Read Trust Me, I'm a Vet Online
Authors: Cathy Woodman
Further down the hill, the stream passes in front of a handful of cottages, all painted pale pink, a shop with a Post Office, a small church and a courtyard of cob-and-thatch barn conversions with ‘For Sale’ signs outside, which make up the vast metropolis of Talyford. I park in front of one of the cottages, the Old Forge, and make my way across a wrought-iron footbridge over the stream to the front door.
I knock, but there’s no answer and, remembering that this is Devon and therefore nothing happens in a hurry, I wait for a couple of minutes before knocking again. A dog whines from the distance, and eventually the door opens and a woman who’s a few years older than me greets me from a wheelchair. I notice her purple eyeliner and her smock, splashed with paint.
‘Hi. I’m Maz, the vet. Ms Diamond?’
‘It’s Penny. Thank you for coming so quickly . . .’ She spins her chair so she ends up facing down the hall and all I can see is the back of her head: the piece of ragged tie-dyed sheet tied like a bandanna and the wooden beads which adorn her multi-coloured locks of hair. ‘Sally’s this way.’
She waves me passed her into some kind of studio set up with an easel, and stacks of canvasses, some virgin white, others painted with eerie landscapes, some in the stark light of a fiery sun, others dark with slanting rain. I’m not sure how best to describe them: impressionistic or amateurish. Who am I to criticise though, when I can’t draw or paint to save my life?
‘I’m sorry about the mess. When the estate agent described it as bijou, I didn’t appreciate quite how small the place was.’ Penny points towards the far corner of the room. ‘There’s Sally over there. I’m really worried – I’ve never seen her like this.’
I step around the easel, taking care not to tread on any of the tubes of paint scattered across the floor, so I can get close to a rather beautiful Golden Retriever with a pink nose and dark brown eyes. She stands in the corner in a harness attached to a short lead, panting and dribbling, her belly swollen so big she could pass as a cartoon dog.
‘She had Christmas dinner early.’ Penny twists the silver fretwork ring on her finger. ‘She stole mine from the worktop: turkey, sprouts, stuffing, the lot.’
‘When was that?’ I’m trying to keep calm, but I’m looking at Sally and thinking, very sick dog, not much time.
‘About two hours ago. Declan, my carer – he comes in twice a day – took her out for a good run afterwards. “To get her to use up the extra calories,” he said. Apparently, she drank lots from the stream on the way back and, since then, her stomach’s been getting bigger and bigger.’ Penny’s freckled face crumples. ‘I’m afraid she’s going to burst.’
The dog groans and retches. Strings of saliva dangle from her jowls and make a sticky pool on the floor.
‘Is there something you can do? An injection? Tablets?’
‘I wish it was that simple. I’m going to have to take her straight to the surgery. She might have to stay with us for a while.’
‘I don’t think I can bear the thought of Christmas without her.’
‘It’s a shame, but—’ It’s non-negotiable. If Sally’s got any chance of survival it’s back at Otter House, not here in the wilds of Talyford.
‘I rely on Sally,’ Penny cuts in. ‘She picks things off the floor for me, fetches the phone . . .’
‘I see.’ Now I understand why the dog’s wearing a lead and harness indoors, and I can feel the pressure piling on as Penny chatters on and on as if she can’t stop, a side effect of living alone, I suspect. At least, I’m assuming she lives alone. Opposite the window which looks out onto a tidy lawn and shrubbery, there’s a wall with photos, including wedding pictures of a younger and much slimmer Penny in a 1920s-style ivory dress, standing beside a rather striking groom who has spiky hair and red drainpipe trousers.
‘It’s serious, isn’t it?’ Penny’s voice quavers. ‘I can tell from your face. She isn’t going to die . . . ?’
Not if I can help it, I think, but I refrain from giving grounds for optimism. I don’t want to raise Penny’s hopes.
‘Is there anyone who can be with you? Anyone you can go and stay with?’ I ask, worried about how she’ll cope, practically and emotionally.
‘I can’t impose on Declan. He offered to stay all day tomorrow, but I told him he mustn’t because he has his own friends. I can’t ask my sister because she’s in York with her kids. Sally’s my family now. Sally, darling,’ Penny calls. At the sound of the sob which catches in her owner’s throat, the dog looks up momentarily before returning to stare at a paint-spot on the stone floor as if she’s depending on it for her survival. ‘What will I do without you?’
‘Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.’ I take Sally by her lead and coax her out along the hall, following Penny who opens the front door for us. ‘I’ll call you when I have any news.’
Once outside, Sally refuses to clamber into the front of my car so, with the sleet stinging the back of my neck, I have to half lift, half force her in. Her limbs are stiff and her nails scrape the paintwork. Her hard belly pings and pops like gas bubbling through an airlock on a demijohn.
‘For an assistance dog, you aren’t being terribly helpful,’ I tell her as I sit her in the footwell on the passenger side, praying she won’t be sick.
As I drive away, I catch sight of Penny at the window with a tissue pressed to her nose. Life isn’t fair, is it? I can’t imagine what it must be like confined to a wheelchair like that and dependent on other people – and a dog. I’m not sure I’d consider Sally a pair of safe paws.
I call ahead to the practice to ask Frances to warn Izzy to prepare theatre.
‘Izzy isn’t in this afternoon,’ Frances says. ‘She’s gone into Exeter to do some last-minute shopping.’
‘Oh?’ I’d forgotten. ‘You’d better tell Emma then. I’ve got a possible GDV.’
‘What’s that in English, Maz?’ says Frances, then before I can explain that it’s a case of bloat with added complications, she adds, ‘No, don’t worry – I’ve got it.’
‘Cheers, Frances.’ I drive on back across the ford, slowly and steadily in first gear, and right in the middle, the car shudders and rolls to a stop, the engine cuts out, and water starts flooding into the footwell, turning my feet to blocks of ice. Sally clambers onto the passenger seat and starts panting steamy breaths of fermenting sprouts into my face. I fiddle with the key in the ignition and press my foot to the floor, but nothing happens. Banging the steering wheel in frustration I watch helplessly as the headlights of a vehicle come flaring through the rear window behind me, and the driver starts hooting at me to get out of the way.
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