James Herriot's Dog Stories

by James Herriot

  ‘Let him lie there a minute, Roddy,’ I said. ‘And tell me exactly what you’ve seen.’

  He rubbed his palms together and his fingers trembled. ‘Well it only started this afternoon. He was right as rain, larkin’ about on the grass, then he went into a sort o’fit.’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘Just kind of seized up and toppled over on ’is side. He lay there for a bit, gaspin’ and slaverin’. Ah’ll tell ye, I thought he was a goner.’ His eyes widened and a corner of his mouth twitched at the memory.

  ‘How long did that last?’

  ‘Nobbut a few seconds. Then he got up and you’d say there was nowt wrong with ’im.’

  ‘But he did it again?’

  ‘Aye, time and time again. Drove me near daft. But in between ’e was normal. Normal, Mr Herriot!’

  It sounded ominously like the onset of epilepsy. ‘How old is he?’ I asked.

  ‘Five gone last February.’

  Ah well, it was a bit old for that. I reached for a stethoscope and auscultated the heart. I listened intently but heard only the racing beat of a frightened animal. There was no abnormality. My thermometer showed no rise in temperature.

  ‘Let’s have him on the table, Roddy. You take the back end.’

  The big animal was limp in our arms as we hoisted him on to the smooth surface, but after lying there for a moment he looked timidly around him then sat up with a slow and careful movement. As we watched he reached out and licked his master’s face while his tail flickered between his legs.

  ‘Look at that!’ the man exclaimed. ‘He’s all right again. You’d think he didn’t ail a thing.’

  And indeed Jake was recovering his confidence rapidly. He peered tentatively at the floor a few times then suddenly jumped down, trotted to his master and put his paws against his chest.

  I looked at the dog standing there, tail wagging furiously. ‘Well, that’s a relief, anyway. I didn’t like the look of him just then, but whatever’s been troubling him seems to have righted itself. I’ll . . .’

  My happy flow was cut off. I stared at the Lurcher. His fore legs were on the floor again and his mouth was gaping as he fought for breath. Frantically he gasped and retched then he blundered across the floor, collided with the pram wheels and fell on his side.

  ‘What the hell . . . ! Quick, get him up again!’ I grabbed the animal round the middle and we lifted him back on to the table.

  I watched in disbelief as the huge form lay there. There was no fight for breath now – he wasn’t breathing at all, he was unconscious. I pushed my fingers inside his thigh and felt the pulse. It was still going, rapid and feeble, but yet he didn’t breathe.

  He could die any moment and I stood there helpless, all my scientific training useless. Finally my frustration burst from me and I struck the dog on the ribs with the flat of my hand.

  ‘Jake!’ I yelled. ‘Jake, what’s the matter with you?’

  As though in reply, the Lurcher immediately started to take great wheezing breaths, his eyelids twitched back to consciousness and he began to look about him. But he was still mortally afraid and he lay prone as I gently stroked his head.

  There was a long silence while the animal’s terror slowly subsided, then he sat up on the table and regarded us placidly.

  ‘There you are,’ Roddy said softly. ‘Same thing again. Ah can’t reckon it up and ah thought ah knew summat about dogs.’

  I didn’t say anything. I couldn’t reckon it up either, and I was supposed to be a veterinary surgeon.

  I spoke at last. ‘Roddy, that wasn’t a fit. He was choking. Something was interfering with his air flow.’ I took my hand torch from my breast pocket. ‘I’m going to have a look at his throat.’

  I pushed Jake’s jaws apart, depressed his tongue with a forefinger and shone the light into the depths. He was the kind of good-natured dog who offered no resistance as I prodded around, but despite my floodlit view of the pharynx I could find nothing wrong. I had been hoping desperately to come across a bit of bone stuck there somewhere but I ranged feverishly over pink tongue, healthy tonsils and gleaming molars without success. Everything looked perfect.

  I was tilting his head a little further when I felt him stiffen and heard Roddy’s cry.

  ‘He’s goin’ again!’

  And he was, too. I stared in horror as the brindled body slid away from me and lay prostrate once more on the table. And again the mouth strained wide and froth bubbled round the lips. As before, the breathing had stopped and the rib cage was motionless. As the seconds ticked away I beat on the chest with my hand but it didn’t work this time. I pulled the lower eyelid down from the staring orb – the conjunctiva was blue, Jake hadn’t long to live. The tragedy of the thing bore down on me. This wasn’t just a dog, he was this man’s family and I was watching him die.

  It was at that moment that I heard the faint sound. It was a strangled cough which barely stirred the dog’s lips.

  ‘Damn it!’ I shouted. ‘He is choking. There must be something down there.’

  Again I seized the head and pushed my torch into the mouth and I shall always be thankful that at that very instant the dog coughed again, opening the cartilages of the larynx and giving me a glimpse of the cause of all the trouble. There, beyond the drooping epiglottis, I saw for a fleeting moment a smooth round object no bigger than a pea.

  ‘I think it’s a pebble,’ I gasped. ‘Right inside his larynx.’

  ‘You mean, in ’is Adam’s apple?’

  ‘That’s right, and it’s acting like a ball valve, blocking his windpipe every now and then.’ I shook the dog’s head. ‘You see, look, I’ve dislodged it for the moment. He’s coming round again.’

  Once more Jake was reviving and breathing steadily.

  Roddy ran his hand over the head, along the back and down the great muscles of the hind limbs. ‘But . . . but. . . it’ll happen again, won’t it?’

  I nodded. ‘I’m afraid so.’

  ‘And one of these times it isn’t goin’ to shift and that’ll be the end of ’im?’ He had gone very pale.

  ‘That’s about it, Roddy. I’ll have to get that pebble out.’

  ‘But how . . . ?’

  ‘Cut into the larynx. And right now – it’s the only way.’

  ‘All right.’ He swallowed. ‘Let’s get on. I don’t think ah could stand it if he went down again.’

  I knew what he meant. My knees had begun to shake, and I had a strong conviction that if Jake collapsed once more then so would I.

  I seized a pair of scissors and clipped away the hair from the ventral surface of the larynx. I dared not use a general anaesthetic and infiltrated the area with local before swabbing with antiseptic. Mercifully there was a freshly boiled set of instruments lying in the steriliser and I lifted out the tray and set it on the trolley by the side of the table.

  ‘Hold his head steady,’ I said hoarsely, and gripped a scalpel.

  I cut down through skin, fascia and the thin layers of the sterno-hyoid and omo-hyoid muscles till the ventral surface of the larynx was revealed. This was something I had never done to a live dog before, but desperation abolished any hesitancy and it took me only another few seconds to incise the thin membrane and peer into the interior.

  And there it was. A pebble right enough – grey and glistening and tiny, but big enough to kill.

  I had to fish it out quickly and cleanly without pushing it into the trachea. I leaned back and rummaged in the tray till I found some broad-bladed forceps, then I poised them over the wound. Great surgeons’ hands, I felt sure, didn’t shake like this, nor did such men pant as I was doing. But I clenched my teeth, introduced the forceps, and my hand magically steadied as I clamped them over the pebble.

  I stopped panting, too. In fact I didn’t breathe at all as I bore the shining little object slowly and tenderly through the opening and dropped it with a gentle rat-tat on the table.

  ‘Is that it?’ asked Roddy, almost in a whisper.


  ‘That’s it.’ I reached for needle and suture silk. ‘All is well now.’

  The stitching took only a few minutes and by the end of it Jake was bright-eyed and alert, paws shifting impatiently, ready for anything. He seemed to know his troubles were over.

  Roddy brought him back in ten days to have the stitches removed. It was, in fact, the very morning he was leaving the Darrowby district, and after I had picked the few loops of silk from the nicely healed wound I walked with him to the front door while Jake capered round our feet.

  On the pavement outside Skeldale House the ancient pram stood in all its high, rusted dignity. Roddy pulled back the cover.

  ‘Up, boy,’ he murmured, and the big dog leaped effortlessly into his accustomed place.

  Roddy took hold of the handle with both hands and as the autumn sunshine broke suddenly through the clouds it lit up a picture which had grown familiar and part of the daily scene. The golf jacket, the open shirt and brown chest, the handsome animal sitting up, looking around him with natural grace.

  ‘Well, so long, Roddy,’ I said. ‘I suppose you’ll be round these parts again.’

  He turned and I saw that smile again. ‘Aye, reckon ah’ll be back.’

  He gave a push and they were off, the strange vehicle creaking, Jake swaying gently as they went down the street. The memory came back to me of what I had seen under the cover that night in the surgery. The haversack, which would contain his razor, towel, soap and a few other things. The packet of tea and the thermos. And something else – a tiny dog collar. Could it have belonged to Jake as a pup or to another loved animal? It added a little more mystery to the man . . . and explained other things, too. That farmer had been right – all Roddy possessed was in that pram.

  And it seemed it was all he desired, too, because as he turned the corner and disappeared from my view I could hear him whistling.

  A journalist came to me recently and asked me to introduce him to some of the local characters. ‘There aren’t any,’ I replied. Maybe too sweeping a statement, but it is true that the wonderful old rural types who provided such a fertile field for my writing are no longer around. You don’t hear the real old Yorkshire dialect and expressions any more. Education, television, radio and ease of transport have smoothed the people out till they are like people anywhere. There isn’t a Roddy Travers to be found. Old people in Darrowby still talk about him with affection, recalling the memory of the sunburned man who pushed that big dog in the pram along the country roads. Jake was a fitting companion for him, and whenever I see a Lurcher it reminds me of the only time in my veterinary experience that I ever removed a foreign body from a larynx.

  42. Nip and Sam

  ‘How are you, Mr Herriot?’

  Ordinary words, but the eagerness, almost desperation in the old man’s voice made them urgent and meaningful.

  I saw him nearly every day. In my unpredictable life it was difficult to do anything regularly but I did like a stroll by the river before lunch and so did my Beagle, Sam. That was when we met Mr Potts and Nip, his elderly Sheepdog – they seemed to have the same habits as us. His house backed on to the riverside fields and he spent a lot of time just walking around with his dog.

  Many retired farmers kept a bit of land and a few stock to occupy their minds and ease the transition from their arduous existence to day-long leisure, but Mr Potts had bought a little bungalow with a scrap of garden and it was obvious that time dragged.

  Probably his health had dictated this. As he faced me he leaned on his stick and his bluish cheeks rose and fell with his breathing. He was a heart case if ever I saw one.

  ‘I’m fine, Mr Potts,’ I replied. ‘And how are things with you?’

  ‘Nobbut middlin’, lad. Ah soon get short o’ wind.’ He coughed a couple of times then asked the inevitable question.

  ‘And what have you been doin’ this mornin’?’ That was when his eyes grew intent and wide. He really wanted to know.

  I thought for a moment. ‘Well now, let’s see.’ I always tried to give him a detailed answer because I knew it meant a lot to him and brought back the life he missed so much. ‘I’ve done a couple of cleansings, seen a lame bullock, treated two cows with mastitis and another with milk fever.’

  He nodded eagerly at every word.

  ‘By gaw!’ he exclaimed. ‘It’s a beggar, that milk fever. When I were a lad, good cows used to die like flies with it. Allus good milkers after their third or fourth calf. Couldn’t get to their feet and we used to dose ’em with all sorts, but they died, every one of ’em.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘It must have been heartbreaking in those days.’

  ‘But then,’ he smiled delightedly, digging a forefinger into my chest, ‘then we started blowin’ up their udders wi’ a bicycle pump, and d’you know – they jumped up and walked away. Like magic it were.’ His eyes sparkled at the memory.

  ‘I know, Mr Potts, I’ve blown up a few myself, only I didn’t use a bicycle pump – I had a special little inflation apparatus.’

  That black box with its shining cylinders and filter is now in my personal museum, and it is the best place for it. It had got me out of some difficult situations but in the background there had always been the gnawing dread of transmitting tuberculosis. I had heard of it happening and was glad that calcium borogluconate had arrived.

  As we spoke, Sam and Nip played on the grass beside us. I watched as the Beagle frisked round the old animal while Nip pawed at him stiff-jointedly, his tail waving with pleasure. You could see that he enjoyed these meetings as much as his master, and for a brief time the years fell away from him as he rolled on his back with Sam astride him, nibbling gently at his chest.

  I walked with the old farmer as far as the little wooden bridge, then I had to turn for home. I watched the two of them pottering slowly over the narrow strip of timber to the other side of the river. Sam and I had our work pressing, but they had nothing else to do.

  I used to see Mr Potts at other times, too. Wandering aimlessly among the stalls on market days or standing on the fringe of the group of farmers who always gathered in front of the Drovers’ Arms to meet cattle dealers, cow feed merchants, or just to talk business among themselves.

  Or I saw him at the auction mart, leaning on his stick, listening to the rapid-fire chanting of the auctioneer, watching listlessly as the beasts were bought and sold. And all the time I knew there was an emptiness in him, because there were none of his cattle in the stalls, none of his sheep in the long rows of pens. He was out of it all, old and done.

  I saw him the day before he died. It was in the usual place and I was standing at the river’s edge watching a heron rising from a rush-lined island and flapping lazily away over the fields.

  The old man stopped as he came abreast of me and the two dogs began their friendly wrestling.

  ‘Well now, Mr Herriot.’ He paused and bowed his head over the stick which he had dug into the grass of his farm for half a century. ‘What have you been doin’ today?’

  Perhaps his cheeks were a deeper shade of blue and the breath whistled through his pursed lips as he exhaled, but I can’t recall that he looked any worse than usual.

  ‘I’ll tell you, Mr Potts,’ I said. ‘I’m feeling a bit weary. I ran into a real snorter of a foaling this morning – took me over two hours and I ache all over.’

  ‘Foaling, eh? Foal would be laid wrong, I reckon?’

  ‘Yes, cross-ways on, and I had a struggle to turn it.’

  ‘By gaw, yes, it’s hard work is that.’ He smiled reminiscently. ‘Doesta remember that Clydesdale mare you foaled at ma place? Must ’ave been one of your first jobs when you came to Darrowby.’

  ‘Of course I do,’ I replied. And I remembered, too, how kind the old man had been. Seeing I was young and green and unsure of myself he had taken pains, in his quiet way, to put me at my ease and give me confidence. ‘Yes,’ I went on, ‘it was late on a Sunday night and we had a right tussle with it. There was just the two of us but we
managed, didn’t we?’

  He squared his shoulders and for a moment his eyes looked past me at something I couldn’t see. ‘Aye, that’s right. We made a job of ’er, you and me. Ah could push and pull a bit then.’

  ‘You certainly could. There’s no doubt about that.’

  He sucked the air in with difficulty and blew it out again with that peculiar pursing of the lips. Then he turned to me with a strange dignity.

  ‘They were good days, Mr Herriot, weren’t they?’

  ‘They were, Mr Potts, they were indeed.’

  ‘Aye, aye.’ He nodded slowly. ‘Ah’ve had a lot o’ them days. Hard but good.’ He looked down at his dog. ‘And awd Nip shared ’em with me, didn’t ye, lad?’

  His words took me back to the very first time I had seen Mr Potts. He was perched on a stool, milking one of his few cows, his cloth-capped head thrusting into the hairy flank, and as he pulled at the teats old Nip dropped a stone on the toe of his boot. The farmer reached down, lifted the stone between two fingers and flicked it out through the open door into the yard. Nip scurried delightedly after it and was back within seconds, dropping the stone on the boot and panting hopefully.

  He wasn’t disappointed. His master repeated the throw automatically as if it was something he did all the time, and as I watched it happening again and again I realised that this was a daily ritual between the two. I had a piercing impression of infinite patience and devotion.

  ‘Right, then, Mr Herriot, we’ll be off,’ Mr Potts said, jerking me back to the present. ‘Come on, Nip.’ He waved his stick and I watched him till a low-hanging willow branch hid man and dog from my sight.

  That was the last time I saw him. Next day the man at the petrol pumps mumbled casually, ‘See old Mr Potts got his time in, eh?’

  And that was it. There was no excitement, and only a handful of his old friends turned up at the funeral.

  For me it was a stab of sorrow. Another familiar face gone, and I should miss him as my busy life went on. I knew our daily conversations had cheered him but I felt with a sad finality that there was nothing else I could do for Mr Potts.