James Herriot's Dog Stories Read online

  I stared at the man. The fact that he might easily have been confronted by a noseless veterinary surgeon did not seem to weigh with him. I looked, too, at his wife standing behind him. She was laughing just as merrily. What was the use of trying to instil reason into these people? They were utterly besotted. All I could do was get on with the job.

  ‘Mr Whithorn,’ I said tautly, ‘will you please hold him again, and this time take a tight grip with your hands on either side of the neck.’

  He looked at me anxiously. ‘But I won’t hurt the little pet?’

  ‘No, no, of course not.’

  ‘All right.’ He placed his cheek against the dog’s face and whispered lovingly, ‘Daddy promises to be gentle, my angel. Don’t worry, sweetheart.’

  He grasped the loose skin of the neck as I directed and I warily recommenced operations. Peering at the interior of the ear, listening to Mr Whithorn’s murmured endearments, I was tensed in readiness for another explosion. But when it came with a ferocious yap I found I was in no danger because Ruffles had turned his attention elsewhere.

  As I dropped the auroscope and jumped back I saw that the dog had sunk his teeth into the ball of his master’s thumb. And it wasn’t an ordinary bite. He was hanging on, grinding deeply into the flesh.

  Mr Whithorn emitted a piercing yell of agony before shaking himself free.

  ‘You rotten little bugger!’ he screamed, dancing around the room, holding the stricken hand. He looked at the blood pouring from the two deep holes, then glared at Ruffles. ‘Oh, you bloody little swine!’

  I thought of Siegfried’s words and of his wish that these people might take a more sensible view of their dogs. Well, this could be a start.

  It is an extraordinary fact that some owners always have nice dogs and others nasty ones. The vast majority of our clients produce generation after generation of friendly little tail-waggers, while others, down through the years, have brought dogs into our surgery whose only ambition seems to be to take a piece out of the vet. And these latter owners do not always spoil their pets – it isn’t as simple as that. I do wish I knew the reason.

  50. The Dustbin Dog

  In the semi-darkness of the surgery passage I thought it was a hideous growth dangling from the side of the dog’s face, but as he came closer I saw that it was only a condensed milk can. Not that condensed milk cans are commonly found sprouting from dogs’ cheeks, but I was relieved because I knew I was dealing with Brandy again.

  I hoisted him on to the table. ‘Brandy, you’ve been at the dustbin again.’

  The big Golden Labrador gave me an apologetic grin and did his best to lick my face. He couldn’t manage it since his tongue was jammed inside the can, but he made up for it by a furious wagging of tail and rear end.

  ‘Oh, Mr Herriot, I am sorry to trouble you again.’ Mrs Westby, his attractive young mistress, smiled ruefully. ‘He just won’t keep out of that dustbin. Sometimes the children and I can get the cans off ourselves but this one is stuck fast. His tongue is trapped under the lid.’

  ‘Yes . . . yes . . .’ I eased my finger along the jagged edge of the metal. ‘It’s a bit tricky, isn’t it? We don’t want to cut his mouth.’

  As I reached for a pair of forceps I thought of the many other occasions when I had done something like this for Brandy. He was one of my patients, a huge, lolloping, slightly goofy animal, but this dustbin raiding was becoming an obsession.

  He liked to fish out a can and lick out the tasty remnants, but his licking was carried out with such dedication that he burrowed deeper and deeper until he got stuck. Again and again he had been freed by his family or myself from fruit salad cans, corned beef cans, baked bean cans, soup cans. There didn’t seem to be any kind of can he didn’t like.

  I gripped the edge of the lid with my forceps and gently bent it back along its length till I was able to lift it away from the tongue. An instant later, that tongue was slobbering all over my cheek as Brandy expressed his delight and thanks.

  ‘Get back, you daft dog!’ I said, laughing, as I held the panting face away from me.

  ‘Yes, come down, Brandy.’ Mrs Westby hauled him from the table and spoke sharply. ‘It’s all very fine making a fuss now, but you’re becoming a nuisance with this business. It will have to stop.’

  The scolding had no effect on the lashing tail and I saw that his mistress was smiling. You just couldn’t help liking Brandy, because he was a great ball of affection and tolerance without an ounce of malice in him.

  I had seen the Westby children – there were three girls and a boy – carrying him around by the legs, upside down, or pushing him in a pram, sometimes dressed in baby clothes. Those youngsters played all sorts of games with him, but he suffered them all with good humour. In fact I am sure he enjoyed them.

  Brandy had other idiosyncrasies apart from his fondness for dustbins.

  I was attending the Westby cat at their home one afternoon when I noticed the dog acting strangely. Mrs Westby was sitting knitting in an armchair while the oldest girl squatted on the hearth rug with me and held the cat’s head.

  It was when I was searching my pockets for my thermometer that I noticed Brandy slinking into the room. He wore a furtive air as he moved across the carpet and sat down with studied carelessness in front of his mistress. After a few moments he began to work his rear end gradually up the front of the chair towards her knees. Absently she took a hand away from her knitting and pushed him down, but he immediately restarted his backward ascent. It was an extraordinary mode of progression, his hips moving in a very slow rumba rhythm as he elevated them inch by inch, and all the time the golden face was blank and innocent as though nothing at all was happening.

  Fascinated, I stopped hunting for my thermometer and watched. Mrs Westby was absorbed in an intricate part of her knitting and didn’t seem to notice that Brandy’s bottom was now firmly parked on her shapely knees which were clad in blue jeans. The dog paused as though acknowledging that phase one had been successfully completed, then ever so gently he began to consolidate his position, pushing his way up the front of the chair with his fore limbs till at one time he was almost standing on his head.

  It was at that moment, just when one final backward heave would have seen the great dog ensconced on her lap, that Mrs Westby finished the tricky bit of knitting and looked up.

  ‘Oh, really, Brandy, you are silly!’ She put a hand on his rump and sent him slithering disconsolately to the carpet where he lay and looked at her with liquid eyes.

  ‘What was all that about?’ I asked.

  Mrs Westby laughed. ‘Oh, it’s these old blue jeans. When Brandy first came here as a tiny puppy I spent hours nursing him on my knee and I used to wear the jeans a lot then. Ever since, even though he’s a grown dog, the very sight of the things makes him try to get on my knee.’

  ‘But he doesn’t just jump up?’

  ‘Oh no,’ she said. ‘He’s tried it and got ticked off. He knows perfectly well I can’t have a huge Labrador in my lap.’

  ‘So now it’s the stealthy approach, eh?’

  She giggled. ‘That’s right. When I’m preoccupied – knitting or reading – sometimes he manages to get nearly all the way up, and if he’s been playing in the mud he makes an awful mess and I have to go and change. That’s when he really does receive a scolding.’

  A patient like Brandy added colour to my daily round. When I was walking my own dog I often saw him playing in the fields by the river. One particularly hot day, many of the dogs were taking to the water either to chase sticks or just to cool off, but whereas they glided in and swam off sedately, Brandy’s approach was unique.

  I watched as he ran up to the river bank, expecting him to pause before entering. But instead he launched himself outwards, legs splayed in a sort of swallow dive, and hung for a moment in the air rather like a flying fox before splashing thunderously into the depths. To me it was the action of a completely happy extrovert.

  On the following day in those