The nurses come and they go. Since the operation, it's been nurses every day so I meet a lot of new ones and they get to meet me if only because if Mook A doesn't introduce me before he puts me out on the balcony I go berserk out there and don't bark so much as shriek, alerting the neighbours that a dog is being brutalized. From what I've heard I'm going to be meeting a lot of new ones as they are now saying that it may take up to a year of daily treatments for the wounds to heal. I wonder what is going to happen in winter; presumably I will not be chucked out onto the balcony in minus 40 but then again, Mook A, who is a little squirrely at the best of times, is capable of anything when he has to wake up, day in day out, Sundays, Mondays, Thanksgivings, Christmases and Halloweens to get mutilated by this procedure.
While I am out on the balcony, looking in at the bedroom window, I also get to listen to what A and the nurses discuss. You'd be amazed by how little of the conversation has to do with the fact that he is butt-naked and bent in two and she is exploring, poking and packing places no right-thinking person would venture into.
A few days ago he and the nurse were talking about me. She thought I was adorable (tell me something I don't know) and wanted to know how old I was, etc. A told her I was two and that I was an SPCA dog as were all the dogs he had ever had in his life. She was surprised because I look like a purebred but A said that although there was some question about my antecedents, their last SPCA dog—the sainted Cosmo—was a no-doubt-about-it purebred Dalmatian.
As the nurse poked onward, the conversation turned toward Cosmo (and my whimpering at the window seemed only to propel nurse and patient to ignoring me even more). I did hear some interesting things about the other dog. He was very difficult at the beginning—far more than I ever was, it seems—but settled in nicely and soon became Mook B's dearest friend (which makes you wonder how Mook A fit into all of this). The two—B and Cosmo—would travel together: camping, driving, visiting B's relatives—and sleep together (as I do now with B).
Then, quite suddenly last January, the dog began to show signs of its eleven—almost twelve—years (which is quite old for a large dog) and before the Mooks could adjust to the fact that he was aging rather quickly, he was beyond that. One night, after the evening walk, B was at the bottom of the staircase to the apartment calling A in desperation. When A went down it became clear that the dog could no longer manage the stairs. Indeed, it was more than likely that the dog's old heart was simply giving out. They finally cajoled the poor beast into the bed where he slept while the Mooks discussed, in the living room, what had to be done. B asked A to take care of everything; that he would rely completely on A to do the right thing.
The next morning B kissed his beloved dog and went off to work. It would be the last time he saw him. A phoned the veterinarian and asked for a housecall. He told the vet that he should bring the "necessary equipment" as Cosmo could no longer leave the bed.
The vet showed up a few hours later with an assistant. The vet, a man of advanced years, walked with a cane. By the time the two arrived at the apartment Mook A had removed the sheets from the bed and covered the mattress with green garbage bags. During this process Cosmo had wagged his tail weakly, thinking they were playing some kind of game. He couldn't really play along with A but he appeared to appreciate the effort.
When Cosmo saw the vets, he smarled. Now for the uninformed, this is a peculiar dalmatian trait. Some think it makes the dalmatian the only dog who imitates a human facial expression: the smile. It's called a smarl because it is half-smile, half-snarl. Dalmatians offer up the face when they are waking up, are excited or are particularly happy to see you. The problem with the smarl is that if you don't know about it it can scare the piss out of you. The vets apparently did not know about it and were immediately nervous. Moreover, Cosmo already had his reputation as the worst patient the vets had ever treated and no one in the office can forget the time he had to have a kennel cough injection (a spritz in the nose) and it took three vets and a Mook to fight him down, with his nervous-piss shooting about everywhere and everyone on the floor rolling in it. Cosmo was muzzled, yes, but his gigantic paws were free to smack males in the goolies and his claws free to rip the skin off his "attackers."
Anyhoo...
Mook A offered to muzzle Cosmo, who did nothing to resist. Then the animal was prepared and as A held him very closely, told him what a fine dog and friend he had been and how badly he would be missed, his leg was prepared, injected and Cosmo slipped away. The vets left the bedroom to leave Mook A alone with the dog. There was more whispering of sweet nothings and then A straightened up (remember, he had had serious surgery just two months before and was being seen by a nurse every other day) and called the vets back in to finish up.
The vets took out a huge green garbage bag, the kind used for construction material, and they told A that he could leave. The problem, as A could clearly see, was that the older vet was on a cane and would not be much help, so he offered to give a hand to the young woman veterinarian. With some difficulty A and the woman shifted Cosmo's dead weight into the garbage bag and then it was tied up. However there was still the small matter of two flights of stairs and a vet on a cane so, again, A made an offer to help and was pressed into service.
It was eleven in the morning and for anybody living on the street who cared to look out their window this is what was to be seen: a bright sunny day, snow on the ground, and two very odd looking people—a middle-aged man in a t-shirt and a young woman in white lab coat—bringing what appeared to be the murdered body of a small human in a green garbage bag down the stairs and towards a car on the other side of the street. It did not make things less suspicious that the man carrying the dead weight was laughing his head off as the absurdity of it all.
They nearly slipped on the ice a couple of times and the weight in the bag shifted so they kept having to adjust how they held it. For the moment the garbage bag was holding despite it's 72-pound burden. When they got to the car the older vet hobbled over and opened the trunk. "Wait!" he said, "let me move my golf clubs!" Which he did as the young vet and the Mook struggled to keep upright on the ice and not drop the bag and desecrate the body (anymore than it already had been...a garbage bag, indeed!).
After, Mook A stood on the side of the street as the old Seville (not any kind of noble chariot) rode off with its strange freight: putter, woods and mashie niblick resting against a huge black and white dog who had once filled a house with so much more than farts and bad breath.
As Mook A was finishing the story for the nurse they were finishing the procedure as well. (Please picture: a dog in a garbage bag and a man with his arse in the air.)
A pulled on his pants, she gathered her medical supplies and then she sat on the edge of the bed as he went on. "Cosmo's death left a huge hole in the apartment and in our lives and we realized we had to fill it pretty quickly or we'd both become too sad. I was already having medical trouble and I needed something to get me out of myself and—especially—to get me out of the house. So back we went to the SPCA and got ourselves another—smaller in size, yes, but just as big a pain in the ass."
When the nurse left and I was let back into the apartment from the balcony I went over to the picture of Cosmo they keep on the wall by the door. I thought, as I looked at it: "Hail to thee, sweet hero, who showed the Mooks that a dog is a Dog."
