I have taken the dogs to the vet.
There is nothing whatsoever the matter with them, but we think that we might want to dump them in a kennel when we go off to Manchester for the pantomime, and when I called the kennel, the lady on the other end started rabbiting about their vaccination certificates.
I assured her that they had been vaccinated, quite recently in fact, and that this would be no problem, but when I rooted around in the drawer for their certificates, I discovered, to my surprise, that not only had it been well over a year ago, and that in consequence, they were overdue for their booster jabs.
This must have been what was being explained in all of the tiresome junk mail coming from the vet that I never bother to read.
I rang the vet, who said I could bring them in this afternoon, and so I did.
Of course by the time we got around to it we were late, and everything was a hasty last-minute dash, as always. I obliged the dogs to leap into the back of the taxi, and we rushed off with a squealing of tyres.
I hadn’t been able to find their leads either. It is a very long time since we have used these, and although I am sure we have got some somewhere, I had forgotten to hunt them out. The vet prefers dogs to be on bits of string, because it doesn’t matter how badly trained they are then, but I hadn’t got the string, and so they would have to Do What They Were Told.
I facilitated this in the car park before we went in, by issuing a series of growly threats about terrible things that might happen to wicked dogs who did not walk to heel when told. This frightened them both so much that they both hovered at my heels in a fever of anxious obedience. This was an achievement, because there was a very pretty girl dog in there, and Roger Poopy was dying to make her very intimate acquaintance.
I refused to consent to this. This meant that he spent the whole time in the waiting room rigid and quivering at my feet, with abject longing practically dripping from his jaws, whimpering occasionally, and glancing up at me in betrayed disbelief at my heartlessness.
I was not sorry when the vet called us in.
I do not like going to the vet any more than the dogs do, mostly because I think they are the sort of marketing organisation which manages to extract vast unnecessary sums of cash by preying on people’s sentimentality.
Today’s vet was a new one, but after a few moments I did not like her any more than the last one.
She said that their booster injections today would cost a hundred and forty quid, which is about a week’s wages at this time of year. Then she examined Roger Poopy’s father and said that in her opinion he needed some dental work. This started at two hundred quid for a scrape and polish and would rise to about four hundred quid if he needed teeth to be taken out, which she thought he would.
I politely declined.
This was not just for economic motives, although I must admit that these were something of a consideration, that is more than I would consider spending on my own dentistry. Mostly it was because I do not think that he has got toothache. I know this because when he is in pain he does not go in for noble martyrdom but for a great deal of whining and fidgeting and restless sighing. In any case he has got a dodgy heart and Mark thinks that if he needs a tooth out it would be safer and less upsetting all round just to pull it out ourselves.
I expect the vet charges more for dental surgery on dogs with dodgy hearts anyway.
This vet did nothing to endear herself to me by saying that she thought he was a little cutie, which very clearly he is not. Apart from his dodgy heart and rotten teeth he has got cataracts, a protruding lower jaw, and an attitude problem. He growled at her. This was not personal. He growls at everybody.
She poked his sullenly resisting frame, and said ingratiatingly what a healthy young dog he was. I said that he was at the very least fourteen, and more likely around seventeen.
She thought he might perhaps be six. We have had him for eight years so I thought that this was unlikely.
She did nothing to endear herself to the dogs either because the vaccination was not just an injection, but a little vial of stuff which she inexplicably poured up their noses.
I think that Roger Poopy has become an anti vaxxer. He was not at all impressed about this, and sneezed violently and profusely, glaring hard at the vet before leaping off the table to see if the pretty girl dog might still be in the waiting room, which she wasn’t.
The vet said that probably they should have another booster injection before they went in kennels, just to be on the safe side. I could even bring them back if I happened to have another hundred and forty quid next week, because obviously I wouldn’t want them to catch anything dreadful in the kennels.
Mark can take them next time.
Years of farming has made him impervious to the pecuniary blandishments of vets.
