The Puppy That Came for Christmas (6 page)

When we could, too, we carried her out in a little bag so that she could experience as much of what the world had to offer as possible even before her second vaccination. Cue trips to the supermarket, frosty walks by the river and a bottom-numbing half an hour sitting near one of the local main roads, so that she'd get used to the sound of traffic and become habituated to huge trucks and lorries barreling past—after all, there's no way except experience for a puppy to know that drivers have also been trained, and that they won't mow down passersby. All Helper Dogs must be taught to sit at each curb and wait to be told to cross the road. They also (depending on the needs of the person they're placed with) may be taught to press the button at a pelican crossing to stop the traffic, like Yogi, the dog we'd met who helps Denise. Whenever we left the house, people wanted to say hello to Emma—she was impossible to resist—and she was pleased to have the attention.

Every now and then, I wondered if her mum was missing her. I thought she must be, so I rang the breeders to find out more about Emma's first family. They were very pleased to learn that she'd arrived safely and was eating well.

“Guide Dogs for the Blind have always taken all of the puppies before, but this year they couldn't use them all. We've never had two puppies go to Helper Dogs before,” they said. “And she's such a dainty little thing. We'll send you some photos of her mum and the other puppies in the litter.”

I reassured them that Ian and I would love and take care of her, and promised to keep in touch and let them know how Emma was progressing.

 

Finally the snow cleared and Emma and I were able to attend our first Helper Dogs class. There were
ooh
s and begs of
can I have a cuddle
from Stacey and Kate, the two dog groomers who had a salon adjacent to the training center. Emma happily obliged.

“She's just the sweetest thing.”

I smiled my agreement.

“Ouch!”

Oh yes, she'd just started doing that. Emma had found her teeth and they could be like little needles.

Emma was overjoyed to see Eddie, her brother. Liz, Eddie's puppy parent, told me that Eddie was also chewing like crazy. Jamie gave us all teething toys.

“Try to distract them with a toy,” he said. “It's a stage they all go through, but you don't want them damaging your stuff.”

“Or us!” said Jo. She was the third puppy parent to receive a Christmas puppy. Hers was a black Labrador called Elvis who seemed to like nothing more than sleeping in his crate. Eddie, Elvis and Emma. All so named because of their age: Helper Dogs, like many assistance-dogs charities, found it easier for quick reference to name dogs of the same intake with the same letter.

“He just loves his bed,” Jo said. “He wakes up in the morning around nine . . .”

Liz and I exchanged a look: sleeping till nine sounded like total luxury.

“. . . and then he has his breakfast and a little play and he goes back to bed for an hour—or maybe a little longer. He just takes himself off to sleep. That's when I get my housework done or go grocery shopping.”

My eyebrows had almost shot off the top of my head by this juncture. There hadn't been much sleeping—let alone housework—going on in our house, and Ian was picking up ready-meals every night on his way home from work. We didn't want to leave Emma by herself for a second.

“She has to learn to be alone at some point,” said a woman in the corner who hadn't spoken before.

“This is Diane,” Jamie said. “She's an experienced puppy parent visiting today from the Peterborough center.” Diane had a Labradoodle that was sitting rigidly to attention beside her.

“It's like being a parent,” Diane said. She looked over at Liz. “Do you have children?”

“Yes.”

“How about you?” She looked over at Jo.

“Grown up now,” Jo said. “I'm a granny.”

“How about you?” Diane said to me. “Do you have children?”

I hesitated, for fear of stumbling over my words, but Diane didn't wait for my reply. “When you're a parent, you develop a sixth sense of when your kids are up to something. Suddenly you seem to have eyes in the back of your head.”

“Hear, hear,” laughed Liz. “I need to with my lot.”

“And that's why people who've had children make the best puppy parents,” Diane announced.

I concentrated on Emma, who was pawing my leg, so Diane wouldn't notice she'd upset me. I might not have had the experience of having children, but I was going to be the very best puppy parent I could be.

“You OK, Megan?” Jamie asked when Diane left shortly afterward.

“Oh, fine,” I said, sighing. But I was worried about leaving Emma when I went for my monthly blood test and scan. Sometimes, if there were a lot of people waiting, it could take ages for me to be seen. And, despite what Diane said, I wasn't ready to lock Emma up in the house on her own for hours.

“Pop her around to me,” Jo said. “I'm only up the road from you, and she and Elvis can have a play together.”

“It'll be at least every month,” I said. “Maybe twice a month sometimes.”

“Not a problem at all.”

Now that Diane had gone back to Peterborough, I was starting to enjoy the Helper Dogs class and the new friends I was making.

Puppies, it was turning out, were a bit of a full-time job. Even without the dozens of trips to the garden in every twenty-four-hour period, there were bundles of forms to fill in, charts to plot, diaries to keep. I felt as if I needed a secretary to keep on top of the admin, while I got on with the important business of loving and caring for Emma. And then there was our first visit to the vet.

Emma had been given her first vaccination before we got her, and she was due a second at ten weeks. Together, the two puppy inoculations protected against some real nasties including canine distemper, viral hepatitis, parvovirus, leptospirosis and other diseases that sounded like you wouldn't wish them on your worst enemy. Even a quick glance at the list of potential symptoms—diarrhea, vomiting, deep hacking coughs, fever, collapse and sometimes death—was almost enough to convince me never to let Emma out of the house without a biohazard suit on. Parvovirus, in particular, I'd heard a lot about as Jamie had been muttering darkly about an outbreak of “parvo” in our area; because of the vaccinations it wasn't very common, so when a dog did catch it the outlook was bad. Puppies, naturally, were particularly vulnerable, and could die within a couple of days due to fluid loss. On top of the vaccinations, Emma would need to be wormed every month for the first six months, but it would be Jamie and Helper Dogs that provided the tablets. Dogs shouldn't have worms for their own health, but the worms' larvae also posed a health risk to people, and young children and babies in particular.

 

“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.