An introduction (flashback)

September 10, 2009

It sounds counterintuitive: vets shouldn’t have puppies. Veterinarians are certified animal people, right; born into the profession? I’ll admit there’s truth in it. Many of us were brought up with animals and weaned on the whimsical prose of Alf White - his wily adventures of James Heriott and All Creatures Great and Small. Difficult pets and livestock were cherished through smiling memories laced with the soft focus of reversed time. I personally doubt Alf ever had a puppy outside his consulting room or operating theatre. He certainly couldn’t have raised one. If he did, I’d be willing to wager the sentimental yarn may have been less inspirational and more than a little like mine.

Trouble arrived on a Thursday evening. It was wheat sheaf yellow with a strong puppy musk, a longer-than-Labrador face and more legs than body.  He presented in the form of a 10 week old Lurcher puppy and part of a litter rescued - whisked away from an evil band of baddies (we’re told) and shuttled across the Irish sea to mother England. They were seven at the start but more than half died. Only three young waifs arrived at our friend’s practice in West Sussex, England. By the time my wife got down to see them, only one remained. He’s the boy that came home - a survivor, and the last picked on the playground. We called him Fionn (meaning fair) for his Celtic roots. And he came into our relatively sedentary lives to ensure chaos.

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What I recall most from Fionn’s arrival was his boundless energy. I was expecting him to miss his sisters and be a little sad, but I was clearly wrong. There was no lamenting of siblings lost, just the raw excitement of adventures ahead. When his big paws hit the carpet he was off, moving like a gale through rooms – limbs a blur. He tore around the house, in a clumsy lope, bashing into furniture, upending thin-legged chairs and end tables. There was much pulling of pillows from the sofa, chewing of shoes and relentless tormenting of cats. I’d bought a few stuffed cows and sheep for his arrival. He’d run by, flipping one of his new toys in the air. They flew by like ill-fated livestock unwittingly caught in the gusts of natural disaster. It was a brief tornado. The wind suddenly died, legs collapsed, and the power of storm evaporated into mist.

At rest, I finally got a look at the beast. He was handsome though incredibly thin. His ribs and hips poked out, giving a small hint of the reason he was here. But he was a happy skeleton with a long sight hound muzzle, blue/grey eyes and ears that flopped over the top of his head like granddad’s comb-over. At rest he epitomized the soft and noble beauty of a dog – the charm of man’s best friend. A puppy has the sweet nature and innocence that we see in a friend’s baby and secretly crave and miss in ourselves. It’s the unrepeatable magic and enthusiasm when introduced to the world as new. Fionn was this embodied, completely uncorrupted, lying stretched out on his belly enjoying the soft sniffs of curiosity that make you smile. Then he extended his neck, picked up a tuft of cat hair on the carpet, snapped it wildly in his mouth like bubblegum, and swallowed.

I read somewhere that the oral phase is part of the exploration of youth and the worry of every new parent; trial and error equals taste and destroy. It’s necessary that innocence be perverted by experience and if the eyes, ears and paws have a go, then all that’s left is the tongue. This means everything you see goes in your mouth, irrespective of size or texture. If it can be ripped or torn, the finer pieces must be swallowed. It was a veterinarian’s nightmare, and as we watched him inhale more debris we wondered at a hasty decision to forgo the pet insurance.