I do not wish to give the impression that I advocate wholesale anaesthesia for all animal ailments but I do know that sedation has a definite place. Nowadays we have a sophisticated range of sedatives and tranquillisers to choose from and when I come up against an acute case of gastroenteritis in dogs I use one of them as an adjunct to the normal treatment; because it puts a brake on the deadly exhausting cycle and blots out the pain and fear which go with it.
And over the years, whenever I saw Penny running around, barking, bright-eyed, full of the devil, I felt a renewed welling of thankfulness for the cure which I discovered in a dark corner of a stable by accident.
32
THIS WAS THE REAL Yorkshire with the clean limestone wall riding the hill’s edge and the path cutting brilliant green through the crowding heather. And, walking face on to the scented breeze I felt the old tingle of wonder at being alone on the wide moorland where nothing stirred and the spreading miles of purple blossom and green turf reached away till it met the hazy blue of the sky.
But I wasn’t really alone. There was Sam, and he made all the difference. Helen had brought a lot of things into my life and Sam was one of the most precious; he was a Beagle and her own personal pet. He would be about two years old when I first saw him and I had no way of knowing that he was to be my faithful companion, my car dog, my friend who sat by my side through the lonely hours of driving till his life ended at the age of fourteen. He was the first of a series of cherished dogs whose comradeship have warmed and lightened my working life.
Sam adopted me on sight. It was as though he had read the Faithful Hound Manual because he was always near me; paws on the dash as he gazed eagerly through the windscreen on my rounds, head resting on my foot in our bed-sitting room, trotting just behind me wherever I moved. If I had a beer in a pub he would be under my chair and even when I was having a haircut you only had to lift the white sheet to see Sam crouching beneath my legs. The only place I didn’t dare take him was the cinema and on these occasions he crawled under the bed and sulked.
Most dogs love car riding but to Sam it was a passion which never waned—even in the night hours; he would gladly leave his basket when the world was asleep, stretch a couple of times and follow me out into the cold. He would be on to the seat before I got the car door fully open and this action became so much a part of my life that for a long time after his death I still held the door open unthinkingly, waiting for him. And I still remember the pain I felt when he did not bound inside.
And having him with me added so much to the intermissions I granted myself on my daily rounds. Whereas in offices and factories they had tea breaks I just stopped the car and stepped out into the splendour which was always at hand and walked for a spell down hidden lanes, through woods, or as today, along one of the grassy tracks which ran over the high tops.
This thing which I had always done had a new meaning now. Anybody who has ever walked a dog knows the abiding satisfaction which comes from giving pleasure to a loved animal, and the sight of the little form trotting ahead of me lent a depth which had been missing before.
Round the curve of the path I came to where the tide of heather lapped thickly down the hillside on a little slope facing invitingly into the sun. It was a call I could never resist I looked at my watch; oh I had a few minutes to spare and there was nothing urgent ahead, just Mr. Dacre’s tuberculin test. In a moment I was stretched out on the springy stems, the most wonderful natural mattress in the world.
Lying there, eyes half closed against the sun’s glare, the heavy heather fragrance around me, I could see the cloud shadows racing across the flanks of the fells, throwing the gulleys and crevices into momentary gloom but trailing a fresh flaring green in their wake.
Those were the days when I was most grateful I was in country practice; the shirt sleeve days when the bleak menace of the bald heights melted into friendliness, when I felt at one with all the airy life and growth about me and was glad that I had become what I never thought I would be, a doctor of farm animals.
My partner would be somewhere out there, thrashing round the practice and Tristan would probably be studying in Skeldale House. This latter was quite a thought because I had never seen Tristan open a text book until lately. He had been blessed with the kind of brain which made swotting irrelevant but he would take his finals this year and even he had to get down to it. I had little doubt he would soon be a qualified man and in a way it seemed a shame that his free spirit should be shackled by the realities of veterinary practice. It would be the end of a luminous chapter.
A long-eared head blotted out the sunshine as Sam came and sat on my chest. He looked at me questioningly. He didn’t hold with this laziness but I knew if I didn’t move after a few minutes he would curl up philosophically on my ribs and have a sleep until I was ready to go. But this time I answered the unspoken appeal by sitting up and he leaped around me in delight as I rose and began to make my way back to the car and Mr. Dacre’s test.
“Move over, Bill!” Mr. Dacre cried some time later as he tweaked the big bull’s tail.
Nearly every farmer kept a bull in those days and they were all called Billy or Bill. I suppose it was because this was a very mature animal that he received the adult version. Being a docile beast he responded to the touch on his tail by shuffling his great bulk to one side, leaving me enough space to push in between him and the wooden partition against which he was tied by a chain.
I was reading a tuberculin test and all I wanted to do was to measure the intradermal reaction. I had to open my calipers very wide to take in the thickness of the skin on the enormous neck.
“Thirty,” I called out to the farmer.
He wrote the figure down on the testing book and laughed.
“By heck, he’s got some pelt on ’im.”
“Yes,” I said, beginning to squeeze my way out. “But he’s a big fellow, isn’t he?”
Just how big he was was brought home to me immediately because the bull suddenly swung round, pinning me against the partition. Cows did this regularly and I moved them by bracing my back against whatever was behind me and pushing them away. But it was different with Bill.
Gasping, I pushed with all my strength against the rolls of fat which covered the vast roan-coloured flank, but I might as well have tried to shift a house.
The farmer dropped his book and seized the tail again but this time the bull showed no response. There was no malice in his behaviour—he was simply having a comfortable lean against the boards and I don’t suppose he even noticed the morsel of puny humanity wriggling frantically against his rib-cage.
Still, whether he meant it or not, the end result was the same; I was having the life crushed out of me. Pop-eyed, groaning, scarcely able to breathe, I struggled with everything I had, but I couldn’t move an inch. And just when I thought things couldn’t get any worse, Bill started to rub himself up and down against the partition. So that was what he had come round for; he had an itch and he just wanted to scratch it.
The effect on me was catastrophic. I was certain my internal organs were being steadily ground to pulp and as I thrashed about in complete panic the huge animal leaned even more heavily.
I don’t like to think what would have happened if the wood behind me had not been old and rotten, but just as I felt my senses leaving me there was a cracking and splintering and I fell through into the next stall. Lying there like a stranded fish on a bed of shattered timbers I looked up at Mr. Dacre, waiting till my lungs started to work again.
The farmer, having got over his first alarm, was rubbing his upper lip vigorously in a polite attempt to stop himself laughing. His little girl who had watched the whole thing from her vantage point in one of the hay racks had no such inhibitions. Screaming with delight, she pointed at me.
“Ooo, Dad, Dad, look at that man! Did you see him, Dad, did you see him? Ooo what a funny man!” She went into helpless convulsions. She was only about five but I had a feeling she would remember my performance
all her life.
At length I picked myself up and managed to brush the matter off lightly, but after I had driven a mile or so from the farm I stopped the car and looked myself over. My ribs ached pretty uniformly as though a light road roller had passed over them and there was a tender area on my left buttock where I had landed on my calipers but otherwise I seemed to have escaped damage. I removed a few spicules of wood from my trousers, got back into the car and consulted my list of visits.
And when I read my next call a gentle smile of relief spread over my face. “Mrs. Tompkin, 14, Jasmine Terrace. Clip budgie’s beak.”
Thank heaven for the infinite variety of veterinary practice. After that bull I needed something small and weak and harmless and really you can’t ask for much better in that line than a budgie.
Number 14 was one of a row of small mean houses built of the cheap bricks so beloved of the jerry builders after the first world war. I armed myself with a pair of clippers and stepped on to the narrow strip of pavement which separated the door from the road. A pleasant looking red haired woman answered my knock.
“I’m Mrs. Dodds from next door,” she said. “I keep an eye on t’old lady. She’s over eighty and lives alone. I’ve just been out gettin’ her pension for her.”
She led me into the cramped little room. “Here y’are, love,” she said to the old woman who sat in a corner. She put the pension book and money on the mantelpiece. “And here’s Mr. Herriot come to see Peter for you.”
Mrs. Tompkin nodded and smiled. “Oh that’s good. Poor little feller can’t hardly eat with ’is long beak and I’m worried about him. He’s me only companion, you know.”
“Yes, I understand, Mrs. Tompkin.” I looked at the cage by the window with the green budgie perched inside. “These little birds can be wonderful company when they start chattering.”
She laughed. “Aye, but it’s a funny thing. Peter never has said owt much. I think he’s lazy! But I just like havin’ him with me.”
“Of course you do,” I said. “But he certainly needs attention now.”
The beak was greatly overgrown, curving away down till it touched the feathers of the breast. I would be able to revolutionise his life with one quick snip from my clippers. The way I was feeling this job was right up my street.
I opened the cage door and slowly inserted my hand.
“Come on, Peter,” I wheedled as the bird fluttered away from me. And I soon cornered him and enclosed him gently in my fingers. As I lifted him out I felt in my pocket with the other hand for the clippers, but as I poised them I stopped.
The tiny head was no longer poking cheekily from my fingers but had fallen loosely to one side. The eyes were closed. I stared at the bird uncomprehendingly for a moment then opened my hand. He lay quite motionless on my palm. He was dead.
Dry mouthed, I continued to stare; at the beautiful iridescence of the plumage, the long beak which I didn’t have to cut now, but mostly at the head dropping down over my forefinger. I hadn’t squeezed him or been rough with him in any way but he was dead. It must have been sheer fright.
Mrs. Dodds and I looked at each other in horror and I hardly dared turn my head towards Mrs. Tompkins. When I did, I was surprised to see that she was still nodding and smiling.
I drew her neighbour to one side. “Mrs. Dodds, how much does she see?”
“Oh she’s very short sighted but she’s right vain despite her age. Never would wear glasses. She’s hard of hearin’, too.”
“Well look,” I said. My heart was still pounding. “I just don’t know what to do. If I tell her about this the shock will be terrible. Anything could happen.”
Mrs. Dodds nodded, stricken-faced. “Aye, you’re right. She’s that attached to the little thing.”
“I can only think of one alternative,” I whispered. “Do you know where I can get another budgie?”
Mrs. Dodds thought for a moment. “You could try Jack Almond at t’town end. I think he keeps birds.”
I cleared my throat but even then my voice came out in a dry croak. “Mrs. Tompkin, I’m just going to take Peter along to the surgery to do this job. I won’t be long.”
I left her still nodding and smiling and, cage in hand, fled into the street. I was at the town end and knocking at Jack Almond’s door within three minutes.
“Mr. Almond?” I asked of the stout shirt-sleeved man who answered.
“That’s right young man.” He gave me a slow, placid smile.
“Do you keep birds?”
He drew himself up with dignity. “I do, and I’m t’president of the Darrowby and Houlton Cage Bird Society.”
“Fine,” I said breathlessly. “Have you got a green budgie?”
“Ah’ve got Canaries, Budgies, Parrots, Parraqueets. Cockatoos…”
“I just want a budgie.”
“Well ah’ve got Albinos, Blue-greens, Barreds, Lutinos…”
“I just want a green one.”
A slightly pained expression flitted across the man’s face as though he found my attitude of haste somewhat unseemly.
“Aye…well, well go and have a look,” he said.
I followed him as he paced unhurriedly through the house into the back yard which was largely given over to a long shed containing a bewildering variety of birds.
Mr. Almond gazed at them with gentle pride and his mouth opened as though he was about to launch into a dissertation then he seemed to remember that he had an impatient chap to deal with and dragged himself back to the job in hand.
“There’s a nice little green ’un here. But he’s a bit older than t’others. Matter of fact I’ve got ’im talkin’.”
“All the better, just the thing. How much do you want for him?”
“But…there’s some nice ’uns along here. Just let me show you…”
I put a hand on his arm. “I want that one. How much?”
He pursed his lips in frustration then shrugged his shoulders.
“Ten bob.”
“Right. Bung him in this cage.”
As I sped back up the road I looked in the driving mirror and could see the poor man regarding me sadly from his doorway.
Mrs. Dodds was waiting for me back at Jasmine Terrace.
“Do you think I’m doing the right thing?” I asked her in a whisper.
“I’m sure you are,” she replied. “Poor awd thing, she hasn’t much to think about and I’m sure she’d fret over Peter.”
“That’s what I thought.” I made my way into the living room.
Mrs. Tompkin smiled at me as I went in. “That wasn’t a long job, Mr. Herriot.”
“No,” I said, hanging the cage with the new bird up in its place by the window. “I think you’ll find all is well now.”
It was months before I had the courage to put my hand into a budgie’s cage again. In fact to this day I prefer it if the owners will lift the birds out for me. People look at me strangely when I ask them to do this; I believe they think I am scared the little things might bite me.
It was a long time, too, before I dared go back to Mrs. Tompkin’s but I was driving down Jasmine Terrace one day and on an impulse I stopped outside Number 14.
The old lady herself came to the door.
“How…” I said, “How is…er…?”
She peered at me closely for a moment then laughed. “Oh I see who it is now. You mean Peter, don’t you, Mr. Herriot. Oh ’e’s just grand. Come in and see ’im.”
In the little room the cage still hung by the window and Peter the Second took a quick look at me then put on a little act for my benefit; he hopped around the bars of the cage, ran up and down his ladder and rang his little bell a couple of times before returning to his perch.
His mistress reached up, tapped the metal and looked lovingly at him.
“You know, you wouldn’t believe it,” she said. “He’s like a different bird.”
I swallowed. “Is that so? In what way?”
“Well he’s so active now. Lively as can be
. You know ’e chatters to me all day long. It’s wonderful what cuttin’ a beak can do.”
33
THE NAME WAS ON the garden gate—Lilac Cottage. I pulled out my list of visits and checked the entry again. “Cook, Lilac Cottage, Marston Hall. Bitch overdue for whelping.” This was the place all right, standing in the grounds of the Hall, a nineteenth century mansion house whose rounded turrets reared above the fringe of pine tree less than half a mile away.
The door was opened by a heavy featured dark woman of about sixty who regarded me unsmilingly.
“Good morning, Mrs. Cook,” I said. “I’ve come to see your bitch.”
She still didn’t smile. “Oh, very well. You’d better come in.”
She led me into the small living room and as a little Yorkshire Terrier jumped down from an armchair her manner changed.
“Come here, Cindy my darlin’,” she cooed. “This gentleman’s come to make you better.” She bent down and stroked the little animal, her face radiant with affection.
I sat down in another armchair. “Well what’s the trouble, Mrs. Cook?”
“Oh I’m worried to death.” She clasped her hands anxiously. “She should have had her pups yesterday and there’s nothing happenin’. Ah couldn’t sleep all night—I’d die if anything happened to this dog.”
I looked at the terrier, tail wagging, gazing up, bright-eyed under her mistress’ caress. “She doesn’t seem distressed at all. Has she shown any signs of labour?”
“What d’you mean?”
“Well, has she been panting or uneasy in any way? Is there any discharge?”
“No, nothing like that.”
I beckoned to Cindy and spoke to her and she came timidly across the lino till I was able to lift her on to my lap. I palpated the distended abdomen; there were a lot of pups in there but everything appeared normal. I took her temperature—normal again.
“Bring me some warm water and soap, Mrs. Cook, will you please?” I said. The terrier was so small that I had to use my little finger, soaped and disinfected, to examine her, and as I felt carefully forward the walls of the vagina were dry and clinging and the cervix, when I reached it, tightly closed.