The Dog With Nine Lives (6 page)

Rat poison and blackbirds

S
O NOW WE WERE
back to having three dogs again. Maggie was the only young one, but they all got on well. The one thing they all had in common was their love of food, although Lindy was the only one who'd actively seek it out. She was forever scavenging about to see what she could find. The deader the better, although things didn't have to be dead for her to take an interest. She just wasn't as quick on her feet as she'd once been.

One evening recently I'd been putting on my make-up in the bathroom – as well as being a writer I teach creative writing and I had a class that night – when I heard a kerfuffle downstairs.

I'd only just put the dogs outside to eat their dinner, and I'd shut the back door, but Maggie, who's rather good at doors, had obviously opened it again and let them all in.

The thunder of paws on the stairs alerted me to the fact that Lindy was en route to my office. She had a basket under the fan heater, which was on the wall, and would happily curl up in it while I was working.

With mascara brush in hand I ran along the landing to shoo her out again, I wanted the dogs to go out in the garden because I was leaving them alone for a couple of hours and I wasn't sure what time Tony would be back in to let them out again. Lindy was sitting in her basket. She wagged her tail and looked guilty, which wasn't surprising, as she had a young blackbird in her mouth. She was holding it by the tip of one wing and the rest of it was dangling down from her mouth.

She must have read my body language and known I wasn't happy because she shot out of her basket, and still carrying the poor blackbird, ran back down the stairs again. I was in hot pursuit. When I got to the dining room I saw that she'd dropped the blackbird on the floor.

It was younger than I'd thought, scarcely more than a baby and couldn't have had its feathers that long. The poor thing was obviously shocked but it looked up at me and opened its beak, as if expecting to be fed.

I locked the dogs in another room and carefully checked the bird. Amazingly it seemed undamaged, although I knew they could die of shock. I wondered where it had come from – I guessed it had only recently left the nest, and was perhaps having its first flying lessons, and its parents might very well still be around.

Making sure the dogs were locked in the house, I carefully picked up the blackbird, carried it out to the back garden and set it down carefully in the middle of the lawn. I was a bit worried. If it stayed there long it would be extremely vulnerable to cats or any passing foxes, but I wasn't sure what else to do.

Back in the house, I watched from an upstairs window. To my great delight another blackbird flew down and landed on the fence a few feet away from the young one. This was soon joined by a second bird. After making sure there was no apparent danger they flew down to the baby on the grass.

For a little while they fluttered around it, as if encouraging it to fly. Up and down they flew. I watched them for several minutes. I was going to be late for work but I wanted to make sure there was a happy ending. And finally there was. The young bird seemed to get the message and he took off with the parents and away they all flew.

I went off to my evening class feeling content with the world. It wasn't until I got home that Tony asked me what had been going on outside in our back yard.

‘What do you mean?' I asked puzzled, as I hadn't yet told him about the incident.

‘Well, I found the remains of something out there. Some innards and a bird's claw and some black feathers. It looked like one of the dogs had eaten a bird.'

‘Oh,' I said, suddenly deflated, and then I told him what had happened earlier. ‘The one I found definitely wasn't missing a claw,' I said.

‘I guess there must have been two of them then,' Tony replied. We looked at each other. It was hard to believe that Lindy had eaten a live blackbird, but there didn't seem to be any other explanation.

Maybe the other dogs had helped her. It also seemed odd that two young birds had both fallen into our back yard at the same time. A gate separated the yard from the back garden, but that had been closed.

The mystery did in fact get solved a few weeks later. Tony had propped up last year's Christmas tree by the fence at the side of the house. And we found a nest about halfway up the five foot tree. Inadvertently, the parent birds had picked the most unsafe place in the world to raise their family.

I'm amazed that neither we nor the dogs had noticed the nest and its family before. That young blackbird had been even luckier than I'd first thought. The whole family had evidently abandoned the nest after the incident and had found a safer place to live. And Tony took the old tree down to the council tip to make sure it couldn't happen again.

I knew we would be less lax about getting rid of our old Christmas trees in future, but I am still amazed by that incident, both at the blackbird's fatal decision to build a nest in a Christmas tree and at Lindy's ability to eat almost anything.

A few months later, her penchant for eating rubbish was very nearly her downfall. We have an old lean-to-cum-wood-store next door to our kitchen. It's where we keep our freezer and our bikes and the car boot sale stuff I sell to raise money for DAWG.

The previous year we'd had a bit of a problem with rats. They got into the rafters of our old house and sometimes I had heard them skittering about in the joists. Also, once, I'd gone out to the wood-store and come face to face with one sitting on the logs.

I don't mind rats, but I was not at all keen on sharing my house with them, so we'd put out some rat poison in little trays high up on the upright freezer and out of reach of the dogs.

One evening, I was just out there getting something out of the freezer for dinner when I heard the phone ring in the house. I raced in to answer it, leaving the door to the wood-store open.

When I got back downstairs I saw that the dogs had taken advantage of the situation to have a root around in the wood-store. This wouldn't usually be a problem, but then I saw that Lindy had something in her mouth. When I asked her to give it to me she obliged with a wag of her tail and I saw to my horror that it was one of the plastic trays that we'd used to put rat poison in.

It must have been knocked off the freezer – presumably by a rat – but the burning question in my mind, was had it still contained poison? And if it had, had the dogs eaten any? All of them were milling about out there.

None of the blue pellets lay on the ground. I knew it was pretty unlikely that there had been any poison left in the tray, but I couldn't take the risk. I phoned the vets.

‘Bring them down,' Kate said. ‘We'd better err on the side of caution.'

So off we all went to the vets where Lindy, Maggie and Abel were given emetics to make them sick.

‘I think she has just used up another of her nine lives,' I joked to one of the receptionists who knew Lindy well.

‘I think you're right,' she said, stroking Lindy's soft brown ears. ‘How many is it now?'

I didn't answer her, but later that night, I ticked them off on my fingers: number one was the beach rescue; number two was probably the rescue mission that had brought her back to England; three was the herd of cows; four was the river; five was the cancer; six was the forest; seven was the haemolytic anaemia; eight the dodgy catch on the Toyota; nine the rat poison. She'd had nine lives already. I looked at her curled up on the settee, with not a care in the world. I decided to stop torturing myself.

So this is goodbye

T
OWARDS THE END OF
2008 we'd lost Abel. The end had come quickly for him. He'd been perfectly fine, eating and drinking as normal, and then he'd had a seizure one Friday evening. Luckily Tony and I were both home so we were able to comfort him and be there for him, and the on-call vet thought that he might well recover, but sadly it wasn't to be. We said goodbye to one of the sweetest-natured dogs we had ever had the pleasure to live with.

It felt very strange only having two dogs in the house. It was oddly quiet and very tidy. Once the novelty of not having to clean and vacuum so much wore off, I realised that I didn't like only having two dogs around. I wasn't sure we were ready for another dog of our own – we had to heal first – but I thought I would quite like to foster a dog again.

We had fostered in the past for DAWG and so I phoned Helen, who runs it, and asked her to keep us in mind next time she was in need of a foster carer.

A few weeks later, Helen contacted me and asked me if I'd look after Max, a young collie she'd just picked up from a sanctuary in Ireland. She had several people interested in him, which meant it would probably only be a very short term fostering.

And so Max came to stay. To say he was scared would be an understatement. He'd never lived in a house before – he'd come from a farm in Ireland, where apparently he'd spent most of his short life tied to a gate. On his first day he wouldn't come inside. He sat at the back door gazing in at us, but he wouldn't step over the threshold.

When I wanted to get him in I'd have to go outside and kind of herd him in. After a few days he began to trust me a little more, but he still wouldn't come into the house unless I was standing well clear of the doorway. Then he'd shoot in at top speed and sit on my foot.

‘It's so you can't kick him,' Tony said. He was only half joking. Poor Max had come from a background where he'd swiftly learned that human feet were to be avoided.

In fact, his previous owners had phoned up the sanctuary in Ireland and said, ‘If you don't take this dog, we're chucking it over a cliff.'

Nice people!

But actually they probably weren't too bad as ex-owners go. At least they phoned up the sanctuary and didn't carry out their threat. I was so glad they had. Max was the most adorable dog. I fell in love with him almost immediately and so did Tony.

Lindy took him under her wing too. She was a great dog to have around with foster dogs. She was maternal and calm and infinitely gentle with them. She showed them what was what, she demonstrated that our laps were a good place to be, as was the sofa, and that it wasn't necessary to bolt your food – or indeed to steal hers – because there was plenty to go around. And little by little they got used to the routines of the house and they learned to trust.

It has always amazed me how forgiving dogs are. No matter what they have gone through in the past they are always ready to believe that things can get better. I have learned an awful lot from dogs.

Anyway, as Helen had said, lots of people were interested in re homing Max. The perfect home came along very quickly. A couple called Andrew and Dominique who had lost their collie the previous year were looking for another one. They had been looking for a while – they didn't want a replacement but they wanted a dog who really needed love. They had no children, Andrew worked from home, they went walking in their spare time, and they were obviously avid dog lovers.

If they hadn't been absolutely the perfect home for Max I wouldn't have let him go – I'd have kept him myself. Tony and I were both besotted with him. But, as Helen so wisely pointed out, I could help a lot more dogs if I let Max go. I cried quite a bit when he went, but actually we do still see him and occasionally he comes to stay with us for his holidays – so we had the best of both worlds.

One sunny afternoon a couple of weeks later Helen phoned me again. ‘I'd like you to foster Rosie for a while. She's another difficult one. She came from a horrendous background – it's probably best if I don't tell you what the owners used to do to her – suffice to say she's a terrified little dog and needs a quiet home to recuperate.'

Rosie turned out to be a rather beautiful brindlecoloured Staffie mix. She probably had some greyhound in her too – she had long legs and a slender body but her head was unmistakeably Staffie.

Helen was right. Rosie was even more terrified than Max had been. For her first few days she cowered in the indoor dog kennel and wouldn't come out. I left her to it, although of course she had to come out to do her business. Being near a human was obviously very traumatic for her, but fortunately she took to Lindy instantly and very soon the two of them were inseparable.

Lindy showed Rosie the ropes of the house, just as she'd done with Max. She showed her where the sofa was and how to curl up so tightly no one would notice you were on it. And also, as Rosie grew more confident, how to make yourself floppy and heavy so no one could throw you off.

Lindy taught Rosie that my office at the top of the house was a great place to be during the day – Lindy had her day basket under the fan heater on the wall. Rosie began to curl up with Lindy so I took another basket upstairs, but generally Rosie preferred to snuggle up close to Lindy so in the end I just got them a bigger basket.

Lindy also taught Rosie to follow me around, and so I had two shadows instead of one. I'm not sure if she also taught her how to empty the bin while I was out of the room or whether Rosie worked that one out for herself, but I would often find the pair of them sitting amidst shredded chocolate wrappers, which had hitherto been in the bin, when I got back to my desk with a cup of coffee.

Not that I sit in my office and eat chocolate all day, you understand!

Rosie was similar to Lindy in lots of ways. Both of them liked to hunt rabbits, although Lindy wasn't up to chasing them very far these days. Both of them had selective hearing when they were doing something ‘very interesting' both of them liked to be a field or so away from me on walks. Both of them liked their home comforts and were big foodies.

Rosie couldn't have had a better mentor. I still worried about Lindy. I fretted that her haemolytic anaemia or her cancer might recur but neither disease had showed itself, although she did give us one or two more health scares. In late 2008 she went off her food again and she would, on occasion, become quite distressed, licking the ground and eating grass. She also had terrible wind.

We consulted a homeopathic vet who diagnosed a digestive problem. She suspected Lindy might be intolerant to cereal and advised us to switch to a dog food which didn't contain it. I did as she said and to my great relief Lindy improved immediately. But in the back of my mind there was a niggling doubt that we might not have her for too much longer.

She was quite grey around the muzzle now and I had a feeling that because she'd had such a bad start in life and because she'd had such major health problems she might not live to be a very old dog.

This might sound a bit negative, but actually this knowledge made me focus on making the best of our time together. Lindy might have slowed down, but she still loved her walks and she loved her home comforts.

Lindy had always loved sunshine, which wasn't surprising, given her background. When we'd moved house in 2005 we'd inadvertently picked the hottest day of the year.

Because of this we couldn't leave the dogs in a car as we packed up the removal lorries with our belongings, and we couldn't leave them in the house as the doors were all open. We had tied Abel and Jess up on the decking, which was quite sheltered with a bowl of water, but Lindy soon got fed up of the hard decking and she slipped her collar.

We found her curled up in the front of one of our friend's cars. He had left the driver's door open. It must have been at least thirty degrees centigrade in there but Lindy was in her element. When I tried to move her, she grunted and gave me a quick burst of wriggle-piggle, as if to say,
‘I'm perfectly happy where I am, thank you.'

I couldn't believe she was comfortable in that heat, (most dogs would have been cooked) but she was. I left her to snooze and made sure our friend didn't shut the door.

Anyway, in summer she would find a patch of sunshine and bask in it, and in winter she liked nothing more than to curl up beneath a heater – or if we'd let her she'd curl in her basket right beside the open fire in our lounge. I was a little wary of the latter as I was convinced she'd get burnt by the odd flying sparks but this never happened.

As 2009 wore on, and we had many a long walk in the sunshine, I began to relax. Maybe I was wrong about Lindy. Maybe she would live another few years. Maybe she would become a grand old lady, after all, like Jess had done. All seemed fine.

And then one Friday morning, it was actually the 2nd October, and the date is burned on my mind for various reasons, disaster struck.

We got up early as usual – I was teaching a writing class that day – but I was actually in the shower when Tony called up the stairs, ‘Quick, love, there's something wrong with Lindy.'

I raced downstairs. She had been sick in her basket and I saw at once that she couldn't get up. She was panting hard. I had the impression that she'd only just been sick. It looked as though she'd had some sort of seizure, like Abel. It was obviously very serious.

While Tony wrapped her in a blanket and carried her to the car I phoned the vet to tell her we were on our way there.

‘Phone me when you get there,' I said to Tony. ‘If they say she isn't going to make it I will cancel my class of students and I will come straight over.'

I would have gone with him but that would have meant leaving a whole class of people wondering why I hadn't turned up.

On the way to class my heart was on overdrive. Please let her be OK, I prayed. Please don't let it be today.

And it seemed my prayers were answered because when Tony phoned he sounded quite upbeat.

‘She isn't going to die. She is very ill, but it isn't the haemolytic anaemia. She's on a drip and is stable. We can phone again later for an update.'

This was great news. After I'd finished teaching I raced home and phoned the vet for an update.

‘She is very ill,' the vet reiterated, ‘but she does seem to be responding to treatment.'

As soon as I put the phone down it rang again. This time it was my mum phoning from Tenerife where she lived for part of the year. ‘I don't want to worry you, but your gran has had a fall. I think she's all right, but I'm just letting you know.'

I thanked her and we carried on chatting. We'd both been a bit worried about Gran lately. At ninety-six she still lived on her own but she was getting decidedly frailer. I'd been doing her shopping and popping in as often as I could to keep an eye on her but I didn't live close enough to go every day.

I told Mum about Lindy and also said I'd ring Gran when I put the phone down.

But before I had the chance it rang again. This time it was Gran's cleaner sounding very distressed because she thought Gran should go to hospital as she'd hurt her leg and was bleeding.

‘I'm on my way,' I told her and left the house immediately.

Gran lived in a flat but fortunately the communal front door was open and so was her front door. I wasn't prepared for the sight that met me when I went inside. Gran's white hall carpet was covered in bloody footprints. I followed them to the lounge and found Gran walking around and giggling slightly hysterically.

‘What on earth have you done?' I gasped.

‘I'm fine,' she said. ‘Nothing wrong with me.'

This was patently not true, although I still couldn't see where the blood was coming from.

‘Please, Gran, just show me where you've hurt yourself,' I begged, and reluctantly she agreed and pulled up the leg of her tracksuit bottom.

She had what I can only describe as a balloon shaped bag of blood attached to her calf. She had wrapped a tea towel around it, and this was blood soaked, and every time she moved more blood spurted from the bag, which I realised had formed from her own stretched skin.

Horrified, I reached for the phone.

‘What are you doing?' she yelped.

‘Phoning an ambulance,' I said. ‘You need to go to hospital.'

She protested vehemently and was still protesting when the paramedics arrived. But they were wonderful and they very gently managed to persuade her that hospital was the best place for her to be.

I followed in my car. My worries about Lindy had been pushed to the back of my mind but they were still there. At the hospital Gran was taken to a side ward where there was a long wait to see the doctor. It was now around 3 p.m.

At 7 p.m. although Gran had seen a registrar and had a temporary dressing put on her leg, we were still waiting to see someone who would make the decision whether or not to keep her in hospital. I was anxious that she stayed in hospital. I didn't want her going back to her flat alone – not least because it looked like a crime scene and I wanted to get the carpets cleaned before she went home. Gran refused point blank to come back to our house, which she said was cold, and I was also worried about her mental state.

She was usually so sharp, but she seemed muddled and confused. In between waiting for the doctor I'd been nipping outside to phone the vet's for progress reports of Lindy.

The news wasn't good but it wasn't too bad either. She was responding to treatment, she was sitting up, they hadn't worked out what was wrong with her, but they thought she was improving.

At 9 p.m. Gran finally saw a doctor who said, to my great relief, that she must stay in hospital while they sorted out her leg. I phoned to tell Tony that I'd be leaving shortly and asked him to phone the vet for another progress report as my battery was getting low and I didn't want my mobile to conk out midway through a conversation.