NOTE: If you haven’t been following this from the beginning, and if you want to know the full sequence of events, start with the introduction. Click on Archives on the right.
Lambert is standing motionless, close to the bole of a big white oak, apparently lost in his own world. He isn’t sniffing the bark, or the dead leaves on the ground around him, or the straggly mint stalks or the briar spreading there, out towards the lawn. His white fur has grown over his eyes and he seems preoccupied. Long soiled white fur hangs down his sides like a ragged skirt. Steve and bel don’t groom him much but do give him an occasional trim to get the mats out. So Lambert usually has a few leaves or bits of mulch on him somewhere. Azalea leaves stick to his coarse white fur, which sticks to leaves as if it were velcro. He was rolling under the big mature azelias in front of Steve Strether’s windows as I approached. He doesn’t seem to notice me as I walk over to chat with Steve. Lambert has been deaf for the last three years, not completely but largely. He stopped barking at the time. He used to go out after meals to bark, sometimes for too long and they would go out to stop him. He still hears sharp sounds like a door slamming. He usually notices people when they get as close as I am now.
“What’s happened to Lambert?”
“He is not well. He’s been getting less responsive lately so we asked the vet to look at him.”
We both wave to Rank Majors as he passes in his car towards the shopping center.
“Did you get a diagnosis Steve?”
“Bel took him in fact. She reports that he has kidney disease.”
“Doesn’t sound good.”
“No, it’s as if he is a person, I mean we can’t talk about anything else!”
“Lambert is a personable dog.”
“Well yes, we made him into a person with all our talk.”
“He speaks to me with his ears you know Steve.”
“You mean dog-body language!”
“Yes he’s very good at it. Where is bel by the way?”
“She has gone to pick up a bag of medical drip and needles for his infusions.”
“What kind of fluid?”
“Electrolytes apparently.”
“Is he eating?”
“No, not enough, he’s supposed to be on a special premium diet. It’s crazy … like a human patient!”
“Our pets now have specialists such as oncologists, just like us … if people can afford it that is.”
“And who is the treatment for?”
“That’s a good question. Some people keep their pets alive because they can’t stand to loose them.”
“Meanwhile the animal may suffer painful interventions and drugs and all that.”
“Yes like a person with no choices. What a nightmare!”
“Well Fred, I woke up from a dream last night feeling as if we had been talking.”
“You and Lambert you mean?
“Yup”
“What was he talking about?”
“It was hard to understand Fred.”
“Was he speaking in dog or English!”
“In English, but using an arcane vocabulary.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean he was pointing out different scents in the air which I couldn’t get.”
“Was he impatient?”
“No, no, no, he thought I was on to something he had missed.”
“What did he ask?’
“That is when I woke up.”
“Oh too bad!”
“Well, there is no knowing where that dream was going.”
“What do you mean?”
“Was it really about Lambert? It might have taken another turn you see.”
“Isn’t it funny how waking up and remembering at a certain moment makes the whole context.”
“Yes, a few moments later I might have been far from Lambert, back at school or something.”
“So you live with him even in your sleep!”
“We do, he sleeps on our bed moving his legs in dreams of his own, and farts in the night!”
“No wonder, if he eats that prescription canned stuff.”
“But he won’t Fred, he doesn’t like it.”
“Have you looked at the ingredients?”
“Yes, the label is in Spanish, and my Spanish is limited to a few words, but I think it has lamb in it and a lot of junk.”
“Have you tried a little baked chicken, with rice?”
“The vet says he shouldn’t have too much fat or protein.”
“Oh, I suppose he can’t metabolize it properly.”
“Yes, something like that. Any way, I am not going to let him starve to death refusing to eat that prescription junk. Why not let the old boy die on a full stomach?”
Down at the foot of the oak, Lambert is back with us. He’s moved slowly through the briars towards a brown hosta stalk sniffing with care and delicacy. The stalk is dried and brittle and his nose barely touches it as he moves up and down the bottom half. He misses his footing and falls back on his hind legs.
“You see that Fred? His hind leg muscles are weakening.”
“He’s recovered though, look!”
“He has, he’s moving quite well now circling out on the grass. He also sleeps about 22 hours a day.”
Rank Majors is walking towards us.
“Rank, where’s your car?”
“Left it at the gas station Fred … for an oil change …
Hey pooch!”
Lambert doesn’t respond. So Rank leans down to give his ears a rub and Lambert grunts, and falls back on his hind legs again.
“Is he okay?”
“No, poor old guy is fading out.”
A car door slams and Lambert startles. He isn’t sure where the sound came from and looks around but can’t see because he is back by the tree trunk.
“Oh! How old is he?”
“Lambert would be eighteen in February if he makes it.”
bel has parked on the driveway and comes over with a plastic shopping bag which is sagging and bellying out. She walks up close to Steve.
“I have got the stuff from the vet Steve.”
“Ouch!”
“I know … Hi Fred have you been told?”
“Yes we were talking about Lambert just now.”
“ … and about talking to Lambert!”
“Oh Steve we are really talking to our selves.”
“I am not, I talk to the dog.”
“Honey he doesn’t understand our words.”
“Bel, we both know he gets something though.”
“We made him into our love object. We aren’t talking to the wet nosed fur. We talk about the ‘dog’, Lambert, as much our idea as an animal.”
“Okay bel, he’s like a character, that’s what is so hard isn’t it? I mean he isn’t entirely fictional.”
“No he’s not. We shall have to let go the idea as well as the critter.”
“Well, not quite yet. He is still interested in the world and he’s not hurting.”
“Okay, so anyway Steve, are you going to do it?”
“Do it?”
“I mean who’s going to jab him with the needle?”
“You are!”
“I thought you were!”
“Have you ever done it before?”
“No Rank, the vet gave us a demonstration yesterday though.”
“Right, he grabbed a bunch of fur on the back of his neck and pulled it up tent-like, then stuck the needle in between the raised skin and the body.”
“That’s right Steve. I had to do it for our cat years ago. You need any help?”
“Thanks Rank, we’ll be alright.”
“We will Steve? So you are going to do it right?”
“No honey, I mean we’ll work it out.”
“Ah huh, I guess so, but I would really appreciate some help Rank even if Steve doesn’t feel the need.”
“Sure bel, just tell me when.”
“Have you got time today, like now?”
“Now Honey! do we have to do this now?”
“We don’t have to but if Rank has time then there’s no time like the present.”
“Sure we can give him a jab now. It will only take ten minutes or less once you get set up”
Steve picks up Lambert with a hand under his chest and the other under his hind legs. Steve’s salt and pepper beard covers the top of his head, which is up under his chin and Lambert’s white fury ears are sticking out at odd angles on either side of Steve’s face. We all start towards the back door and go in the kitchen. Uncomfortable as he looks Lambert doesn’t make a sound as he is carried in. Steve puts Lambert down hind legs first on the kitchen floor. The linoleum is slippery and he has trouble getting up as his front legs keep slipping out to the side. Bel comes in with a bath mat and lifts him on to that for firmer footing.
“So what do you think Rank?”
“You need somewhere to hang the bag. You got a hook on the wall anywhere?”
“Here!”
Bel opens a cupboard door next to the dryer, which has two hooks on the inside. She takes an apron off one and throws it over her shoulder. Then hangs the drip bag in place.
“Fred, would you grab that towel to put over the top of the dryer and we can work on him there.” I take a towel hanging from the oven door handle and spread it over the top of the dryer.
Steve hangs the bag from the vacant hook.
“We are nearly ready.”
“Here’s a bag of needles Rank.” Bel hands him a small ziplock bag.
He takes out one of the needles and attaches it to the bottom of the tube coming down from the bag hanging up on the cupboard door.
Then he releases a valve half way down the tube and the fluid squirts out of the needle on to the towel.
“You have to get the bubbles out of the line. Here take a look.”
We crowd around Rank, and look for bubbles in the length of flexible transparent plastic tube. There’s a tiny gap just beyond the valve, like a bubble in a builder’s level. It gradually moves down the tube toward the needle and disappears. Now the line is uninterrupted by any gaps.
“Okay folks lift the patient up here.”
Bel picks up Lambert neatly from the bath mat and places him on top to the dryer with his paws nicely aligned under him back and in front. He moves his head from side to side. He tries to stand up, but bel keeps hold of his head, looking into his eyes and cooing.
“So here goes, nothing to it, He won’t even feel it!”
“Easy for you to say!”
“Just watch Steve, pull up some fur, like this, back here on his neck behind the ears, see?”
Rank has Lambert by the scruff of the neck in his left hand and pushes the needle into the midst of the raised skin with his right, just as the vet’s demonstration was described.
“That way he can’t bite if he gets mad … just don’t jab yourself!”
He releases the valve and we can see the fluid dripping from the bag into a little reservoir where the tube attaches.
Steve’s ring chimes sound, and he lets them go on unanswered until they stop.
