Tea and Dog Biscuits (13 page)

Mr Bradley looked at his watch. It was a very big watch. He was a big man and he had a watch and a car to match.

He gave a forced laugh. ‘This is going to sound terrible – we've only just got here – but we'll have to shoot off pretty soon.'

Dorothy opened her mouth to speak – I put my hand on her arm. ‘We'll run through what we need to know as quickly as we can,' I said.

He opened the tailgate of his big four-wheel drive. The darkened windows had kept the dog inside a mystery up to now. But there she was: a long-coat Shepherd. Oh, how I'd always wanted a long-coat for myself. She stood up, wagged her tail and came forward.

I turned to Dorothy. ‘She's gorgeous!'

Her colouring was more black and gold than the traditional black and tan. I cannot think of any other breed of pedigree dog that has so many variations in colour and appearance. Black and tan, all-black, white, cream, the rare blue Shepherd, the even scarcer palomino Shepherd, the short-coat, the medium-coat, the heavy-coat and the long-coat. Sabrina was a true long-coat. She jumped down and Dorothy clipped a lead on and walked her along the drive. Her coat fluttered in the breeze and she had feathered legs that mud would adhere to later when we walked her in the fields, but for now Mr Bradley had two glamorous females in his life.

And yet it seemed her potential to dazzle admirers had not been fulfilled. Her coat was matted and lacked the sheen I would have expected. She struck me as lethargic, her eyes were dull and she was panting.

‘Let's take her in and give her some water,' Dorothy said.

In the kitchen I made notes while Mr Bradley told us what a fantastic pedigree she had, how everybody admired her, that as a pup she had cost him £750, and how that did not include the inoculations, for which the breeder had charged him another £45. No, he hadn't brought her bedding or any of her food with him, he'd forgotten. He was sorry about that, he had meant to after I had asked him.

The woman who accompanied him spoke only two or three times, one of the occasions being to chip in that the dog had American breeding in her ancestors. And that the dog was good around horses: she had five horses. One of the reasons they'd got the dog was to guard the stables – but it turned out she ‘would lick any burglar to death'.

While we received all this information Sabrina had found a spot to lie down where the sun that came in through the kitchen window had warmed the floor tiles. Dorothy had taken up residence beside her on the floor. I smiled at them both.

‘We've got ourselves a nice, cosy, sunny spot here, haven't we, Sabrina?' she said.

Mr Bradley raised his arm up and looked at his watch.

‘Don't let us keep you,' said Dorothy.

Mr Bradley and his female companion went out into the hall and Sabrina got up to follow them.

‘What's that?' said Dorothy pointing to the floor where she had lain. A pool of fluid glinted in the sun.

Mr Bradley turned round. He took a deep breath and frowned. ‘That's a problem she's got.' He looked at his female companion. ‘I asked you to remind me about that.'

‘Don't blame me,' was the reply.

Mr Bradley looked at me. ‘It's something she's been doing,' he said.

‘She's leaking urine?' said Dorothy. Her face had become set. ‘How long has that been going on?'

Mr Bradley shook his head. ‘Two or three weeks?'

‘What does the vet say about it?'

Mr Bradley made no reply. Up to then he had struck me as a very confident man but now for a moment he seemed uncomfortable. He didn't look at either Dorothy or me.

‘We have been meaning to take her to the vet,' said the woman. We were going to take her last weekend, but we had arranged to go away on the boat.'

Dorothy stared at the couple, a hostile stare. I had not seen her look at someone like that before.

Mr Bradley took a deep breath and drew himself up. ‘If you don't want her, just say so and we'll take her away again.'

Dorothy's eyes widened. Before she had the chance to speak I held my hand up.

When we decided to start doing dog rescue work, my wife and I had talked about what each of us was best at and who should do what. My dog-handling skills made it obvious that Dorothy should be the one that did most of the work with the dogs when she fully recovered her health. I pointed out – tactfully, I felt – that she did tend to speak her mind rather more than I did.

‘Well, dear, then you deal with any awkward situations with people and I'll deal with the dogs – that'll suit me fine,' she had said.

Whatever our opinion of these people and of how they had neglected their dog, this German Shepherd shouldn't stay with them. We didn't want the people getting in a huff and walking out with her.

I turned my back on the couple and fixed Dorothy with a look to indicate restraint and remind her of the agreement about our respective roles, then turned back to the couple.

‘It's probably only an infection, something not difficult for us to clear up,' I said, trying to sound as casual about it as I could. ‘We've got to go to the vet's today anyway with another dog so we'll take her with us then. Please don't worry about it.'

‘Well… if you're sure,' said Mr Bradley. ‘We don't mind taking her back.'

I wanted to say, No need to put on an act. But I couldn't.

Mr Bradley, his female companion and I went out to the car, leaving Sabrina with Dorothy. I noticed his gleaming black four-wheel drive boasted the latest registration plate. My looking at the car may have prompted him to pause as he was getting in.

‘You obviously do good work. I wouldn't like to think you were out of pocket over this – send us the vet's bill and I'll put a cheque in the post by return.'

‘Thank you,' I said.

I did send the bill for the three visits to the vet but his cheque got lost in the post.

I was beginning to suffer regularly with stomach ache. It was visiting the vet that was the cause of the pain: the size of my bills.

I was grateful that Melissa did what she could to keep the bills down but in reality there was little that could be done other than the occasional suggestion for a cheaper alternative drug or to see two dogs together and put it down as one consultation.

We'd recently decided that as the rehoming work was more time-consuming than we'd expected, one of us – it turned out it had to be me – should go half-time at their job if that could be arranged. So as the money going out went up, money coming in went down.

The number of items on Friend's bill made it look like the week's till receipt from the supermarket. As I wrote the cheque I hoped they wouldn't pay it in that day.

Dorothy read my thoughts. She whispered in my ear, ‘Saturday afternoon – too late to pay in.'

Friend's weekend visit to the vet was visit number five. It had been a mixture of good news and not-so-good news. The improvement in his skin problem was there to be seen, the discharge from his eyes had ceased, his tormented scratching reduced now to what Melissa thought was probably habit. But the reading on the scales still flickered around 20 kilos: we had to get to 35. I felt I had to say to Melissa, ‘He's had a week now on that special veterinary food that costs us about four times the normal stuff – and he hasn't put on an ounce.'

‘Truth is, we've done all the tests we can do here and there is nothing showing up that would cause the weight loss.'

There was silence for several moments in the consulting room. ‘So what do we do now?' I asked.

‘I'd like to send away some blood samples to a laboratory. I do have a suspicion about what's going on but it doesn't always show up in the tests we can do here.'

She must have read the alarm that registered on my face. She smiled broadly and put her hand on my arm. ‘It's all right, Barrie, it isn't something that's fatal.'

‘I'm very grateful you told him that,' said Dorothy. ‘You know what a panicker he is.'

Melissa's smile broadened. ‘I know!' Then the smile disappeared. ‘However… it could take a while for the results to come back. What I'd really like to do is to start treating him now for what I suspect the problem is, namely that his system is not properly digesting food. We really do need to get some weight on him.'

From time to time since Dorothy and I had begun taking on dogs, the realisation would hit me of what we had embarked upon and what was involved: the need for animal-handling skills, the element of danger, the demands on our time, the anxiety of letting the dog go. And now something else was really hitting me: the need for money. To add to all this expenditure on one dog, were we now going to pay for drugs and treatment that might not even be needed?

But Melissa had the answer before I even framed the question. ‘There are drugs we could prescribe – but they're quite expensive…'

I closed my eyes. Both in resignation and as a sign to Melissa that money was now a real worry.

‘… but there is an alternative we could try that would be cheap and, Barrie, can sometimes work even better.'

‘Oh,' I said. ‘I'm already feeling better myself, now.'

Dorothy had been kneeling beside Friend, gently tickling his tummy. He had necessarily been pulled about during examination, had needles stuck in him and a thermometer inserted. But now, thanks to Dorothy, he was lying on his back with a dreamy look on his face.

‘Look at him!' I said, pointing.

‘What I want you to do,' said Melissa, ‘is to feed him pancreas. It has to be fresh and from a pig. And it has to be fed raw.'

I ceased to point at Friend and Dorothy stopped tickling his tummy.

‘I don't suppose you have any reason to know what the pancreas is,' Melissa added. Looking back, I think she must have taken our blank faces to be the result of ignorance of biology, and was being tactful. ‘It's not normally used as food. It's a gland near the stomach that supplies the duodenum with digestive fluid and secretes insulin into the blood.' She paused in her explanation but getting no response ploughed on. ‘I think in this country you can't usually get it from a butcher – you'll have to get it direct from a slaughterhouse.'

Dorothy and I remained motionless. Melissa looked at us, one to the other. ‘I don't know where there's a slaughterhouse,' she said.

‘I'm sure we don't,' Dorothy said. ‘We're both vegetarians.'

The news from Melissa about our glamorous Sabrina had all been good.

I had, of course, panicked once Mr Bradley and his companion had left.

‘Oh, Dorothy, she's been like this for weeks,' I wailed. ‘It might be too late.'

‘Darling, the dog's a female,' she said in calm, matter-of-fact tone. ‘It's probably quite a common female complaint she's got, like cystitis.'

That stilled me for some moments. Then it occurred to me. We couldn't let Friend come into contact with other dogs, so we'd have to take two cars to the vet's and that would mean two lots of petrol…

At the surgery Melissa diagnosed cystitis. ‘Clever clogs,' was my response.

‘What me, you mean?' said Melissa.

‘No, he means me,' said Dorothy. ‘I'd been trying to stop him panicking and sending his blood pressure up. I told him it was probably cystitis. And I made him take an extra blood pressure tablet.'

‘I've had so many scares since we started this rescue work,' I said, ‘I could do with a blood pressure tablet sandwich.'

I was to discover that not all vets were like Melissa. Some seemed to be able to take a more detached view when it came to the welfare of their patients. Even, perhaps, when it came to a matter of life or death.

Mr Treadmore was, it seemed, one such vet, although I never met him. I was, however, to meet one of his young assistants – Luke, who was recently qualified. There was a message from him on the answer machine when we got back home with Friend and Sabrina. He said I didn't know him, he'd got my number from a woman called Cecilia who said I would be discreet, would I please ring him as soon as possible, it was urgent but he didn't want to say any more for now. Puzzled, I rang him immediately.

‘I couldn't say too much earlier,' he said when I phoned. ‘My boss, Mr Treadmore, was still here. I've got a young dog that's been brought in for euthanasia. He's got a lovely temperament. The nurse on duty with me today knows him and says he's fine with people and dogs – and even with cats.'

‘What's wrong with him?' I asked. ‘Why has he got to be euthanised?'

‘He hasn't got to be euthanised, Mr Hawkins. Jess is a happy, healthy, one-year-old dog. The owner wants him destroyed because his girlfriend has left. His girlfriend loves Jess so the guy wants to destroy him to get back at her.'

I shook my head in wonder at the things people were capable of doing.

‘Hello,' said Luke, ‘are you still there?'