Ever by My Side (29 page)

For all her craziness, perhaps Sophie’s most appealing trait was the way she relished the diligent attention Whitney bestowed upon her. Our photo albums are full of pictures of Sophie wearing a pink and blue floral shower cap, utterly content to be driven around the house in a wicker baby carriage.

In Arizona, the swimming pool is often seen as a necessity, not a luxury, and pool-related pet deaths are a very real concern. I had heard of an obese Corgi who fell into a black gunnite pool and was unable to climb the stairs to get out. The thought of that poor animal paddling around to the point of exhaustion, until he finally slipped beneath the water, only to be discovered later the same day by the family, is a truly haunting image. For this very reason, Sophie joined Emily in swimming lessons with particular attention to the art of the exit. I need not have worried. Sophie demonstrated Herculean strength for her size, not only able to pull herself up the metal rungs but especially nimble when it came to mounting a flotation device such as a boogie board. This is not a natural movement for a dog, but Sophie had drive and determination in spades. Once up she would stand there, hanging ten, content to cruise around on the current. Seeing her there with limp hair clinging to pale skin, I realized I would have to be particularly careful to guard against possible sunburn. Reggie was a shade seeker, smart enough to avoid the heat of the day. Sophie needed to be taught. I didn’t fancy lathering her up with SPF 45 for six months of the year!

When it came time to have Sophie spayed, I offered to do the job myself.

“Are you sure?” said Kathy.

I was stunned.

“What are you trying to say, you don’t trust me to do a decent job with my own dog?”

She pursed her lips into a pensive kiss before adding, “Of course not. I’m just saying it’s always more difficult operating on your own dog. If something’s going to go wrong, it will go wrong with Sophie and then what will the kids do, especially Whitney?”

I thought about this urban legend, with its threat of inevitable doom—ignore the old wives’ tale at your own peril. Over the years
I have performed surgery, oftentimes minor procedures, on the pets of veterinarians because the owner felt unable to put scalpel on skin when it came to a member of the family. Conceivably it might feel like a conflict of interest, too personal. Perhaps some vets fear the quality of the judgment calls they might make if faced with a crisis. Not me. If something were to go wrong with Sophie’s spay, the kids would never forgive me if I was
not
the one in control. And fortunately, Sophie’s surgery was uneventful.

Given Sophie’s apparent desire to learn, I was quite surprised to discover Jack Russell terriers lie outside the top ten most intelligent breeds of dog. How could that be? Even as a young dog, Sophie excelled at predicting when my wife or I were coming home, sensing the arrival of a car in the driveway minutes before one appeared. Moreover, on one occasion, she demonstrated her superior intellect with some quick thinking, ultimately saving me thousands of dollars.

We taught Sophie to sleep in her crate in a large mudroom off the kitchen, quite a distance from our bedroom. Slumber parties with Whitney had been attempted, but as a young dog Sophie refused to settle; you know the type, the kid who eats too much candy and won’t shut up and go to sleep as she rides a sugar high into the wee hours. The crate door was left open, but there was a kiddie gate blocking her exit from the room, otherwise she would sneak a visit to Whitney.

The mudroom housed our washer and dryer, and in the middle of the night a main water pipe to the washing machine burst. Sophie knew just what to do. She was too far down the other end of the house for her barking to be heard and besides, the AC was running in our bedroom, further muffling her cries for help. Gifted in
the art of vertical takeoffs, she cleared the two-foot-high fence, raced into the bedroom, and leapt onto our bed, a distressed, soaking-wet fur ball. As unpleasant and unexpected as her nocturnal greeting was, I appreciated the fact that her prompt action had prevented some major flood damage to our home.

Despite my father’s foreboding, Sophie turned into a receptive and accomplished lapdog. In fact, on several occasions, I have caught him in moments of weakness, conceding to her winning charm. Her innate kindness seems to overpower her flashes of independent spirit and I have found myself wishing I had made the time to train her as a therapy dog. Recently, however, I heard a story that reminded me why Sophie was probably not best suited for work in a hospice or elderly care facility.

Liz Henderson and her eight-year-old golden retriever, Rommy, came to see me for a problem that was, according to the owner, the troubling ailment “hip displeasure.” As we talked she informed me that Rommy had briefly been a therapy dog, and given the creature’s vivacious personality I was not the least bit surprised.

“Unfortunately she got fired from the hospital,” she said.

“What?” I said. “You’re joking, right? Not this dog!”

Ms. Henderson smiled

“Let me tell you a funny anecdote,” she said. “Rommy is your typical retriever, loves to retrieve—socks, sticks, and best of all, balls, especially tennis balls.”

“Sounds like my Jack Russell,” I said.

“She goes nuts for tennis balls. She had been doing great in her basic training, approved to go to the hospital and pay some of the elderly patients a visit, and they loved her.”

What’s not to love, I thought.

“It was all going so well, until she spied an old woman working her way along a corridor on a walker. Rommy saw her, saw the walker,
and bolted. Somehow we managed to pry her off and thankfully the old lady didn’t get bowled over and break a bone.”

“I don’t get it. Did the woman do something to make Rommy freak out?”

Ms. Henderson laughed.

“Not the woman. The walker,” she said. “At the bottom of all four feet were tennis balls. Bright green tennis balls. Rommy just thought it was time to play.”

And right there and then I realized why Sophie could never have made it as a therapy dog. She might not have the momentum to bowl you over, but one glimpse of a tennis ball and she’d never let go.

For a while, even before we acquired Sophie, a general unease had been brewing about raising our family in a desert environment. I am at pains to point out that the folks of Arizona could not have been friendlier; the place was brimming with well-meaning and warm hospitality. Heck, after my experiences in New England, I was taken aback the very first time I went for a hike down a desert trail and strangers stopped me to wish me well or to bid me a good morning instead of the familiar silence, glum faces, and downcast eyes. And this bonhomie extended into neighborhoods, to some of the most reliable, attentive, genuine people I have ever had the pleasure of knowing as part of my community. Yet, at times, particularly holidays, I started to realize how the hand of friendship only heightened my awareness of the absence of family.

Be it England, or New England, there is something about seasons, about grass and leaves, about snow and stifling humidity that just feels right. It is about what you know, what you grew up with,
and wanting your children’s experiences to parallel your own, creating opportunities to share memories. The alien desert environment made me feel so much further away from my parents and moreover this unaccustomed world seemed to offer new dangers at every turn. What was with all the sandstorms, flash floods, and plagues of killer bees? Were we irresponsible parents for nurturing our children in this land of peril? And, of all the hazardous pests we faced, none was more revered than the bark scorpion, a tiny translucent critter capable of inducing seizures in small children. I lived in perpetual fear that one would cross paths with Emily, and then, one morning at breakfast, my wife discovered the unthinkable.

“I knew it,” she said, swatting the newspaper with the back of her hand. “It was only a matter of time.”

“What was a matter of time?”

“Death due to scorpion sting. Right here. Killed a man.”

The paper was shuffled across the table and I was directed to the appropriate article.

“What you neglected to point out,” I said, “was the fact that the man was one hundred and two years old and in renal failure.”

Kathy shooed away my pedantry, as though these additional facts were inconsequential. Scorpions killed people and therefore, knowing our luck, one of our children was likely to be next. Quite the leap, I know, but the very fact that these connections were being made told me it was time for us to leave this arid world and return to somewhere that resonated with our past.

Maybe this was why a phone call from my father helped me realize that the decision to head back east was right, confirmation of something I had known I had to do for some time.

Fifteen years earlier it had come in the middle of a school day, a call taken in a headmaster’s office. Now it came in the middle of the night, a painful reminder of time zones, of distance and even
abandonment. But there was my father’s voice fighting for traction, the exact same pain as before, taking me back in time.

“I’m so sorry to wake you, son, but I needed to let you know. Whiskey had to be put to sleep this morning.”

He began to bring me up to speed and as he spoke, instead of feeling involved and included, I felt detached and absent, as though this must be happening to someone else’s father. For the first time since leaving Britain, I wondered if any of his friends in the village had asked, “Isn’t your son a veterinarian? What does he think is wrong?” And that brought me to a far more disturbing question: What would Dad have said in reply?

“All of a sudden Whiskey became very unsteady on his back legs, so I took him to our vet, and he said he thought he’d had a stroke of some sort, gave him a shot, and for a couple of days he seemed to get better.”

There was never a trace of finger pointing from my father. It was all in my head, in the inferences and the pauses where I could find my failings. How long had this been going on? Why didn’t Dad call me when it first started? Did he feel as though I had nothing to offer so there was no point in even trying, forced to place his trust in “our vet” when all he had ever wanted was to place his trust in his son?

“Then it happened again, at least I think so, perhaps another stroke, leaving him completely unable to stand and worse, he seemed to have lost his sight. I couldn’t see him suffer like that. You understand why I had to put him to sleep?”

I did, and I supported his decision absolutely. Whiskey was fourteen years old, a fine age for any dog, especially a golden retriever. But I couldn’t help but think it should have been me delivering a dose of mercy.

“I’m sorry I couldn’t have been there, to help I mean.”

“I know you are. Of course. And I understand. It’s just the way it is.”

And I knew he did, but part of me wanted to argue, the self-destructive guilty part, the part that said I should have been a general practice veterinarian, working within easy driving distance. We all make choices, we chart a certain course, committing to it for better or for worse. Becoming a surgical specialist was right for me and so was living in America. But maybe I had begun to use this distance as an excuse, a subconscious justification for a hands-off approach to the animals in my parents’ life, as though I was so remote as to be worthless.

“How was he, with the vet I mean?”

Knowing Whiskey, I imagined an ordeal, the need for heavy sedation, a rough-and-tumble battle to gain access to a vein. In short, I worried it was something other than a graceful, painless goodbye.

Dad surprised me.

“He was good. Didn’t growl. Didn’t put up a fight. I think that tells you right there the kind of state he was in.”

I heard him swallow hard and could imagine my father’s proud smile, his lion-hearted little fellow finally behaving himself on this, his last visit with a veterinarian.

“Yes,” I said. “If Whiskey wasn’t trying to bite the vet’s hand off he had to be in a pretty bad way.”

For a moment the two of us were silent, comfortable with our memories—of the skinny puppy who beat parvovirus, the wayward Casanova using his charms to avoid getting neutered, the affectionate, loyal retriever that craved human touch.