WILLIAM

CHAPTER SEVEN

by JEAN NORFOLK

The one absolute, unselfish friend that man can have in this selfish world – the one that never deserts him, the one that never proves ungrateful or treacherous – is his dog….

When William was a puppy, a visit to the vets was an easy task. Not so when he got older, so it was fortunate that until the last three or four years of his life he hardly ever needed veterinary treatment. As an adult dog he viewed the vet’s surgery as a medieval torture chamber! He was absolutely petrified when he realised where we were going, and when we were a mile or so away from the surgery he’d know instinctively where we were heading, and his entire body would begin to shake and he’d dribble uncontrollably.

As we drove into the car park at the vets he’d begin struggling to escape and he was as strong as a horse! It took every ounce of my strength to keep hold of him. He’d whine and howl and look up at me pleadingly with an expression that said it all “How could you bring me here when you know how I hate it?” I had to literally drag him inside and I always said a silent prayer that we wouldn’t be kept waiting for too long.

The first time he needed treatment was when he had to have a build up of blood on the flap of his ear drained. William was so terrified, it took the vet and her assistant, along with my son and I, to hold him down until this was done, and we were all covered in scratches and bruises, not to mention hot and totally exhausted by the time it was over!

A few months later he had to go back to have exactly the same treatment done again, when once more the same problem recurred. This time we saw a different vet who was absolutely wonderful with him. She explained that the trouble with his ear had been caused by him shaking his head too vigorously, perhaps because of itching in his inner ear.

To my immense relief, she didn’t insist on William being lifted up onto the table, which is not an easy thing to do with a scared full-grown adult dog. “Leave him where he is”, she said, “and I’ll kneel down beside him.”

She stroked him and talked softly to him for a couple of minutes, gently coaxing him to allow her to look at his ear. I felt the tension on his lead slowly loosen as he began to relax and warm to her. She gently inserted the hypodermic syringe into his ear whilst continuing to whisper to him. “Good Boy! My aren’t you a good brave boy?”

I could scarcely believe it when this lovely young woman had completed the whole operation with such relative ease but almost before I had an opportunity to thank her, William, realising that the dreaded deed was done, almost yanked my arm off in his eagerness to get outside once more!

All went well for a couple of years then I was forced to take him back once more when he had problems with his teeth. I was told to return with him at eight-thirty the following morning when I would have to leave him there all day and he would be given a general anaesthetic to allow the vet to inspect all his teeth. It broke my heart to see him being dragged off into the unknown by a veterinary assistant as he barked and howled and looked back at me with an expression of terror and disbelief, no doubt wondering why I was deserting him for the first time in his life.

I was sick with apprehension as we drove back home without him. I had been told to telephone the surgery at three o’clock that afternoon for news of his progress and I tried to find something to do to take my mind off William, but I couldn’t. I was so worried about him I couldn’t eat a thing.

I waited and waited until finally, at two thirty, I could wait no longer so I picked up the telephone.

“He’s not recovered from the anaesthetic yet. Call back in an hour!” I was told.

I called again at three thirty, then at four o’clock then again and again. Finally at around six o’clock I was told “You can come and collect him”. I couldn’t get there quickly enough!

My eldest son drove me there in the Landrover that had taken William to the vet’s that morning. When we arrived he said “I’ll go across and collect him whilst you are in reception paying the bill.” I did as he asked and the vet who had operated on William was waiting to see me. I was told that he had extracted five teeth and had discovered an abscess under one of them so he prescribed a course of antibiotics for him to take over the following week.

I went back to the car park, eager to see my dog and I spotted my son holding William on his lead as they waited for me to return. For a few seconds I was convinced that he had got the wrong dog! He looked ten years older than he had done when I left him that morning and as he stood there looking so obviously weak and frail with blood still dripping from his mouth, I almost wept. I tried to reach out and stroke him but William was having none of that. Although still dazed and muddled, he spotted the vehicle that had brought him there earlier and pulled us towards it as if to say “Come on, take me home” He leapt up inside, but refused to lie down on his blanket. Instead he insisted on standing behind me as I sat in the passenger seat in front, so that he could look straight ahead. I think he wanted to be certain that we were heading in the right direction – home!

After a couple of days he was almost back to normal. He regained his youthful looks once more and was no longer the sorry old chap I had seen emerge from the vet’s operating room. Somehow though, I couldn’t help feeling that if he had been a cat this operation would have used up a couple of his nine lives.

He still enjoyed his walks now, albeit at a rather more leisurely pace than previously. Sometimes he would stop and look up at me and I knew what he was thinking.

“Do you want to go back?” I would ask, and he’d and turn around, eager to return home, fleetingly displaying his old exuberance and spirit before settling into his now familiar steady pace.

Now the distance and speed of our daily walks was dictated by him, as was the destination. He discovered that suddenly he had a choice and I’m sure he relished the idea of being in charge. I found myself being led to places we had visited only infrequently in the past and William was excited by all the fresh unfamiliar scents and smells, although he tired easily and would sometimes be exhausted by the time we got back home. Looking back I wonder if perhaps I expected too much of him; after all he was now almost twelve years old which in human terms would have made him over eighty! I would console myself with the fact that his parents had both lived to be six years older than he was now so I hoped that he too would be blessed with a few more years yet.

One day I decided on a sudden impulse to take him to a place that had been special to me but one that William had never visited, the place where I was brought up as a child. Although now rather different to the place I remember all those years ago, a lot of the old landscape still survives. The lane that I walked so many times as a child is still there and provides a temporary respite from the constant noise of traffic that is left behind as you leave the busy road.

I set William free and he immediately began darting from one side of the lane to the other, sniffing excitedly and exploring the ditches on either side. So many landmarks were familiar to me, yet everything was fresh and new to my dog.

Halfway along the lane, a motorway service station now occupies land to the right. As a child I recall the testing sheds for aeroplane engines that were built there during the war, and the incessant din driving my poor father wild as he tried to sleep following a night shift at the local factory. Beyond the service station the fields widen a little more and the motorway is in the distance to the right. I could then have almost believed that I had stepped back in time had it not been for the housing estate high on the hills to the left. As a child I had wandered across the open fields never dreaming that one day the farms would disappear and the land would be swallowed up by dozens and dozens of houses. Thankfully, the lane still leads up to the last remaining farm, and a cottage that I remembered as a child is still there, and still occupied by the same owner who lived there then. Alas, my old home is now long gone and a large new bungalow now stands in its place.

William was too excited to be tired that day but I couldn’t help wishing he could have seen it as it was all those years ago when, as a child, I raced around playing with other dogs who were free-spirits and allowed to run freely wherever they wanted to. I don’t remember us ever having a dog lead; we had no use for one, although I do recall my Dad always keeping a bit of string in his pocket just in case! I guess we lived in what must have been a paradise for dogs.

The field where I had sat beneath the pear trees eating windfalls was still there and it brought a lump to my throat to see William, with his tail wagging enthusiastically, enjoying his few precious minutes of freedom close to the spot where Nellie, a beloved old dog of mine from childhood, was buried.

As we turned to go back down the lane, away from memories of the past, I was glad that I had decided to take William there. Somehow I knew that it would be his, and possibly my last visit. He thoroughly enjoyed himself that day, and in spite of the distance we had covered, it seemed to have invigorated him. He wasn’t quite so tired as I had imagined he would be and it felt good to know that sharing my memories with him had given him so much pleasure.

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