All Things Bright and Beautiful Read online

  “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.”

  36

  A FULL SURGERY! BUT 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