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Shannon and I were in my SUV on a Thursday afternoon driving to the Vet. The sun was low in the crystal clear autumn sky. It was turning out to be one of the warmest Novembers on record. I had the windows cracked enough to give Shannon and I some of the delicious air, but not enough for her to stick out her head. Dogs are deliriously happy with the sensory overload of hundreds of smells coming at them at sixty miles an hour, but the problem is everything else is coming at the same speed. A pebble can blind a dog, allergens loge in their nose and ears and more than one dog has jumped to their death at the sight of a deer on the side of the road.
Shannon’s right ear had become infected almost overnight. I felt guilty because she swims every day and it is my job to dry her ears thoroughly after she swims. A little dampness under the ear flap is a breeding ground for bacteria. I must have missed a day.
However, I was more concerned about something sinister that I had found while giving Shannon her daily massage; a lump where her right foreleg meets her chest. A lump a few years back had been cancer.
Shannon was sitting upright in the back of the SUV on high alert. One of her many extra senses had kicked in. When I put on the turn signal at exit 13 on I95 she began to shake and cry. It was a heart breaking sound coming from a dog that I had seen back down a 105 pound pit bull. She is the ultimate, alpha bitch, but going to the Vet makes her tremble and cry.
“What’s the matter,” I asked, looking at her reversed image in the rearview mirror?
“What, you think I’m stupid? You don’t think I know we’re going to the Vet?”
I know she’s not stupid, but how a dog knows a destination halfway there is still a wonder to me.
“You love Charlie,” I said. Doctor Charles Duffy has been Shannon’s Veterinarian since she was a puppy. He has saved her from cancer, set broken bones and attended to a myriad of injuries acquired in her nine and a half years of approaching life as an extreme sport. “Why do you get so upset going to see him?”
“Blame it on the wolves,” she said.
“Wolves?”
“Yup. They left me with AERD,” she smirked.
I cocked my head sideways and raised my eyebrows asking for the wise ass answer I knew was coming.
“You humans like to label all your disorders, then you can address them with a pill. I actually saw a pill on television for RLD, restless leg disorder. So I shake and cry because I have Automatic Evolutionary Response Disorder.”
I had no defense for the fact ninety percent of us allowed ourselves to be held hostage by pharmaceutical companies.
“You’ve raised wolves to near mythical status, she said, when in fact they really do only one thing well; hunt! Put a wolf in a situation that requires higher cognitive effort and they shake and whine. They’ve left me with that gene. I feel out of control at Charlie’s so I have this involuntary response.”
“Oh,” I said, “Wouldn’t be that you are just scared of needles?”
Her response was icy silence.
We pulled into Charlie’s parking lot, Shannon jumped out of the SUV and quickly marked her territory in three spots. Alpha bitches mark their territory more than most male dogs.
Wisely, Charlie has separate entrances at his Hospital. One for dogs and one for cats. We walked into the barely controlled chaos of the dog’s waiting room. It smelled mildly of generic hospital and strongly of dog.
A Lab, Dalmatian mix with stitches under his right eye strained at the end of his leash trying to sniff a Springer Spaniel that growled at anything that came near her.
“I don’t know what’s wrong. She is normally so sweet. She howled in pain when I touched her this morning,” said a heavily made up woman in sweats.
Two Jack Russell Terriers yapped in tandem and Chocolate Lab puppy tried to play with everybody, as it continually escaped the tattooed arms of a man who disobeyed the “all dogs must be leashed” sign.
All this was accompanied by an orchestral cacophony of soprano yips, tenor growls, bass woofs and numerous ignored human commands, always approaching, but never reaching crescendo.
I couldn’t get through the mob so I shouted to Linda, at the receptionist window, “Shannon to see Doctor Duffy.” She gave me thumbs up and I moved to a bench and sat next a young couple with a mellow, rescued Greyhound that had a nasty skin rash. Shannon lay quietly on the floor next to me, her AERD obviously under control.
Across from us a young man of about thirty alternately sat and paced. He held his arms stiffly at his sides and his fingers moved oddly as if constantly playing an invisible musical instrument. He was very handsome, but there was something a little off about his face. He was muttering a phrase that I couldn’t understand, over and over again under his breath.
He clearly had mental challenges.
We began our wait to see Charlie.
Our scheduled appointment time was 12:40, but those times are like little jokes. It really meant sometime between 12:40 and whenever. The acceptable reason for the vagueness of appointment times is simply that Charlie is the best Vet in the world. Everyone wants to see him and when he is in the examining room with you and your pet you have his complete attention. He always asks about what’s going on in your life, the well being of your family and then spends whatever time is necessary with your pet. He never rushes an exam.
Shannon dozed at my feet.
Charlie is also one of the most friendly, decent and cheerful human beings that I know. He does everything with a smile, good humor and compassion. He will beam with joy examining a new puppy or tenderly tell someone what a good life they have provided for a terminally ill dog that he must put to sleep.
As Shannon and I waited, one of the examining room doors opened and an old man very, slowly made his way across the waiting room. His clothes were threadbare, but neat and pressed. They looked like they had once been expensive. He leaned heavily on a wheeled, aluminum walker towards the muttering young man.
Shannon jerked her head up and said, “Uh oh.”
“What,” I asked?
“Something’s very wrong.” She stood up and her nose dilated and twitched. “I smell sadness and death,” she said.
The old man continued his slow journey across the waiting room. The young man said, “Daddy, daddy?” The old man quietly asked the young man to open the door for him and he continued his sad journey to the hospitals’ parking lot. The young man sat down and stared at the examining room’s door. He did some more odd finger movements and continued his undecipherable mantra.
After a few moments a woman about the same age as the old man walked into the hospital. She looked fit and tan. I guessed she was a tennis player. The young man’s eyes lit up and he yelled, “Mommy! Mommy!”
She hugged the young man and whispered something into his ear. He sat on the bench and she went into the examining room.
“There’s been a loss,” said Shannon, “but something more.”
I started to ask her what she was talking about when the woman walked out of the examining room, took the young man by the hand and walked him out of the hospital. Then the strangest thing happened.
Charlie walked out of the examining room. His stethoscope peeked out of the pocket of his clean, starched, white lab coat. He walked briskly and erect, even though he has serious back problems from picking up thousands of overweight dogs and putting them on his examining table.
However, Charlie’s face, a handsome map of Ireland was different. His eyes did not twinkle as they caught mine and beneath his bushy mustache his lip only gave the briefest hint of his perpetual smile.
“Hi, Charley,” I said.
“Hi, Dennis. Be right with you,” he said without pausing and walked out the door to the parking lot.
“Wow, I’ve never seen him like this,” I said to Shannon.
“There’s a reason,” she said.
Five minutes later Charlie walked back into the waiting room. His smile was beginning to return, but there was sadness in his eyes. “Hey, Shannon,” he said. “Come on guys.” He led us into another of his examining rooms.
“Sorry,” he said “I didn’t mean to blow you off back there, but I just had to put those people’s dog down.” I am way to empathetic for my own good. My heart began to ache.
I looked at Shannon. “Yeah, I knew,” she said reading my thoughts. Of course Charlie couldn’t hear her even though they had some sort of communication between them. “But there’s more,” she said.
“Oh man,” I said.
“That part’s not so bad,” he said. “She was sixteen. She was a rescue and had a very good life. The hard part is their son. He’s about thirty and he’s autistic. They got that dog for him when it was a puppy and he was a teenager. He’s had her half of his life. She was the thing he related to most in this world. Now they have to tell him she’s not coming back.”
The room took on the stillness of a tomb. My heart went to that profoundly sad, dark place that only the Irish know. I have been fighting to keep out of that place my whole life. Beverly, my wife, Shannon and a slowly, growing awareness of God’s love has kept it at bay for many years. However, it had just sucker punched me and I felt the darkness closing in. Its awful how the darkness is always waiting……..and then Charlie’s smile returned like a beacon shining light on the edge of the abyss into which I was about to fall.
Shannon licked my hand.
“But I told them about a dog one of my other patients has to put up for adoption. They have to move and can’t take her. She’s a sweet older dog so she won’t be too much for them to handle and I think their son will love her. It’s going to work out,” Charlie said, his eyes twinkling and his smile full ablaze.
I felt the world beginning to right itself. “What’s going on with you guys?” He asked.
We talked about recent vacations, my mother- in- law’s many cats, his mother’s recent close call with dumb doctors, Shannon’s adventures and basically caught up
He bent down and asked Shannon how she was doing. I told him about the ear infection. He cleaned her ears, gave me some antibiotic cream and said, “sorry Shannon…no swimming for two weeks. She let out a small groan. “I swear she understands English,” he said. I smiled.
Then I told him about the lump. Still cheerful he expertly ran his hands over her whole body. He found a few more. “They feel like fatty cysts, but I’ll aspirate them and check it out. Do you have a few minutes?” I said we did.
“You worry too much,” said Shannon.
“Blame it on the apes,” I said.
“Apes?”
“Yeah they worry a lot and gave me AERD.”
“Very funny,” she said
Charlie came back into the examining room in about ten minutes. “Fatty cysts. Nothing to worry about.” He drew a crude picture of a dog on Shannon’s chart and made a few circles here and there on its body. “This will help us keep track of any new stuff.”
We talked a few more minutes and shook hands goodbye and Charlie looked me in the eye. “It was great to see you two.” He is one of the very few people who truly means that phrase. Still holding my hand he added, “Stop worrying about the kid. He’s going to be O.K.”
I drove back to our house and told Beverly the good news about Shannon and the story about the boy. She had a two hour break between voice students so we all had frozen yogurt to celebrate. Then went for a walk at Lake Mohegan
We held hands as we walked and took in the wondrous sights, sounds, and smells of the woodlands. Shannon sniffed, peed and chased things real and imaginary.
We stopped and sat on the big rock overlooking the lake and watched the sunset.
For the moment the world was perfect.
-Dennis Quinn
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