Pets in Prospect - Malcolm D. Welshman [20]
‘Is it Peggy?’ I asked.
She gave a curt nod. ‘The Adams’ Labrador. Yes. She’s off her legs and they can’t move her. Not surprised … she’s so overweight. Takes after her owners.’ Stir … stir …
Mind you, she was right about the Adams.
Bernie Adams introduced himself when I eventually got over to the pub. He was as massive as his wife – big, beefy, barrel-chested, with a flat pan of a face and large protruding ears that wouldn’t have looked out of place on a Toby Jug. He was ’ale and hearty in every sense. A typical ‘mine host’.
‘Brenda’s upstairs with Peggy now,’ he said, ushering me in through the pub’s bar. The stairs were steep and narrow but only one flight, so no scaling of Everest – but to judge from the shortness of breath it provoked in Bernie, I half expected a Sherpa guide and a cylinder of oxygen to be waiting on the landing. How on earth did Peggy, with all her pounds, manage to climb up and down?
She was lying stretched out on the kitchen floor; Brenda, sitting squashed alongside in the narrow galley, was wedged between the dog and a washing machine. I put my black bag down on the work-top and crouched down by Peggy’s head. Her lips curled back in their customary grin and her tail thumped on the vinyl, but there was no attempt to get up.
‘Now, now, Peggy my girl … no need to worry.’ I gave the Labrador a gentle pat on the head as Bernie leaned over me, his ears jiggling with anxiety. ‘We just need to find out what’s wrong with you.’ I levered myself up in the confined space. ‘Now, Bernie, if you could just move back a bit. And you, Brenda, I just need to squeeze past.’
‘OK, yes … right.’ Brenda struggled to her feet. There was much grunting and shifting of flesh as I squeezed myself between the lumbering Adams feeling that, at any minute, I might be pulped before I managed to slip through, stepping over the dog to sink down over her hindquarters. I felt as if I’d just been swimming with a pod of whales especially when Brenda began to blubber, her shoulders heaving, asking if Peggy was going to be all right.
I elicited from Bernie that Peggy had been fine the night before and that they’d found her like this when they’d surfaced this morning. Moby Dick swam before my eyes as the words spouted from him. I quickly turned my attention to Peggy in an attempt to fathom out what was wrong with her. The poor dog was then subjected to much prodding, pummelling and poking. A right hind here … a left hind there … up a bit … down a bit … rotated both around a bit. It was a hokey-pokey of an examination throughout which Peggy just lay there, grinning. No grunt of pain. No squeal. Nothing. This wasn’t what it was all about. I needed a diagnosis.
I began to panic – the situation was turning into a dog’s dinner. It was hot as an oven in there, the three of us gleaming like roasted potatoes with a Yorkshire pudding that had failed to rise at our feet.
‘Let’s try getting her to stand,’ I said. No mean task considering the confines within which we were working.
Much huffing and puffing and further large movements of flesh followed – the Adams’ flesh in particular.
And a fat lot of good it did, too.
We got Peggy on to her feet only for her to skid on the vinyl floor, her claws skittering in all directions … and then down she sank again.
‘We need a less slippery surface,’ I wailed; Flipper had nothing on the way I was beginning to feel. ‘Your lounge perhaps?
Bernie shook his head. ‘No better in there. It’s got wooden floors.’
‘Bedroom?’
‘The same.’
I felt myself getting hotter and hotter; we had to do something. No way could