Do I really hate my life and everyone in it, or is it just PFS?

  

Puppy Fatigue Syndrome (PFS)

 another look back: nostalgia on anti-depressants

 

I’ve been instructing clients for years regarding the care of their new kittens and puppies. I’ve fine tuned my casual chat, surfeit with expectations and worries that come with adopting a young pet. There are wormers and vaccinations, diet and obedience. I speak at length about paper training vs back garden pottying, biting and chewing issues.  There is a general theme of consistency, trundled out with gentle care.  I encourage using recommendations from medical texts, followed up with soothing words from guide books that compare their soft little creatures to babies. They’ll grow out of it, I say; be patient, and most importantly, persevere.

It was only by some preternatural instinct that I addressed new pet owners like this: with calm words and marshmallow-soft expressions.  It was like giving advice to a new mother who hadn’t slept for weeks, and had suddenly found she’d been filling the bassinet a little higher with each un-slept night, even though I was myself childless.  They were hollow platitudes of the inexperienced and uninitiated.  Because until I’ve nursed a colicky baby til my nipples fall off or waded through the gurgling brooks of puppy diarrhoea in my living room, stepping between mangled remotes and eviscerated sofas, I am essentially just wind.  I’m a hypocrite and no more than voyeur to the madness.  It’s only when, on a dark 3am walk to the toilet, I've personally felt something unfamiliar squirt between my toes can I speak with a modicum of wisdom.  Accent this with no sleep and you see the darker side of yourself creep to the surface. And you think, Alf White my friend, you can kiss my ass!

***

For the first few evenings, Fionn lulled us into a false sense of security and slept through the night. There were accidents in his kennel, but he was mostly quiet until morning. Less than a week in, he began feeling a stronger need for pack support and the high pitched shrieking began.  That was day three.

At bedtime he muttered for a few minutes. It was a low hum that built into a quiet requiem of whines and developed into that crooning death howl that no floor/wall or pillow can muffle. We live in a block of apartments with neighbours on either side of very thin walls and don’t envy the idea of eviction. We tried all the remedies we’d ever recommended - the hot water bottle, the ticking clock, the soft music – but nothing pacified him. In the end Katie slept downstairs.  She took Fionn out whenever he cried, and played with him for awhile. The next day I came from the shower and saw my wife perched at the edge of our bed staring blankly ahead, swollen purple crescents under her eyes. She looked up and told me that Fionn had wanted to play the whole time. She hadn’t gotten more than twenty minutes sleep all night.

“This is going to be the worst day ever,” she said, her hands stuck halfway down her face.  She sighed, only her red-rimmed eyes peeking out, and burst into tears.

The next night I started sleeping downstairs with Fionn. I laid a mattress of blankets, pulled up my sleeping bag and camped by his kennel. I kept a finger in the cage and touched his back. He’d get a little restless, make a few turns and maybe squeak a bit, but he’d feel my hand and lay back down. He settled eventually, and we both slept – if not comfortably – without too much fuss.  And yet, it wasn’t ideal.

***

The truth is, we link these little creatures with the baby image because that's the most understandable comparison I can make. Learned people will claim this is anthropomorphic silliness (and I do my share), but the fact remains that this is a recently hatched beast - a small new voice that's been pulled from what he knows and dumped into an evening of isolation. He's a pack animal, used to the warm soft bodies of family. How can it be unreasonable to offer a gradual transition to this period? Would he learn faster if we just let him cry a few nights - realizing we were there in the morning and everything was really okay? Likely. But I just can't do it. I'm a vet - which makes the logic of training palatable - but I'm also a new dad (anthropomorphically speaking) and so ridiculously protective of this new addition to the family.

Unfortunately, this is a recipe for (temporary) exhaustion and a part of the responsibility I've unwittingly agreed to. It means finding the patience hidden deep below my sleep organ (which was new to me). Just like anything else, it all gets better. And after a relatively short transition – nights not weeks – he was sleeping through the night, curled up in the plush bed of his kennel. Fionn was sleeping like a baby. And so were we.

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.

*** 

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.