Yorkshire are a proud race of people. As Herriot is obliged to point out in his writing, they are suspicious and wary of strangers, a label applied to any man or woman born outside the boundaries of the largest Shire in England. They can make New Englanders look positively warm and fuzzy. My father was born in Zimbabwe, the only son of a Royal Air Force flying instructor, stationed in what was then Salisbury, Rhodesia, at the start of World War II. His pretending to hail from Yorkshire was like a Bostonian insisting he was a loyal and lifelong Yankees fan.

  Armed with an incentive and a new vocabulary, Dad found the desire to mimic his hero from the Dales irresistible, and was eager to apply Herriot’s rural terminology whenever possible. When friends called and I was busy doing homework they were informed that I was “out on a farrowing” even though I had never seen a sow in labor let alone assisted in the delivery of piglets. If I came home after curfew, he would inform my mother that I had been “out while all hours” and if I looked the worse for wear he would declare that I had “eyes like chapel hat pegs.” He would say “t” instead of “the,” “summat” instead of “something”; nothing became “nowt.” On one occasion I asked if Fiona and I could go on a school ski trip to Italy and he replied, “I’m sure the world is full of wonderful places, and good luck to them that goes to see them, but just give me that parlor down at Mr. Dents and Marian behind the bar, the dominoes clicking and them logs roaring up the chimney, and you can keep all your Monte Carlos.”

  Sometimes I questioned who really wanted to become a vet the most and this led me to another logical possibility. Patch was a proven disaster around strangers and veterinarians, but what if his veterinarian was someone he trusted? Was Dad trying to cajole me into a profession for practical purposes, so he never had to endure the embarrassment of another veterinary visit with his unruly dog? Even if I was lucky enough and smart enough to become a veterinarian, it would be years before I was qualified to practice, much too far into the future to benefit Patch. Was Dad planning ahead, certain he would always have companionship with incorrigible canines?

  While those awkward teenage years afford adolescents and their beleaguered parents an opportunity to discover a new and strained relationship, our bond to our pets remains an unwavering constant. In relative terms, Patch may have progressively shrunk in stature from when I was a little boy, but his presence was always inescapable and reassuring. When I went to my first church hall disco, heard the opening riff to Lionel Ritchie’s “Three Times a Lady,” and plucked up the courage to ask a girl for a dance only to have her laugh at my effrontery, who was there for me to hug when I got home? After promising myself that I would never experiment with Southern Comfort again, on whose head did I lay my hand to ground me as the room continued to spin? And, in those days before cell phones and any semblance of responsibility, when I wandered home at two in the morning only to find my father sick with worry and waiting up for me, who understood my excuses and appreciated the sincerity in my apology? Patch and I had both grown older together, though, according to my parents, he was the only one who had acquired any wisdom. I never took him for granted; he just … was, amenable to affection so long as the contact was tough and manly. Patch didn’t do “pet the dog” and on the journey into manhood, this kind of interaction suited me just fine.

  Patch’s morning stiffness, first reported to Mr. Jones all those years before, started to become increasingly problematic as he began to age. It took longer and longer for him to warm out of it and in the end he simply could not walk as far. He chased rabbits less frequently. He’d spot a bouncing white tail, mull it over, and decide to let it go, as if he had calculated the price to be paid for such bursts of energy was too high.

  Hip arthritis was suggested to be the most likely cause (hip dysplasia, abnormal development of the hip joint, being rife among German shepherds of that era). Anti-inflammatory medications were prescribed, and back then veterinarians had very few options to choose from. Patch was put on a drug called phenylbutazone, a powerful pain reliever more commonly used in horses that went by the nickname “Bute.” These little red pills worked their magic and thankfully Patch appeared to have none of the potential side effects of vomiting or diarrhea or signs of abnormal kidney function. He recovered some of his pep, his gait became more fluid, and once more the paperboy and the postman had to be alert to the possibility of a quick, mean dog defending our front door.

  Patch must have been about twelve years old when he started to show signs of something more than just stiffness. As a clinician I see it all the time, particularly in older German shepherds, referred to me for chronic hip arthritis when sadly there is much more going wrong with their back legs. Oftentimes it is hard to appreciate the difference between muscle weakness secondary to long-standing hip issues and the emergence of a new, progressive deterioration in the portion of the spinal cord that feeds nerves into the hind legs. This neurological disease is called degenerative myelopathy and when it first crept into Patch’s life it pretended to be another dimension of his ailing hip function.

  “Duncan, has your dog been drinking your beer?”

  The question came from my mother, and because she didn’t pay as much attention to Patch as my father and me it carried the weight of a fresh objective eye.

  “Now you come to mention it, I see what you mean,” I said, watching as Patch took a corner, perfectly coordinated on his front legs yet awkward and clumsy on his back, the paws crisscrossing over one another like the feet of a drunk trying to walk a straight line and miserably failing to retain his balance during a sobriety test.

  Dad sought veterinary advice, but the progression of hip arthritis remained the prime suspect, the medical options limited and pretty much already exhausted. To this day degenerative myelopathy is a disease diagnosed by the exclusion of everything else. Definitive diagnosis in the living patient is only possible using one particularly useless test—microscopic evaluation of the affected part of the patient’s spinal cord. There remains no specific treatment beyond dabbling in stem-cell therapy or homeopathic techniques. Then, as now, veterinary medicine hasn’t got much to offer for the condition.

  The worst thing about Patch’s illness was the way it slowly but surely stripped him of his independence. To the best of our understanding degenerative myelopathy is not a painful disorder and to some extent, it is this apparent absence of pain and suffering that makes it all the worse. It persuades us to become false optimists. We see a dog cleaved into two distinct halves—strong and healthy on the front end, frail and incoordinated on the back. His heart was perfect while ours were breaking. His mind was sharp and eager for normalcy, whereas ours were numb and frustrated. Perhaps as owners we should realize we have a problem when our minds are filled with the walks we are not taking with our dogs.

  Patch began falling down, unable to scramble to his feet unassisted. Patch had always been larger than life, powerful and intimidating. Now his gait was clumsy, making him scuff the skin off his back paws with every step he took on concrete or asphalt, causing them to bleed. He would sit in the backyard, barking for help, unable to extricate himself from the bowel movement lurking below his tail. And as a final sign of Patch’s infirmity, my most pathologically dog-fearing friend, Nigel, with uncanny self-assurance, began paying visits to our house.

  Nigel claimed his cynophobia (fear of dogs) stemmed from a near-death encounter with a fiendish terrier when he was a little boy. Back then this was all I needed to know, the endless rounds of reparative plastic surgery and hours of psychological counseling something one could imagine but never dream of inquiring about. Decades later I discovered that his aunt’s geriatric Jack Russell had merely growled at Nigel from afar when he picked up one of the poor dog’s treats. Just the once! And there was never any physical contact! Now you have a sense of how sullied Patch’s reputation had become. For ye
ars, when Nigel dared to visit, it was always a battle to apply a leash and drag Patch away from the front door. But Nigel’s fear had begun to wane with the visible progression of Patch’s disease and by now it was heartbreaking to have to take this poor dog’s scrawny back legs like wooden handles and wheelbarrow him away to another room on strong front legs. Patch had done the unthinkable, he had become malleable, and wholly unintimidating.

  Dad and I worked hard to keep the practicalities of Patch’s progressive demise from my mother and sister, but there was only so much we could hide. I kept waiting for Mum to object, to be the voice of reason, but she looked the other way and she said nothing. Maybe she saw the pain and agony taking turns in her husband’s heart. Maybe she was coming to terms with the amazing effect an unexpected and unwelcome dog was having on hers.

  Sometimes it is not the things you do, but the things you don’t do that leave a lasting impression. Though Dad and I believed we had done our best, we had essentially helped Patch, at thirteen, become a paraplegic. He had reached a point at which he needed a full-time nurse and the canine equivalent of a wheelchair. We both loved this dog but this dog was no longer the Patch we knew. Though it remained unsaid, I could tell Dad was battling a relentless undercurrent of guilt for having come this far. He knew he stood on the brink of a void created by the certainty of his best friend’s demise. He could see it spread out before him—vast, dark, and unimaginably lonely. Fearing the future, he had clung to the now, the grim but preferable now, even though what he sought and the only memories he wanted to choose were lost in the past. It came down to whether he had it in him to do the right thing, to step into this future, face the fear of loss and embrace the promise of mercy for a friend trapped inside a dying body.

  If I have one lasting and positive memory of that difficult final year in Patch’s life it would be this. One night when I was heading up to bed I heard the television still on in the family room. I popped my head around the door and saw Patch lying in front of the sofa, dozing, with my dad lying down on the floor beside him. On the TV, Siegfried Farnon was giving James Herriot a dressing down about how he had handled the tetchy owner of a prized thoroughbred. Dad’s choice of entertainment came as no surprise, neither did Patch’s apathy toward All Creatures Great and Small, but Dad’s posture, reclined on his side, hand cupped under head, elbow pointed to the floor, was most unusual. I stood there, silent and unnoticed. Dad was running his free hand over Patch’s head and as I watched, he snuggled even closer, put his arm over the dog’s big neck and gave him a hug.

  The old Patch would have twisted out of the embrace, squirmed away, and come back at you with a mouthy “Give me a break! You goin’ all soft on me!”

  But not now. It was over in a matter of seconds, Patch apparently indifferent but tolerant, and what struck me, because it seemed so awkward and forced, was the unusual alignment of their bodies. When we as humans hug, whether we think about it or not, we have the potential to align our hearts. Subconsciously, in that brief moment, had my father found a way to truly connect with his dog?

  When it finally happened, it came out of the blue, the news delivered in a phone call from my father while I was at school.

  “I’m so sorry, son. The sores, the infection … I couldn’t see him suffer anymore.”

  Suddenly my father was a little boy, tears and grief hacking his words into pieces. It was his seventeen-year-old son who held it together. There was nothing to discuss, nothing else that mattered. I told no one at school what I was doing or where I was going. I simply walked home because Patch and my dad needed me.

  When I got there, the hole in the earth below a young apple tree was already taking shape. It was Mr. Jones, Patch’s old veterinary adversary, who had come to our house and painlessly brought Patch’s torment to an end. There had been no fight or confrontation, unambiguous confirmation that Patch was more than ready to go.

  For a while, I helped my father dig. We worked efficiently and in silence as though this part of the project was all there was. And when the grave was ready we went about carrying Patch outside and laying him to rest. His favorite blanket, the one in which he lay, looked all wrong covered in earth.

  “Thanks for helping me, son.”

  Tears were streaming down Dad’s cheeks, but I held it together through a mixture of stubbornness, defiance, and teenage detachment. I risked a nod. Speech would have split me open.

  As we stood there, side by side, staring down at the tilled soil, I thought Dad should and would say a prayer, but what he said, and all he needed to say, was “He was a great dog. A faithful friend.”

  4.

  Sea Change

  I have known people who cannot do it over. Regular, everyday people who dare not acquire another dog or cat after losing the furry love of their life. I have argued with them, tried to convince them they are not being unfaithful, that no two pets will ever be the same, that a unique, capricious but equally magical relationship may unfold. Yet often these fragile souls would rather not risk any more heartbreak.

  For a while I believe my father was one of these people. Possibly it was a mark of respect, akin to sitting shivah, a way to let the world know he was grieving a significant loss. He knew dog owners who were capable of getting a replacement puppy as soon as their steadfast companion began to wane, ensuring an overlap, a canine continuum. To him, this felt too much like buying a hot new car at the first sign your trusty clunker is beginning to break down. He knew of other dog owners who could lose their best friend and go straight out and get a new puppy, no problem. To him, this felt like the husband who loses his wife of forty years and at the next family gathering turns up flaunting a much younger replacement whom he introduces as his “soul mate.” Dad wasn’t being judgmental or suggesting that this approach demeaned the sense of grief. It was just that, as with so much else in his life, Dad had to go about healing on his own terms, even if I thought getting a new dog would cheer him up. Whether he still believed he had to atone for his underhanded acquisition of Patch and was daunted by the prospect of future negotiations with my mum, I didn’t know. All I knew was our family was once more without a dog, with no prospect of filling the void any time soon.

  This time around I did not badger my parents. Patch’s absence was simply too big and palpable. Every day after school I would slip into the house unnoticed. No bark, no sniff, no cursory inspection, approval, and dismissal as our noble German shepherd wandered off to work on more important business. His water bowl sat on the kitchen floor, familiar and empty, and on more than one occasion I caught myself as I went to fill it up. No wonder I channeled my attention elsewhere, scoring my animal fix at Ryan James’s vet practice.

  Intoxicated by the buzz of that awesome first visit, I was eager to return and make sure the rush I felt working there was real and durable. What if I had been mistaken or gullible, easily disposed to a sense of wonder and adventure thanks to my father’s brainwashing with the works of James Herriot? Perhaps more important, did I have what it took to become a veterinarian? Did I have the smarts, the stamina, the heart? All I knew for sure was that a place at veterinary school required higher grades than any other course of study, including human medicine, and that despite this ominous requirement, competition remained fierce.

  When I confided this career possibility to my teachers at high school, they universally agreed that I had “as good a chance as anyone,” but this felt more like “Why not apply, you’ve got nothing to lose” rather than a resounding endorsement of my academic aptitude. Part of me sensed their real interest lay not with me as an individual, but rather with me as a statistic, as placement of a student at veterinary school would be proof of their collective educational expertise.

  In order to stand out from the crowd I knew I must demonstrate my desire to experience what it meant to be a veterinarian. And so, during every vacation from high school, I would try to hang out at our local veterinary practice for as long as they would let me, as desperate to prove my com
mitment as I was to assuage any uncertainties about whether this was really the vocation for me.

  On that first day with Ryan James, when I had stood quietly by and watched a dog undergo a Caesarian section, a part of me had been pleasantly surprised at my own stoicism. But looking back, two singular events during my childhood had probably groomed me for a certain degree of composure in and around the operating room.

  The first came courtesy of my sister, Fiona, when she was no more than three or four years old. If I wasn’t playing with Patch or with my grandma’s faithful Dalmation, Cleo, or the kids from across the street (pretty much in that order), Fiona became my foil, a rough-and-tumble playmate happy to rat me out to my parents when we moved beyond the “end in tears” stage of our games. She always embraced versions of tag or “You’re It,” alternating between smiles and maniacal screams as I chased her around our house. On this occasion, I had coaxed her to chase me, and hidden around a corner, in the manner of a Tom and Jerry or Road Runner cartoon, I stuck out a long leg over which she flew. I don’t know why she didn’t point the finger of blame in my direction. Perhaps it was the shock of how much blood was pouring from her head, making her look like a miniature version of Carrie on her prom night. Maybe it was a moment of amnesia coinciding with the impact. For whatever reason, as I bore witness to the deluge of what looked like bright red paint, somehow the guilt of what I had done helped me overcome any fleeting sensation of nausea or faintness. To this day I think poor Fiona believes the two-inch scar on the upper left side of her forehead was caused by accidentally tripping on a loose flap of carpet and landing on her skull.