My Dog Tulip (17 page)

And nothing ever happened. She flirted and played with them. They flew about together in high spirits. She stood for them from time to time. Nothing ever happened. Sometimes she stood in a perfunctory kind of way, sometimes with seeming purpose, lowering her rump. Sometimes they appeared to be on the mark, she would make her little protest and stand again. Often they clung to her in the unlikeliest places, even her head. She panted, they panted. Some were so exhausted by their efforts that they vomited, bringing up breakfast or lunch. Occasionally they fought among themselves. Fights, out of which, of course, Tulip herself freely skipped, were mostly started by some single dog with whom we had set out, objecting to interference from other dogs who joined us on the way. And this was understandable, but I was sorry nevertheless, the more so since the animals were disputing over something which none of them seemed able to possess. Indeed, now that I was a spectator merely, observing with detachment, I thought of them more deeply and regretted that I had added to canine social difficulties by my persecution of their fellows in the past. Not that I truly cared for them. Whatever breed or non-breed they might be, they seemed too preposterous or indistinct beside the wild beauty of my imperial bitch; but I saw how amiable and well-mannered they mostly were, in a way how sad, above all how nervous with their air of surreptitious guilt, and meeting the mild, worried brown eyes that often studied me and my friendly hand with doubt, I realized clearly, perhaps for the first time, what strained and anxious lives dogs must lead, so emotionally involved in the world of men, whose affections they strive endlessly to secure, whose authority they are expected unquestioningly to obey, and whose mind they never can do more than imperfectly reach and comprehend. Stupidly loved, stupidly hated, acquired without thought, reared and ruled without understanding, passed on or “put to sleep” without care, did they, I wondered, these descendants of the creatures who, thousands of years ago in the primeval forests, laid siege to the heart of man, took him under their protection, tried to tame him, and failed—did they suffer from headaches?
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Infinite pains I now took to reassure them, and sometimes succeeded. They perceived, after all, that, surprisingly enough, I did not mean to bully them or interfere; they saw too what a comradely relationship existed between myself and Tulip, whom I was always stooping down to caress and praise; in the end they would come confidently to meet me and put their cold noses against my hand.

But nothing ever happened. It was exactly the same as, excepting for Dusty, it always had been. And so convinced did I at last become that nothing ever would happen, that I no longer bothered to stop and wait for Tulip, or even to turn my head to see what kept her; soon, I knew, I would hear her protest and then she would come galloping after me, this grand lady with her entourage of inadequate wooers.

One day, late in her ninth year—the day, I afterwards understood, on which she would have whelped had a mating taken place—when she was sitting beside me in her armchair, she suddenly raised her hind leg and looked down at herself as if in dismay. A flux of bloody muck was oozing out of her. Like the birch tree she had her disease. She had gone bad inside. She had a septic womb.

This put an end to her sexual history, but not to her life. The irony of it all lay in my vet's information that it was a condition largely associated with non-breeding and usually found in elderly maiden bitches. This information seems to provide an answer to the query in my footnote on page 150, though it leaves Tulip unexplained. If the pus in the womb is able to escape, as in her case, the trouble can be quickly cleared up by hormone therapy. But not permanently. A recurrence is liable whenever the same point, the moment of parturition, in the sexual cycle is reached. The wise course is to have the womb removed. Foolishly funking that (in the hands of a good surgeon the danger is slight), I chose therapy and the consequent worry of studying the calendar and keeping an anxious eye on Tulip whenever the biannual crises approached. For two-and-a-half years she lived ostensibly a perfectly normal, healthy life, though she could no longer be allowed to flirt with dogs in her seasons; then the muck streamed out again. Once more I funked surgery and had her treated; another two years passed without incident. At the age of fourteen her womb turned septic for the third time, therapy failed to control it, as I had been warned it might fail, and an emergency hysterectomy had to be performed. It was successful. Whatever blunders I may have committed in my management of this animal's life, she lived on to the great age of sixteen-and-a-half.

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The working classes still cling to the superstition, long ago discredited, that a pedigree bitch is ruined by sexual promiscuity and can never afterwards have a pure litter.