James Herriot's Dog Stories Read online

  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 forty-eight 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 enquiringly 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, slipping 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 the