All Things Bright and Beautiful (40 page)

One old farmer remarked sourly to me once, “There’s no wonder the buggers are ’appy, they’ve got nowt to do.” An exaggeration, of course, but I knew how he felt; compared to farming every other job was easy.

I had seen Bert Chapman just a day or two ago, sitting on a grassy bank, his shovel by his side, a vast sandwich in his hand. He had raised a corded forearm in salute, a broad smile bisecting his round, sun-reddened face. He had looked eternally carefree but tonight his smile was strained.

“I’m sorry to bother you this late, Mr. Herriot,” he said as he ushered us into the house, “but I’m gettin’ a bit worried about Susie. Her pups are due and she’s been making a bed for them and messing about all day but nowt’s happened. I was goin’ to leave her till morning but about midnight she started panting like ’ell—I don’t like the look of her.”

Susie was one of my regular patients. Her big, burly master was always bringing her to the surgery, a little shame-faced at his solicitude, and when I saw him sitting in the waiting room looking strangely out of place among the ladies with their pets, he usually said “T’missus asked me to bring Susie.” But it was a transparent excuse.

“She’s nobbut a little mongrel, but very faithful,” Bert said, still apologetic, but I could understand how he felt about Susie, a shaggy little ragamuffin whose only wile was to put her paws on my knees and laugh up into my face with her tail lashing. I found her irresistible.

But she was a very different character tonight. As we went into the living room of the cottage the little animal crept from her basket, gave a single indeterminate wag of her tail, then stood miserably in the middle of the floor, her ribs heaving. As I bent to examine her she turned a wide panting mouth and anxious eyes up to me.

I ran my hands over her abdomen. I don’t think I have ever felt a more bloated little dog; she was as round as a football, absolutely bulging with pups, ready to pop, but nothing was happening.

“What do you think?” Bert’s face was haggard under his sunburn and he touched the dog’s head briefly with a big calloused hand.

“I don’t know yet, Bert,” I said. “I’ll have to have a feel inside. Bring me some hot water, will you?”

I added some antiseptic to the water, soaped my hand and with one finger carefully explored the vagina. There was a pup there, all right; my finger tip brushed across the nostrils, the tiny mouth and tongue; but he was jammed in that narrow passage like a cork in a bottle.

Squatting back on my heels I turned to the Chapmans.

“I’m afraid there’s a big pup stuck fast. I have a feeling that if she could get rid of this chap the others would come away. They’d probably be smaller.”

“Is there any way of shiftin’ him, Mr. Herriot?” Bert asked.

I paused for a moment. “I’m going to put forceps on his head and see if he’ll move. I don’t like using forceps but I’m going to have one careful try and if it doesn’t work I’ll have to take her back to the surgery for a caesarian.”

“An operation?” Bert said hollowly. He gulped and glanced fearfully at his wife. Like many big men he had married a tiny woman and at this moment Mrs. Chapman looked even smaller than her four foot eleven inches as she huddled in her chair and stared at me with wide eyes.

“Oh I wish we’d never had her mated,” she wailed, wringing her hands. “I told Bert five years old was too late for a first litter but he wouldn’t listen. And now we’re maybe going to lose ’er.”

I hastened to reassure her, “No, she isn’t too old, and everything may be all right. Let’s just see how we get on.”

I boiled the instrument for a few minutes on the stove then kneeled behind my patient again. I poised the forceps for a moment and at the flash of steel a grey tinge crept under Bert’s sunburn and his wife coiled herself into a ball in her chair. Obviously they were non-starters as assistants so Helen held Susie’s head while I once more reached in towards the pup. There was desperately little room but I managed to direct the forceps along my finger till they touched the nose. Then very gingerly I opened the jaws and pushed them forward with the very gentlest pressure until I was able to clamp them on either side of the head.

I’d soon know now. In a situation like this you can’t do any pulling, you can only try to ease the thing along. This I did and I fancied I felt just a bit of movement; I tried again and there was no doubt about it, the pup was coming towards me. Susie, too, appeared to sense that things were taking a turn for the better. She cast off her apathy and began to strain lustily.

It was no trouble after that and I was able to draw the pup forth almost without resistance.

“I’m afraid this one’ll be dead,” I said, and as the tiny creature lay across my palm there was no sign of breathing. But, pinching the chest between thumb and forefinger I could feel the heart pulsing steadily and I quickly opened his mouth and blew softly down into his lungs.

I repeated this a few times then laid the pup on his side in the basket. I was just thinking it was going to be no good when the little rib cage gave a sudden lift, then another and another.

“He’s off!” Bert exclaimed happily. “That’s champion! We want these puppies alive tha knows. They’re by Jack Dennison’s terrier and he’s a grand ’un.”

“That’s right,” Mrs. Chapman put in. “No matter how many she has, they’re all spoken for. Everybody wants a pup out of Susie.”

“I can believe that,” I said. But I smiled to myself. Jack Dennison’s terrier was another hound of uncertain ancestry, so this lot would be a right mixture. But none the worse for that

I gave Susie half a c.c. of pituitrin. “I think she needs it after pushing against that fellow for hours. We’ll wait and see what happens now.”

And it was nice waiting. Mrs. Chapman brewed a pot of tea and began to slap butter on to home-made scones. Susie, partly aided by my pituitrin, pushed out a pup in a self-satisfied manner about every fifteen minutes. The pups themselves soon set up a bawling of surprising volume for such minute creatures. Bert, relaxing visibly with every minute, filled his pipe and regarded the fast-growing family with a grin of increasing width.

“Ee, it is kind of you young folks to stay with us like this.” Mrs. Chapman put her head on one side and looked at us worriedly. “I should think you’ve been dying to get back to your dance all this time.”

I thought of the crush at the Drovers. The smoke, the heat, the nonstop boom-boom of the Hot Shots and I looked around the peaceful little room with the old-fashioned black grate, the low, varnished beams, Mrs. Chapman’s sewing box, the row of Bert’s pipes on the wall. I took a firmer grasp of Helen’s hand which I had been holding under the table for the last hour.

“Not at all, Mrs. Chapman,” I said. “We haven’t missed it in the least.” And I have never been more sincere.

It must have been about half past two when I finally decided that Susie had finished. She had six fine pups which was a good score for a little thing like her and the noise had abated as the family settled down to feast on her abundant udder.

I lifted the pups out one by one and examined them. Susie didn’t mind in the least but appeared to be smiling with modest pride as I handled her brood. When I put them back with her she inspected them and sniffed them over busily before rolling on to her side again.

“Three dogs and three bitches,” I said. “Nice even litter.”

Before leaving I took Susie from her basket and palpated her abdomen. The degree of deflation was almost unbelievable; a pricked balloon could not have altered its shape more spectacularly and she had made a remarkable metamorphosis to the lean, scruffy little extrovert I knew so well.

When I released her she scurried back and curled herself round her new family who were soon sucking away with total absorption.

Bert laughed. “She’s fair capped wi’ them pups.” He bent over and prodded the first arrival with a horny forefinger. “I like the look o’ this big dog pup. I reckon we’ll keep this ’un for ourselves, mother. He’ll be company for t’awd lass.”

It was time to go. Helen and I moved over to the door and little Mrs. Chapman with her fingers on the handle looked up at me.

“Well, Mr. Herriot,” she said, “I can’t thank you enough for comin’ out and putting our minds at rest. I don’t know what I’d have done wi’ this man of mine if anything had happened to his little dog.”

Bert grinned sheepishly. “Nay,” he muttered. “Ah was never really worried.”

His wife laughed and opened the door and as we stepped out into the silent scented night she gripped my arm and looked up at me roguishly.

“I suppose this is your young lady,” she said.

I put my arm around Helen’s shoulders.

“Yes,” I said firmly. “This is my young lady.”

A
FULL SURGERY!
B
UT
the ripple of satisfaction as I surveyed the packed rows of heads waned quickly as realisation dawned. It was only the Dimmocks again.

I first encountered the Dimmocks one evening when I had a call to a dog which had been knocked down by a car. The address was down in the old part of the town and I was cruising slowly along the row of decaying cottages looking for the number when a door burst open and three shock-headed little children ran into the street and waved me down frantically.

“He’s in ’ere, Mister!” they gasped in unison as I got out, and then began immediately to put me in the picture.

“It’s Bonzo!” “Aye, a car ’it ’im!” “We ’ad to carry ’im in, Mister!” They all got their word in as I opened the garden gate and struggled up the path with the three of them hanging on to my arms and tugging at my coat; and en route I gazed in wonder at the window of the house where a mass of other young faces mouthed at me and a tangle of arms gesticulated.

Once through the door which opened directly into the living room I was swamped by a rush of bodies and borne over to the corner where I saw my patient.

Bonzo was sitting upright on a ragged blanket. He was a large shaggy animal of indeterminate breed and though at a glance there didn’t seem to be much ailing him he wore a pathetic expression of self pity. Since everybody was talking at once I decided to ignore them and carry out my examination. I worked my way over legs, pelvis, ribs and spine; no fractures. His mucous membranes were a good colour, there was no evidence of internal injury. In fact the only thing I could find was slight bruising over the left shoulder. Bonzo had sat like a statue as I felt over him, but as I finished he toppled over on to his side and lay looking up at me apologetically, his tail thumping on the blanket.

“You’re a big soft dog, that’s what you are,” I said and the tail thumped faster.

I turned and viewed the throng and after a moment or two managed to pick out the parents. Mum was fighting her way to the front while at the rear Dad, a diminutive figure, was beaming at me over the heads. I did a bit of shushing and when the babel died down I addressed myself to Mrs. Dimmock.

“I think he’s been lucky,” I said. “I can’t find any serious injury. I think the car must have bowled him over and knocked the wind out of him for a minute, or he may have been suffering from shock.”

The uproar broke out again. “Will ’e die, Mister?” “What’s the matter with ’im?” “What are you going to do?”

I gave Bonzo an injection of a mild sedative while he lay rigid, a picture of canine suffering, with the towsled heads looking down at him with deep concern and innumerable little hands poking out and caressing him.

Mrs. Dimmock produced a basin of hot water and while I washed my hands I was able to make a rough assessment of the household. I counted eleven little Dimmocks from a boy in his early teens down to a grubby faced infant crawling around the floor; and judging by the significant bulge in Mum’s midriff the number was soon to be augmented. They were clad in a motley selection of hand-me downs; darned pullovers, patched trousers, tattered dresses, yet the general atmosphere in the house was of unconfined joie di vivre.

Bonzo wasn’t the only animal and I stared in disbelief as another biggish dog and a cat with two half grown kittens appeared from among the crowding legs and feet. I would have thought that the problem of filling the human mouths would have been difficult enough without importing several animals.

But the Dimmocks didn’t worry about such things; they did what they wanted to do, and they got by. Dad, I learned later, had never done any work within living memory. He had a “bad back” and lived what seemed to me a reasonably gracious life, roaming interestedly around the town by day and enjoying a quiet beer and a game of dominoes in a corner of the Four Horse Shoes by night.

I saw him quite often; he was easy to pick out because he invariably carried a walking stick which gave him an air of dignity and he always walked briskly and purposefully as though he were going somewhere important.

I took a final look at Bonzo, still stretched on the blanket, looking up at me with soulful eyes then I struggled towards the door.

“I don’t think there’s anything to worry about,” I shouted above the chattering which had speedily broken out again, “but I’ll look in tomorrow and make sure.”

When I drew up outside the house next morning I could see Bonzo galloping around the garden with several of the children. They were passing a ball from one to the other and he was leaping ecstatically high in the air to try to intercept it.

He was clearly none the worse for his accident but when he saw me opening the gate his tail went down and he dropped almost to his knees and slunk into the house. The children received me rapturously.

“You’ve made ’im better, Mister!” “He’s all right now, isn’t he?” “He’s ’ad a right big breakfast this mornin’, Mister!”

I went inside with little hands clutching at my coat, Bonzo was sitting bolt upright on his blanket in the same attitude as the previous evening, but as I approached he slowly collapsed on to his side and lay looking up at me with a martyred expression.

I laughed as I knelt by him. “You’re the original old soldier, Bonzo, but you can’t fool me. I saw you out there.”

I gently touched the bruised shoulder and the big dog tremblingly closed his eyes as he resigned himself to his fate. Then when I stood up and he realised he wasn’t going to have another injection he leaped to his feet and bounded away into the garden.