All Things Wise and Wonderful Read online

  “For God’s sake, have a care, Mr. Herriot!” he gasped at last.

  I looked up from my work. “What’s wrong, Rory?”

  “Watch what you’re doin’ with that bloody knife! You’re whippin’ it round between me legs like a bloody Red Indian. You’ll do me a mischief afore you’ve finished!”

  “Aye, be careful, Mr. Herriot,” the young farmer cried. “Don’t geld Rory instead of the pig. His missus ud never forgive ye.” He burst into a loud peal of laughter, the Irishman grinned sheepishly and I giggled.

  That was my undoing because the momentary inattention sent the blade slicing across my left forefinger. The razor-sharp edge went deep and in an instant the entire neighborhood seemed flooded with my blood. I thought I would never stanch the flow. The red ooze continued, despite a long session of self-doctoring from the car boot, and when I finally drove away my finger was swathed in the biggest, clumsiest dressing I had ever seen. I had finally been forced to apply a large pad of cotton wool held in place with an enormous length of three-inch bandage.

  It was dark when I left the farm. About five o’clock on a late December day, the light gone early and the stars beginning to show in a frosty sky. I drove slowly, the enormous finger jutting upwards from the wheel, pointing the way between the headlights like a guiding beacon. I was within half a mile of Darrowby with the lights of the little town beginning to wink between the bare roadside branches when a car approached, went past, then I heard a squeal of brakes as it stopped and began to double back.

  It passed me again, drew into the side and I saw a frantically waving arm. I pulled up and a young man jumped from the driving seat and ran towards me.

  He pushed his head in at the window. “Are you the vet?” His voice was breathless, panic-stricken.

  “Yes, I am.”

  “Oh thank God! We’re passing through on the way to Manchester and we’ve been to your surgery … they said you were out this way … described your car. Please help us!”

  “What’s the trouble?”

  “It’s our dog … in the back of the car. He’s got a ball stuck in his throat. I … I think he might be dead.”

  I was out of my seat and running along the road before he had finished. It was a big white saloon and in the darkness of the back seat a wailing chorus issued from several little heads silhouetted against the glass.

  I tore open the door and the wailing took on words.

  “Oh Benny, Benny, Benny …!”

  I dimly discerned a large dog spread over the knees of four small children. “Oh Daddy, he’s dead, he’s dead!”

  “Let’s have him out,” I gasped, and as the young man pulled on the forelegs I supported the body, which slid and toppled on to the tarmac with a horrible limpness.

  I pawed at the hairy form. “I can’t see a bloody thing! Help me pull him round.”

  We dragged the unresisting bulk into the headlights’ glare and I could see it all. A huge, beautiful collie in his luxuriant prime, mouth gaping, tongue lolling, eyes staring lifelessly at nothing. He wasn’t breathing.

  The young father took one look then gripped his head with both hands. “Oh God, oh God …” From within the car I heard the quiet sobbing of his wife and the piercing cries from the back. “Benny … Benny …”

  I grabbed the man’s shoulder and shouted at him. “What did you say about a ball?”

  “It’s in his throat … I’ve had my fingers in his mouth for ages but I couldn’t move it.” The words came mumbling up from beneath the bent head.

  I pushed my hand into the mouth and I could feel it all right. A sphere of hard solid rubber not much bigger than a golf ball and jammed like a cork in the pharynx, effectively blocking the trachea. I scrabbled feverishly at the wet smoothness but there was nothing to get hold of. It took me about three seconds to realise that no human agency would ever get the ball out that way and without thinking I withdrew my hands, braced both thumbs behind the angle of the lower jaw and pushed.

  The ball shot forth, bounced on the frosty road and rolled sadly on to the grass verge. I touched the corneal surface of the eye. No reflex. I slumped to my knees, burdened by the hopeless regret that I hadn’t had the chance to do this just a bit sooner. The only function I could perform now was to take the body back to Skeldale House for disposal. I couldn’t allow the family to drive to Manchester with a dead dog. But I wished fervently that I had been able to do more, and as I passed my hand along the richly coloured coat over the ribs the vast bandaged finger stood out like a symbol of my helplessness.

  It was when I was gazing dully at the finger, the heel of my hand resting in an intercostal space, that I felt the faintest flutter from below.

  I jerked upright with a hoarse cry. “His heart’s still beating! He’s not gone yet!” I began to work on the dog with all I had. And out there in the darkness of that lonely country road it wasn’t much. No stimulant injections, no oxygen cylinders or intratracheal tubes. But I depressed his chest with my palms every three seconds in the old-fashioned way, willing the dog to breathe as the eyes still stared at nothing. Every now and then I blew desperately down the throat or probed between the ribs for that almost imperceptible beat.

  I don’t know which I noticed first, the slight twitch of an eyelid or the small lift of the ribs which pulled the icy Yorkshire air into his lungs. Maybe they both happened at once but from that moment everything was dreamlike and wonderful. I lost count of time as I sat there while the breathing became deep and regular and the animal began to be aware of his surroundings; and by the time he started to look around him and twitch his tail tentatively I realised suddenly that I was stiff-jointed and almost frozen to the spot.

  With some difficulty I got up and watched in disbelief as the collie staggered to his feet. The young father ushered him round to the back where he was received with screams of delight.

  The man seemed stunned. Throughout the recovery he had kept muttering, “You just flicked that ball out … just flicked it out Why didn’t I think of that …?” And when he turned to me before leaving he appeared to be still in a state of shock.

  “I don’t … I don’t know how to thank you,” he said huskily. “It’s a miracle.” He leaned against the car for a second. “And now what is your fee? How much do I owe you?”

  I rubbed my chin. I had used no drugs. The only expenditure had been time.

  “Five bob,” I said. “And never let him play with such a little ball again.”

  He handed the money over, shook my hand and drove away. His wife, who had never left her place, waved as she left, but my greatest reward was in the last shadowy glimpse of the back seat where little arms twined around the dog, hugging him ecstatically, and in the cries, thankful and joyous, fading into the night.

  “Benny … Benny … Benny …”

  Vets often wonder after a patient’s recovery just how much credit they might take. Maybe it would have got better without treatment—it happened sometimes; it was difficult to be sure.

  But when you know without a shadow of a doubt that even without doing anything clever, you have pulled an animal back from the brink of death into the living, breathing world, it is a satisfaction which lingers, flowing like balm over the discomforts and frustrations of veterinary practice, making everything right.

  Yet, in the case of Benny the whole thing had an unreal quality. I never even glimpsed the faces of those happy children nor that of their mother huddled in the front seat. I had a vague impression of their father but he had spent most of the time with his head in his hands. I wouldn’t have known him if I met him in the street. Even the dog, in the unnatural glare of the headlights, was a blurred memory.

  It seemed the family had the same feeling because a week later I had a pleasant letter from the mother. She apologised for skulking out of the way so shamelessly, she thanked me for saving the life of their beloved dog who was now prancing around with the children as though nothing had happened, and she finished with the regret that she hadn