Ever by My Side (12 page)

On only one occasion have I been truly impressed by the power of this genetic tool. A client visited me with what appeared to be a pit bull that had a lameness problem. The dog was fantastic, your typical friendly, rough-and-tumble “pitty” who would not hurt a fly, let alone a human, let alone a child’s face.

“Not everyone shares my enthusiasm for pit bulls,” said the owner. “Many of the households in the neighborhood have small children
and a number of the parents got together to complain about my dog, saying the breed couldn’t be trusted, that it was only a matter of time before one of their kids was attacked.”

“That’s ridiculous,” I said. “You could say that about any dog in the wrong hands.”

“Yeah,” said the owner, “I’m telling you, if you put her in a ring with a rabbit my money would be on the rabbit! But I didn’t want them coming back at me, so I decided to try something I wouldn’t have ordinarily considered—genetically testing my dog to discover what she’s made of. And here’s the thing. She may look like a pit bull and she may act like a pit bull, but according to her DNA test she’s actually a cross between a mastiff and, of all things, a Dalmation. You should have seen the neighbors’ faces when I showed them the official report.”

But I digress, because back then, all you had to do was trust the experience of your veterinarian, and as far as Ryan James could tell, Bess was simply a Lab mix, the “mix” component open to interpretation.

“One good thing going for a Heinz fifty-seven,” James would later inform me, “is the benefit of hybrid vigor.”

“Hopefully,” said James, “Bess will have all the good breed traits and dodge all the bad. Part of the fun of having a mix is not knowing exactly what you’re going to get.”

Where there was ambiguity when it came to heritage, nothing was more indisputable than the puddles of urine and tiny poops abandoned in bizarre locations and the lost sleep due to nocturnal puppy whimpering. By the time my mushy, sleep-deprived brain was remembering not to walk around the house in bare feet, it was time for Mum and Dad to collect Bess’s canine companion. They disappeared one Saturday morning, maintaining their contrived shroud of mystery to the bitter end.

They would concede only one detail, that they would be gone
for at least five hours, giving me more than enough time to ponder the possibilities. For a split second I thought about discussing the matter with my sister, inviting her to make a prediction. Then reality kicked in. Fiona would rather discuss the finer points of calculus or debate symbolism in the novels of Thomas Hardy than speculate about canine matters. And so, as the arrival time approached, I sat alone in our living room, little black Bess pooped out (literally!), curled up and sleeping on my lap, the two of us wondering who and what was about to become her new BFF.

Based on my mother’s recent purchase of royal blue wall-to-wall carpeting for several rooms I couldn’t imagine it would be a dog with a tendency to shed, a dog with a long fur coat of a fair color. Mother had weakened over a black dog with slick short hair reminiscent of an otter. Surely she would lean toward something similar?

I wondered whether she would go for a small dog, following her mother’s penchant for a toy breed. By now Marty had to be about fifty-three years old (okay, sixteen) and he was still going strong. Either he was the Benjamin Button of poodles or my grandma had been pulling off the old goldfish stunt, trading up for a look-alike, keeping the same name and hoping no one noticed. My mum’s cousin Pat bred and showed Tibetan terriers. These are fantastic little dogs, full of vim and vigor, but somehow I didn’t see a small breed of dog in our future. If Bess was going to be approximately Labrador in size, I didn’t imagine Dad striding off to the nearby fields with anything that could wear a pink bow in its head, needed a coat in winter, and could dress up for Halloween. Dad had been enjoying this game. I didn’t believe he would act that way if he wasn’t extremely satisfied with Mum’s choice.

When the car pulled into the driveway, Mum emerged clutching something swaddled in a plaid blanket, tucked tight into her
body, as though she half expected to get jostled by paparazzi and needed to ensure the creature’s anonymity.

“Fiona, they’re back,” I shouted upstairs, not even expecting a reply and therefore surprised to hear feet bounding down the stairs as she ran to join me.

I opened the door for them and stepped back, Dad beaming, Mum behind him, turning slightly away from me and my sister as she tried to heighten the tension. It was like watching an
American Idol
finale and there’s Ryan Seacrest flaunting the sealed envelope with the winner’s name at the camera and you just want to slap him upside the head, grab the envelope, rip it open, and find out who won.

Bess was in my arms, lost to a place where well-fed fat bellies and sleep rule. I watched as my mother crouched down and slowly lowered the contents of her blanket (which I noticed were covered in patches of milky puke) to the carpeted floor.

“Here you go,” she said, beaming in a way that was so surprising, so unexpected, it was all the more affecting. “Here’s Whiskey.”

And out trotted a golden retriever.

Whiskey was male, twelve weeks old and, to my way of thinking, more blond than golden. He too was christened by my father, on the basis of his most obvious traits.

“He was soft, gold, and had plenty of spirit.”

Unfortunately, the term
spirit
was being applied to behavior that most people would define as destructive or willful. Whiskey was endowed with a dangerous combination of good looks, rolls of squishy, cherubic puppy fat, unlimited tail-wagging charm, and a drive that kept him pushing forward, stopping at nothing when it
came to inappropriate chewing, brawling with Bess, and general domestic destruction. He quickly asserted himself as the alpha to Bess’s beta, and you can get a sense of his curb appeal if I tell you that at our first meeting even Fiona rushed forward, picked him up, and cradled him in her arms, applying a lipstick bindi, a red third eye in the center of his broad golden forehead.

Hindsight is like an annoying colleague who always speaks up after the fact, tapping you on the shoulder with a cocky smile, a knowing look, and the phrase “Told you so.” Hopefully we learn from hindsight for the next time because, by definition, the time for its usefulness has already passed. Now, having spoken to a number of animal behaviorists, I know that some of Whiskey’s “spirited” personality traits were related to his age at the time of his adoption. Bad habits in puppies can already be deep-seated at eight weeks. They are by no means irreversible, but by twelve weeks the window of opportunity for meaningful correction is already beginning to close. These days, it’s unusual to pick up a puppy as late as three months from a reputable dog breeder. My father, a man with a less than stellar track record when it came to dog training and socialization, was already, unwittingly, behind the curve.

Whiskey required constant puppy patrol. We always had to be ready with a paper towel, and alert to possible household hazards—electric cables, telephone cords, VCR tapes, potted plants, the list goes on and on. Sure, I did my share of prying tiny teeth off chair and table legs, fed Bess and Whiskey, and shooed them into the backyard, eager to gush over a timely and appropriately placed bowel movement, but I was distracted by the academic demands of high school, given what I would need to achieve in order to have a shot at veterinary school.

“Feel free to give Bess or Whiskey the once-over whenever you want to get some practice,” said Dad. This was the first time he had
used the term
once-over
and it would not be the last. I think Dad put it out there as something I might enjoy doing, good preparation, a useful learning experience. But part of me felt as though I now had an obligation, a new role to fulfill as his personal veterinarian. I had observed Ryan James performing his ritualistic physical exam dozens of times and Dad glowed as I tried to mimic his routine. I didn’t own a stethoscope, not that I would have known what I was listening to, but I could pry open their mouths, squeeze their bellies, and bicycle their limbs. Bess and Whiskey were in perpetual motion, running, squirming in my hands, resistant and mouthy. I didn’t know what I was doing, what I was feeling for, what was normal and what was not. For me it was an exercise in futility, but though my dad said nothing, the glint in his eyes told me he liked what he saw and, more important, what it would surely mean for the dogs in his future.

Whiskey had been with us for less than two weeks when the woman formerly known as my mother struck again.

“I’m going to take Whiskey to school with me. The kids are dying to see him and so is Mrs. Peacock.”

Mrs. Peacock was the school’s headmistress and if Mrs. Peacock and the kids knew about Whiskey, Mum must have been bragging about how impossibly cute and chubby and cuddly he was. The aliens had done a fine job.

Dad looked worried.

“I’m not so sure that’s a good idea. He’s not finished with his shots. I spoke to Mr. James and he suggests keeping them both away from other dogs and people who have dogs until he’s fully vaccinated.”

“Oh, Duncan, don’t be so silly, he’ll be fine.”

And with that she headed off to her car with a golden fur ball tucked under her arm.

We thought no more of it. Later Mum came home from her day at work sporting something akin to a golden retriever bounce in her stride, working hard not to gloat over all the admiration her choice of dog had reaped. Whiskey, on the other hand, seemed beat, content but exhausted after, what for him, must have been a big day, handling his fans, working crowds, and delivering pleasantries.

Two days later I was about to head out to school when we saw the first sign of trouble.

“Careful,” I said, reaching for a paper towel. “Which one of them has thrown up?”

Someone had deposited a silver-dollar-sized dollop of frothy, yellow-green vomit on the kitchen linoleum.

“I’m pretty sure it’s Whiskey,” said Dad and I noticed how he had instinctively turned down the decibels.

“Really,” I said. “Do you think it has something to do with his trip to …?”

Mum walked into the kitchen.

“What?” she said.

Dad and I were clearly busted, so I came clean. “Dad thinks Whiskey is throwing up because you took him with you to your school.”

I grinned. Dad grimaced.

“Oh, it’s probably nothing,” replied Mum. “You used to throw up at the drop of a hat. I’m sure Whiskey will be fine.”

If Mum was worried about being even remotely responsible for Whiskey’s first brush with sickness, she hid it well and to be fair, the fat little fellow seemed relatively chirpy. It wasn’t until I came home from school that I saw reality take a bite out of her apparent indifference.

“Mum, what’s wrong?”

I’d walked through the front door to find Mum speaking into
the phone, tears drying on her cheek. Her mouth moved, emitting a slow series of yeses and noes, but the words weren’t connected to the panic dancing in her eyes.

“Thank you,” she said, and hung up. Mechanically she turned to face me.

“Whiskey is at the vet’s. That was Mr. James. He says Whiskey needs emergency surgery. Right now!”

T
he news went from bad to worse. It turned out Dad had checked in on Whiskey at lunchtime, found him listless and unresponsive, and rushed him straight over to see Ryan James. In different circumstances, office manager Arthur Stone might have quipped over the novelty of my father failing to create chaos in the waiting room with one of his pets, but any temptation to say something impish vanished as soon as he saw the pathetic creature Dad carried in his arms.

“He’s dehydrated, Duncan,” said James. “He’s got a fever and his belly’s very tender to the touch. Any chance he got into anything he shouldn’t?”

Dad thought about the house, the ever-present possibility that an inquisitive puppy could get into trouble if he or she tried hard enough. And then he thought about the trip to the school. Who knew what Whiskey might have gotten into in a kindergarten classroom?

“Don’t know,” he said. “Don’t think so.”

Ryan James must have noticed the hesitation, the uncertainty. He backed up from the examination table on which Whiskey lay wrapped in a towel, unresponsive to his touch.

“Leave him with me. He needs some intravenous fluids and I’m going to want to take an X-ray of his abdomen. See if there’s anything amiss inside.”

A couple of hours later, Mum received a phone call telling her Whiskey’s X-rays appeared to confirm that he had swallowed a ball.

“You can see it in his stomach,” said James. “I’m pretty sure that’s why he keeps being sick. The only way to get it out is surgery. And it’s not going to be easy putting him under anesthesia. He’s very weak and he’s very young but I don’t think we have much choice.”

Mum had given her consent. James promised to call back when it was over. There was nothing left to do but wait, and—though Mum, Dad, Fiona, and I never said it out loud—pray.