Ever by My Side (9 page)

Dad thanked him for the offer and after a few minutes Arthur returned with a small white envelope containing half a dozen bright orange tablets.

“Next time,” said Arthur, sliding them across the counter and jutting out his chin, his chubby lips curved downward into the frown of someone who knows best.

Dad thanked him once again with an appreciative nod, but when he glanced down at me to say, “Let’s go,” I sensed he remained haunted by a mixture of skepticism and guilt for having nurtured a dog who required chemical sedation to come out in public.

To put Patch’s antics in some kind of context, I can look back on my career as a veterinarian and realize that sadly, he would be right up there with my top ten all-time nightmare encounters. I’m no behaviorist but Patch seemed motivated by a dangerous combination of fear, dominance, and desire to protect his pack—me and my dad. Sometimes you can try removing the dog from the owner, but with Patch there would have been no separating him from those he was sworn to defend at all cost.

If I had been in Mr. Jones’s shoes, I would have been rolling my eyes and shaking my head the moment Patch was out of my sight. It may seem inconsequential, but as an owner who acknowledged his pet’s bad behavior, my father at least had one saving grace. An owner who appreciates there is a problem is always preferable to the smiling owner who quips as a pair of canine teeth sinks deep into your flesh, “Oh, yeah, I forgot to mention … sometimes he gets snippy!”

As I entered my teenage years, my inner nerd began to stir. I was the geek who craved a chemistry set (so long as I could try to make a bomb), was enthralled by any television show featuring Sir David Attenborough, and, though I dared not tell a living soul, actually enjoyed algebra. It became apparent that if I kept to the sciences and stayed far away from anything involving the English language, it was possible that I might just make something of myself. It was at this point that my father’s inclination to coddle my academic efforts began to change. Don’t get me wrong, my father’s aspirations for his son were always well intentioned—consistent nudges interlaced with remembrances of his own failings in school, all aimed at preventing a similar calamity. But as I began to savor the feel of primitive peach fuzz on my cheeks and the first crack in my choirboy vowels, I noticed a shift in his focus on my scholarly success to bigger issues of career and even destiny. It wasn’t long before the time-honored question, savored by so many parents and grandparents, finally emerged from his lips.

“So, son, what do you want to be when you grow up?”

To this day, I’m not exactly sure how I broadcast my curiosity about the life of a veterinarian, but my father jumped all over this spark of interest and soon arranged an intense one-day immersion
program, at the very same practice I had visited with Patch years earlier.

Eager to make a good impression, I was worried that I would be perceived as an accomplice to Patch’s bad behavior. I tried to convince myself that enough time had passed since the troubling encounter with Mr. Jones and besides, I was assigned to a different doctor in the practice, the man I would come to think of as our family veterinarian, Ryan James. I’ve written about this fateful day elsewhere, how James took an ambivalent schoolboy and somehow made him feel important, made him feel instantly and profoundly connected, and integral to his work of healing sick animals. The effect was both intoxicating and overpowering, though I cringed during my first few introductions to coworkers when Ryan said, “This is Nick. His dad brings in Patch.”

My fear of being negatively associated with my pet’s disposition was completely unwarranted. Sure, that one word,
Patch
, was all it took for some staff members, including Arthur Stone (whose initial failure to recognize me reinforced my conviction that I must be in the throes of a dramatic pubescent transformation), to give me a look that ranged from knowing to withering. And yes, Patch’s notoriety may have been more Manson than Monroe and clearly he had made a lasting impression, with folkloric staying power. But, more telling than any unwanted recognition and in keeping with that wonderful day was the way in which neither my father nor I was ever made to feel irresponsible or negligent. Patch was never criticized for his behavior. He was simply another facet of the veterinarian’s challenge, a difficult dog who misunderstood our intent. From that very first day I was already beginning to see Patch’s societal failings in a different light.

As a parent, it doesn’t get much sweeter than having a child who believes he or she has found a calling in life. Aimless drifting,
speculation, or passing interest is suddenly replaced by direction, motivation, and a clear-cut goal. For my dad, with his lifelong desire for me to discover a meaningful path, it appeared to be a dream come true. As evidence of his overwhelming support for my fledgling career path, he underwent a bizarre metamorphosis from which he has never truly recovered.

It began innocently enough with the sudden appearance of two new accoutrements for his walks with Patch. Both items consistently bothered me. They seemed so affected and unnecessary for a man about to turn forty. I’m talking about a flat cloth cap and a simple wooden walking stick. It was as if Dad sought an air of working-class practicality, a rural motif, despite his tendency to use the stick like a London gentleman uses an umbrella, snapping his wrists and striking out with the metal tip at every stride.

There followed the appearance of numerous James Herriot books conspicuously placed on bedside tables, kitchen counters, and sofa arms, spines split and pages well thumbed. And when my father sensed I was ignoring his bait, he switched mediums from paper to television, watching countless hours of the highly acclaimed BBC TV series
All Creatures Great and Small
.

“I don’t think you’ve seen this one, son. I’ve recorded it, so no rush. Mum and I can wait until you’re finished with your homework.”

Eventually this sixteen-year-old boy gave in and one night I joined them on the sofa with Patch at our feet, stretched out across the carpet. I couldn’t help but notice how the opening theme music seemed to cue up a sense of relaxation and contentment in my father and as the show progressed, I would glance over at him, studying his face in the flickering light, a witness to a phenomenon akin to hypnotism. The man sat mesmerized, entranced by the location and the characters, by the big moody skies and the even moodier big farmers. It was a wonderful show but for my father it appeared
to be much more than entertainment. Sitting in front of the screen, the tired VHS tape rolling across the heads one more time, I would watch as his lips synchronized with the dialogue, as if he were participating in an evangelical service. Herriot’s books had become his bible, the author’s veterinary lifestyle revered like a new religion. As the hour-long period of worship drew to a close, I wondered if I recognized another possibility in his facial expressions. Was he daring to imagine a future for his son the veterinarian in the Yorkshire Dales? Was he mentally gesturing to the rolling landscape on the screen and saying, “This can be yours”? Or was his dream even more personal and intertwined, something more like “This can be ours.”

I should not have been surprised when my father acquired a broad Yorkshire accent almost overnight. It is worth noting that the folks who hail from Yorkshire are a proud race of people. As Herriot is obliged to point out in his writing, they are suspicious and wary of strangers, a label applied to any man or woman born outside the boundaries of the largest Shire in England. They can make New Englanders look positively warm and fuzzy. My father was born in Zimbabwe, the only son of a Royal Air Force flying instructor, stationed in what was then Salisbury, Rhodesia, at the start of World War II. His pretending to hail from Yorkshire was like a Bostonian insisting he was a loyal and lifelong Yankees fan.

Armed with an incentive and a new vocabulary, Dad found the desire to mimic his hero from the Dales irresistible, and was eager to apply Herriot’s rural terminology whenever possible. When friends called and I was busy doing homework they were informed that I was “out on a farrowing” even though I had never seen a sow in labor let alone assisted in the delivery of piglets. If I came home after curfew, he would inform my mother that I had been “out while all hours” and if I looked the worse for wear he would declare that I had “eyes like chapel hat pegs.” He would say “t” instead of
“the,” “summat” instead of “something”; nothing became “nowt.” On one occasion I asked if Fiona and I could go on a school ski trip to Italy and he replied, “I’m sure the world is full of wonderful places, and good luck to them that goes to see them, but just give me that parlor down at Mr. Dents and Marian behind the bar, the dominoes clicking and them logs roaring up the chimney, and you can keep all your Monte Carlos.”

Sometimes I questioned who really wanted to become a vet the most and this led me to another logical possibility. Patch was a proven disaster around strangers and veterinarians, but what if his veterinarian was someone he trusted? Was Dad trying to cajole me into a profession for practical purposes, so he never had to endure the embarrassment of another veterinary visit with his unruly dog? Even if I was lucky enough and smart enough to become a veterinarian, it would be years before I was qualified to practice, much too far into the future to benefit Patch. Was Dad planning ahead, certain he would always have companionship with incorrigible canines?

While those awkward teenage years afford adolescents and their beleaguered parents an opportunity to discover a new and strained relationship, our bond to our pets remains an unwavering constant. In relative terms, Patch may have progressively shrunk in stature from when I was a little boy, but his presence was always inescapable and reassuring. When I went to my first church hall disco, heard the opening riff to Lionel Ritchie’s “Three Times a Lady,” and plucked up the courage to ask a girl for a dance only to have her laugh at my effrontery, who was there for me to hug when I got home? After promising myself that I would never experiment with Southern Comfort again, on whose head did I lay my hand to ground me as the room continued to spin? And, in those days before cell phones and any semblance of responsibility, when I wandered home
at two in the morning only to find my father sick with worry and waiting up for me, who understood my excuses and appreciated the sincerity in my apology? Patch and I had both grown older together, though, according to my parents, he was the only one who had acquired any wisdom. I never took him for granted; he just … was, amenable to affection so long as the contact was tough and manly. Patch didn’t do “pet the dog” and on the journey into manhood, this kind of interaction suited me just fine.

Patch’s morning stiffness, first reported to Mr. Jones all those years before, started to become increasingly problematic as he began to age. It took longer and longer for him to warm out of it and in the end he simply could not walk as far. He chased rabbits less frequently. He’d spot a bouncing white tail, mull it over, and decide to let it go, as if he had calculated the price to be paid for such bursts of energy was too high.

Hip arthritis was suggested to be the most likely cause (hip dysplasia, abnormal development of the hip joint, being rife among German shepherds of that era). Anti-inflammatory medications were prescribed, and back then veterinarians had very few options to choose from. Patch was put on a drug called phenylbutazone, a powerful pain reliever more commonly used in horses that went by the nickname “Bute.” These little red pills worked their magic and thankfully Patch appeared to have none of the potential side effects of vomiting or diarrhea or signs of abnormal kidney function. He recovered some of his pep, his gait became more fluid, and once more the paperboy and the postman had to be alert to the possibility of a quick, mean dog defending our front door.

Patch must have been about twelve years old when he started to
show signs of something more than just stiffness. As a clinician I see it all the time, particularly in older German shepherds, referred to me for chronic hip arthritis when sadly there is much more going wrong with their back legs. Oftentimes it is hard to appreciate the difference between muscle weakness secondary to long-standing hip issues and the emergence of a new, progressive deterioration in the portion of the spinal cord that feeds nerves into the hind legs. This neurological disease is called degenerative myelopathy and when it first crept into Patch’s life it pretended to be another dimension of his ailing hip function.