All Things Bright and Beautiful (51 page)

The old man put his hand to his ear. “What’s that you say?”

“Nice warm day it’s been.” My voice was like a soft breeze sighing over the marshes.

I felt a violent dig at my back. “What the heck’s the matter with you, Jim? Have you got laryngitis?”

I turned and saw the tall bald-headed figure of Dr. Allinson, my medical adviser and friend. “Hello, Harry,” I cried. “Nice to see you.” Then I put my hand to my mouth.

But it was too late. A furious yapping issued from the manager’s office. It was loud and penetrating and it went on and on.

“Damn, I forgot,” I said wearily. “There goes Magnus again.”

“Magnus? What are you talking about?”

“Well, it’s a long story.” I took another sip at my beer as the din continued from the office. It really shattered the peace of the comfortable bar and I could see the regulars fidgeting and looking out into the hallway.

Would that little dog ever forget? It seemed a long time now since Mr. Beckwith, the new young manager at the Drovers, had brought Magnus in to the surgery. He had looked a little apprehensive.

“You’ll have to watch him, Mr. Herriot.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, be careful He’s very vicious.”

I looked at the sleek little form, a mere brown dot on the table. He would probably turn the scale at around six pounds. And I couldn’t help laughing.

“Vicious? He’s not big enough, surely.”

“Don’t you worry!” Mr. Beckwith raised a warning finger. “I took him to the vet in Bradford where I used to manage the White Swan and he sank his teeth into the poor chap’s finger.”

“He did?”

“He certainly did! Right down to the bone! By God I’ve never heard such language but I couldn’t blame the man. There was blood all over the place. I had to help him to put a bandage on.”

“Mm, I see.” It was nice to be told before you had been bitten and not after. “And what was he trying to do to the dog? Must have been something pretty major.”

“It wasn’t you know. All I wanted was his nails clipped.”

“Is that all? And why have you brought him today?”

“Same thing.”

“Well honestly, Mr. Beckwith,” I said. “I think we can manage to cut his nails without bloodshed. If he’d been a Bull Mastiff or an Alsatian we might have had a problem, but I think that you and I between us can control a Miniature Dachshund.”

The manager shook his head. “Don’t bring me into it. I’m sorry, but I’d rather not hold him, if you don’t mind.”

“Why not?”

“Well, he’d never forgive me. He’s a funny little dog.”

I rubbed my chin. “But if he’s as difficult as you say and you can’t hold him, what do you expect me to do?”

“I don’t know, really…maybe you could sort of dope him…knock him out?”

“You mean a general anaesthetic? To cut his claws…?”

“It’ll be the only way, I’m afraid.” Mr. Beckwith stared gloomily at the tiny animal. “You don’t know him.”

It was difficult to believe but it seemed pretty obvious that this canine morsel was the boss in the Beckwith home. In my experience many dogs had occupied this position but none as small as this one. Anyway, I had no more time to waste on this nonsense.

“Look,” I said “I’ll put a tape muzzle on his nose and I’ll have this job done in a couple of minutes.” I reached behind me for the nail clippers and laid them on the table, then I unrolled a length of bandage and tied it in a loop.

“Good boy, Magnus,” I said ingratiatingly as I advanced towards him.

The little dog eyed the bandage unwinkingly until it was almost touching his nose then, with a surprising outburst of ferocity, he made a snarling leap at my hand. I felt the draught on my fingers as a row of sparkling teeth snapped shut half an inch away, but as he turned to have another go my free hand clamped on the scruff of his neck.

“Right, Mr. Beckwith,” I said calmly. “I have him now. Just pass me that bandage again and I won’t be long.”

But the young man had had enough. “Not me!” he gasped. “I’m off!” He turned the door handle and I heard his feet scurrying along the passage.

Ah well, I thought, it was probably best. With boss dogs my primary move was usually to get the owner out of the way. It was surprising how quickly these tough guys calmed down when they found themselves alone with a no-nonsense stranger who knew how to handle them. I could recite a list who were raving tearaways in their own homes but apologetic tail-waggers once they crossed the surgery threshold. And they were all bigger than Magnus.

Retaining my firm grip on his neck I unwound another foot of bandage and as he fought furiously, mouth gaping, lips retracted like a scaled-down Siberian wolf, I slipped the loop over his nose, tightened it and tied the knot behind his ears. His mouth was now clamped shut and just to make sure, I applied a second bandage so that he was well and truly trussed.

This was when they usually packed in and I looked confidently at the dog for signs of submission. But above the encircling white coils the eyes glared furiously and from within the little frame an enraged growling issued, rising and falling like the distant droning of a thousand bees.

Sometimes a stern word or two had the effect of showing them who was boss.

“Magnus!” I barked at him. “That’s enough! Behave yourself!” I gave his neck a shake to make it clear that I wasn’t kidding but the only response was a sidelong squint of pure defiance from the slightly bulging eyes.

I lifted the clippers. “All right,” I said wearily. “If you won’t have it one way you’ll have it the other.” And I tucked him under one arm, seized a paw and began to clip.

He couldn’t do a thing about it. He fought and wriggled but I had him as in a vice. And as I methodically trimmed the overgrown nails, wrathful bubbles escaped on either side of the bandage along with his splutterings. If dogs could swear I was getting the biggest cursing in history.

I did my job with particular care, taking pains to keep well away from the sensitive core of the claw so that he felt nothing, but it made no difference. The indignity of being mastered for once in his life was insupportable.

Towards the conclusion of the operation I began to change my tone. I had found in the past that once dominance has been established it is quite easy to work up a friendly relationship, so I started to introduce a wheedling note.

“Good little chap,” I cooed. “That wasn’t so bad, was it?”

I laid down the clippers and stroked his head as a few more resentful bubbles forced their way round the bandage. “All right, Magnus, we’ll take your muzzle off now.” I began to loosen the knot. “You’ll feel a lot better then, won’t you?”

So often it happened that when I finally removed the restraint the dog would apparently decide to let bygones be bygones and in some cases would even lick my hand. But not so with Magnus. As the last turn of bandage fell from his nose he made another very creditable attempt to bite me.

“All right, Mr. Beckwith,” I called along the passage. “You can come and get him now.”

My final memory of the visit was of the little dog turning at the top of the surgery steps and giving me a last dirty look before his master led him down the street.

It said very clearly, “Right, mate, I won’t forget you.”

That had been weeks ago but ever since that day the very sound of my voice was enough to set Magnus yapping his disapproval. At first the regulars treated it as a big joke but now they had started to look at me strangely. Maybe they thought I had been cruel to the animal or something. It was all very embarrassing because I didn’t want to abandon the Drovers; the bar was always cosy even on the coldest night and the beer very consistent.

Anyway if I had gone to another pub I would probably have started to do my talking in whispers and people would have looked at me even more strangely then.

How different it was with Mrs. Hammond’s Irish Setter. This started with an urgent phone call one night when I was in the bath. Helen knocked on the bathroom door and I dried off quickly and threw on my dressing gown. I ran upstairs and as soon as I lifted the receiver an anxious voice burst in my ear.

“Mr. Herriot, it’s Rock! He’s been missing for two days and a man has just brought him back now. He found him in a wood with his foot in a gin trap. He must…” I heard a half sob at the end of the line. “He must have been caught there all this time.”

“Oh, I’m sorry! Is it very bad?”

“Yes it is.” Mrs. Hammond was the wife of one of the local bank managers and a capable, sensible woman. There was a pause and I imagined her determinedly gaining control of herself. When she spoke her voice was calm.

“Yes, I’m afraid it looks as though he’ll have to have his foot amputated.”

“Oh I’m terribly sorry to hear that.” But I wasn’t really surprised. A limb compressed in one of those barbarous instruments for 48 hours would be in a critical state. These traps are now mercifully illegal but in those days they often provided me with the kind of jobs I didn’t want and the kind of decisions I hated to make. Did you take a limb from an uncomprehending animal to keep it alive or did you bring down the merciful but final curtain of euthanasia? I was responsible for the fact that there were several three-legged dogs and cats running around Darrowby and though they seemed happy enough and their owners still had the pleasure of their pets, the thing, for me, was clouded with sorrow.

Anyway, I would do what had to be done.

“Bring him straight round, Mrs. Hammond,” I said.

Rock was a big dog but he was the lean type of Setter and seemed very light as I lifted him on to the surgery table. As my arms encircled the unresisting body I could feel the rib cage sharply ridged under the skin.

“He’s lost a lot of weight,” I said.

His mistress nodded. “It’s a long time to go without food. He ate ravenously when he came in, despite his pain.”

I put a hand beneath the dog’s elbow and gently lifted the leg. The vicious teeth of the trap had been clamped on the radius and ulna but what worried me was the grossly swollen state of the foot. It was at least twice its normal size.

“What do you think, Mr. Herriot?” Mrs. Hammond’s hands twisted anxiously at the handbag which every woman seemed to bring to the surgery irrespective of the circumstances.

I stroked the dog’s head. Under the light, the rich sheen of the coat glowed red and gold. “This terrific swelling of the foot. It’s partly due to inflammation but also to the fact that the circulation was pretty well cut off for the time he was in the trap. The danger is gangrene—that’s when the tissue dies and decomposes.”

“I know,” she replied. “I did a bit of nursing before I married.”

Carefully I lifted the enormous foot. Rock gazed calmly in front of him as I felt around the metacarpals and phalanges, working my way up to the dreadful wound.

“Well, it’s a mess,” I said. “But there are two good things. First the leg isn’t broken. The trap has gone right down to the bone but there is no fracture. And second and more important, the foot is still warm.”

“That’s a good sign?”

“Oh yes. It means there’s still some circulation. If the foot had been cold and clammy the thing would have been hopeless. I would have had to amputate.”

“You think you can save his foot then?”

I held up my hand. “I don’t know, Mrs. Hammond. As I say, he still has some circulation but the question is how much. Some of this tissue is bound to slough off and things could look very nasty in a few days. But I’d like to try.”

I flushed out the wound with a mild antiseptic in warm water and gingerly explored the grisly depths. As I snipped away the pieces of damaged muscle and cut off the shreds and flaps of dead skin the thought was uppermost that it must be extremely unpleasant for the dog; but Rock held his head high and scarcely flinched. Once or twice he turned his head towards me inquiringly as I probed deeply and at times I felt his moist nose softly brushing my face as I bent over the foot, but that was all.

The injury seemed a desecration. There are few more beautiful dogs than an Irish Setter and Rock was a picture; sleek coated and graceful with silky feathers on legs and tail and a noble, gentle-eyed head. As the thought of how he would look without a foot drove into my mind I shook my head and turned quickly to lift the sulphanilamide powder from the trolley behind me. Thank heavens this was now available, one of the new revolutionary drugs, and I packed it deep into the wound with the confidence that it would really do something to keep down the infection. I applied a layer of gauze then a light bandage with a feeling of fatalism. There was nothing else I could do.

Rock was brought in to me every day. And every day he endured the same procedure; the removal of the dressing which was usually adhering to the wound to some degree, then the inevitable trimming of the dying tissues and the rebandaging. Yet, incredibly, he never showed any reluctance to come. Most of my patients came in very slowly and left at top speed, dragging their owners on the end of the leads; in fact some turned tail at the door, slipped their collar and sped down Trengate with their owners in hot pursuit. Dogs aren’t so daft and there is doubtless a dentist’s chair type of association about a vet’s surgery.

Rock, however, always marched in happily with a gentle waving of his tail. In fact when I went into the waiting room and saw him sitting there he usually offered me his paw. This had always been a characteristic gesture of his but there seemed something uncanny about it when I bent over him and saw the white-swathed limb outstretched towards me.

After a week the outlook was grim. All the time the dead tissue had been sloughing and one night when I removed the dressing Mrs. Hammond gasped and turned away. With her nursing training she had been very helpful, holding the foot this way and that intuitively as I worked, but tonight she didn’t want to look.

I couldn’t blame her. In places the white bones of the metacarpals could be seen like the fingers of a human hand with only random strands of skin covering them.

“Is it hopeless, do you think?” she whispered, still looking away.

I didn’t answer for a moment as I felt my way underneath the foot. “It does look awful, but do you know, I think we have reached the end of the road and are going to turn the corner soon.”