Waiting Room Encounters

Took jake back to the vet today to have his operation wound checked. It's been a struggle keeping him from licking and nibbling at it since he took the stitches out. A battle of wits between him and I as I invent new methods of stopping him getting at it and he finds ways to get round them. Despite his efforts it's healing quite well, although its going to leave a much worse scar than it would have if he hadn't been so determined. On the negative side however a new lump has appeared in the last 2 days and not only really irritated him but grown alarmingly quickly. We're giving it a week of me trying to keep him off both sites to see if it improves on its own otherwise it'll have to be removed too. So after the relief of the biopsy results now I'm worrying again.

Usually the waiting room of the vets is a fairly quite, peaceful place except for the chatter of Jakes teeth as he quivers in fear, today however it was far from it. I'd been sitting there for a few minutes in the company of a nice lady with a cute Border Terrier ( one of the few small breeds I like ) , a lad and his mum with their huge Ginger cat ( which I kept examining to make sure it wasn't my missing Tom cat Albus) and a 40 something gent whose macho appearance was somewhat undermined by the small King Charles Spaniel that he carried everywhere and which only raised its head from his shoulder to gaze into his eyes ( I forgave it for being on the wrong side in the Civil War and decided to like it too), when the door was thrown open with a bang. A sizeable slab of muscle exploded into the room dragging two figures limply behind it on a lead. Arriving in the centre of the waiting area it stopped long enough to resolve itself into a Bull Terrier. As it stood quivering with energy and making a mental invoice of the other occupants I began to relax as I saw that it wasn't covered in hideous scars and accompanied by Oliver Reed in the role of Bill Sykes, club in hand and bellowing "Boooolseye! Boooolseye!". The owners when they landed from their flight through the doorway at the end of their lead, appeared to be two perfectly presentable ladies - possibly mother and daughter. They smiled at each of the shocked and recoiling people and their suddenly nervous animals, the smiles were a little too hearty. "Sorry! Sorry! Don't mind Bull he's just a little bouncy!" This reassurance would probably have had more effect if said "Bull" was not at that moment frantically trying to rip the hard plastic shell of the cats carry box into fragments to get at the bottle brushed howling creature inside. "Oh he's such a curious little thing" said his delusional owners as the mum tried to keep herself between her son and the gnashing, plastic munching jaws of the aforesaid Curious Little Thing, while simultaneously trying to drag the cat box away from its grip. "Now Bull leave it alone" said the elder of the two Bull apologists, an instruction that lacked force in its tone but in any case would have been undermined by the way in which the speaker was bouncing along on the end of her lead as Bull advanced across the floor. Behind the terrified and apparently doomed cat owner, her pet and her progeny, a door suddenly opened and the face of a surprised vet saying "Mrs ohhh!...." was briefly seen before he was pushed back into his room by the fleeing party. The door slammed shut behind them. The two women belonging to Bull were now at opposite ends of the room, one having been dragged to the very brink of the consulting rooms, all avenues of escape were this effectively cut off. "Oh dear!" said the older of the two in a light breezy tone as if she was remarking on the sudden appearance of a tiny rain loud on the distant horizon of a beautiful summer day, "oh dear! He does like to see everything that's going on. He's ever so affectionate though." At floor level Bull was recovering rapidly from his disappointment over the cat and was now eyeing the other two dogs on his level as if trying to decide which to dismember first. The Spaniel true to its courageous cavalier ancestors retreated onto his gentleman friend's shoulder and observed developments from a strategic location. Bull went into Spaghetti Western mode - cut to extreme close up of eyes shifting from Border Terrier to Jake and back again, all it needed was the blaring trumpets of an Ennio Morricone soundtrack , the tension was reminiscent of the three way gunfight at the climax of The Good The Bad and The Ugly. Bull as the snake eyed Lee Van Cleef, the Borderer as the laconic, courageous Clint Eastwood (before he became a right wing nutter and started to yell incoherently at apparently foul mouthed empty chairs) and Jake as Eli Wallach, the comic relief (sorry Jake). The long seconds dragged by in unbearable expectancy....the younger woman giggled....like an arrow released from a bent bow Bull flew across the room in a tornado of teeth and claws and spit, landing on top of the wiry little terrier who went under with a defiant bark. As the confused ball of biting, growling dogs rolled across the floor (followed by the limp ineffectual form of Bull's human mascot swinging along on its thin little strap) a new combatant entered the fray. The petite grey haired form of the elderly receptionist arose and stepped out from behind her desk and from this slight, unlikely form a voice spoke, a voice of immense volume and unchallengeable authority, a voice that could not only have brought an unruly class of Glaswegian 10 year olds to an ordered standstill but reduced most of them to a state of bed wetting for a month. "Please," and the word never sounded more like a slap in the face with a leather strap, "please remove your dog." The words were accompanied by a ramrod straight finger indicating the door. Game to the last the ladies looked around in puzzlement as if wondering which dog had to be removed, then with both hauling on the lead they managed to wrestle Bull outside. One of them then returned and quietly sat down in a corner to await the vets summons. A rapid examination of the other dog revealed he was relatively unscathed but soaked in spit. His owner cowered in her chair in an obvious state of terror while her canine champion surveyed the field of battle, the triumphant victor. Things settled down, an attempt at conversation by Bull's remaining owner, "He just wants to investigate...and the other dog barked at him....." subsided into defeated silence. It could not be denied that the other dog had barked at him but the fact that its head was half way down Bull's throat at the time was at least a mitigating factor. The woman stared blankly ahead in misery and the room once more became hushed apart from the occasional thump of Bull encountering a firmly closed door or a slight cry of distress as the woman still tied to him flew past one of the windows at high speed.

After some time there was a cacophony of barking from outside, the door opened and in came a couple with a heartbreakingly elderly Bassett Hound. It dragged itself in, belly close to the floor, every step an obvious effort and looked up at us through painful eyes buried in the heavy bags of flesh with which human enforced inbreeding has cursed the breed. It's people sat down and it sank to the floor beside them. Behind it Bull crashed into the lower pane of the door and with a soft "fluuug" noise the hound released a tidal wave of liquid faeces across the floor. I felt terribly sorry for the old dog, I felt great sympathy for its human companions who rushed to clean it up, but most of all as the wave of gag inducing miasma hit my sinuses, I felt sick.

At this point, mercifully, jake and I were called.