I Hate Liz
It was a day that would long live in infamy; a turning point, a day of reckoning. It was a day when man and beast would clash amid the primordial beating of the drums of chaos, where the fury of hell itself would spill over into the bright, clear light of judgment, and two men would be left standing alone to reap the smoking ruin of their own bitter, bitter harvest. None would be spared in the savage struggle for power, for dominance.
Before it was over, minds would bend and illusions would shatter. Flesh and bone would be tested beyond endurance of suffering. Blood would flow.
And there, in the profound silence that would pass like the all-seeing eye of a hurricane, Liz would ask, “Whew! What stinks in here?”
Liz, Liz, LIZ! Treachery, thy name is Liz! From hell’s heart, I stab at thee!
Vet visits with Mesa have never been pleasant. Ever since she spent a week in an animal hospital with Parvo, her reaction toward vets clearly indicates she hates them passionately. One can hardly blame her, since her week long stay was at best miserable. Unable to eat or drink, Mesa was prodded and poked with numerous IV’s and injections, all the while confined to small steel cage in a quarantine room that reeked of bleach. There have been few moments in my life more depressing than visiting her in that place, which required one to enter the hospital through a side door that opened directly into her room. Leaving her there was even worse. Weakened as she was, she would bark hysterically and paw at the cage door as we stepped into a basin filled with bleach to decontaminate our shoes before we left the room. We kept our visits to a minimum because we didn’t want Mesa wasting her energy that way.
Not visiting her was hard, too. Although we were in constant phone contact with the vet, Mesa’s prognosis went up and down each time we called. In the morning we’d be told she was doing so well she might be home in a day or two, and that afternoon we’d be told to expect the worst, and that she might not come home at all. Every day added hundreds of dollars to a vet bell we were unsure we’d be able to pay. Our lives revolved around Mesa and were filled with dread and anxiety.
When she recovered and came home, our lives continued to revolve around Mesa. We couldn’t do enough for our poor pooch who had been so very near the brink of death. Handmade dog beds, home cooked meals of white rice and lean hamburger for her sensitive tummy, and an obsessive monitoring of the quality of her bowl movements were just the beginning. While most dogs earn praise for being obedient and well behaved, Mesa was praised for continuing to exist.
“Sit, Mesa,” Shawn would say.
“Yes, Mesa,” I’d say. “Sit.”
Mesa would grace us with an indifferent glance, and then go back to sniffing the coffee table.
“Are we pushing too hard?” I’d ask.
“Well, she did just get out of the hospital two weeks ago,” Shawn would say.
“Good girl, Mesa!” I’d say. “Let’s go buy her a present.”
The fact that Mesa still ignores our commands shouldn’t surprise us, but it does. We knew we were spoiling her, but she deserved to be spoiled. We had no idea what kind of monster we were creating. She knows how to sit and stay, of course, but she rarely sees the point. She knows, for example, that we have to go to work in the morning and don’t have the time to argue, and we’ll take her out regardless of whether or not she sits at the door. But all that is about to change; our last visit to the vet was an awakening.
We disliked Liz’s pinched little face and put-upon sighs the second she entered the exam room. The longer she stood in the room without acknowledging us, the more we disliked this vet technician. They say dogs can intuitively read the emotions of people and react to them. So either Mesa read Shawn’s mind and mine, or she sensed negative vibrations coming from Liz herself. Either way, Mesa took an immediate dislike to Liz, which she verbalized the only way dogs can. Dougal, who had hardly noticed Liz’s arrival, immediately sprang to his feet and backed Mesa up. The chorus of barking shook Liz from her stupor, and she shrank away from us with her eyes wide in terror. I can’t say I was sorry for her distress, but her reaction struck me on a deeper, less vindictive level.
Anyone who works with dogs, it seems to me, should be aware of certain behaviors to which dogs are prone. Barking is a pretty big one. The fact that she didn’t bother introducing herself to us was annoying. But the fact that she didn’t attempt to introduce herself to our dogs before attempting to place a thermometer in their rectums was just plain stupid. Yes, dogs may be dumb animals, but even they know such intimate acts are simply unacceptable from a complete stranger. Liz handled the situation by skipping the temperature-taking altogether. What a pro. I began to miss our old vet, but that hospital has too many negative associations for Mesa and for us. Plus, they’re very expensive.
Shawn and I decided things would go better if Liz had only one dog to deal with a time. I took Dougal out into the waiting room, where he was menaced by a Jack Russell Terrier named Spanky.
“No, Spanky!” Spanky’s owner said. “That dog will eat you!” Spanky was wearing a doggie-t-shirt and yapping, which people thought was adorable. “Oh, look at that little dog barking at that big dog! That’s so cute!” Little dogs can get away with being misbehaved because so few people are frightened by them. But as soon as Dougal began bark back at Spanky, people began to run for cover.
“Hey,” I said, to no one in particular, “Spanky started it!”
When Spanky was at last far, far away, the sounds of an epic struggle began to erupt from the exam room. Mesa’s barking was suddenly silenced, and, fearing the worst, I opened the exam room door and poked my head in. Mesa was wild-eyed and muzzled, and Shawn was holding an ice pack to his bloodied lip, looking exhausted.
“Hi, there!” I said. “How’s it going?”
“Mesa went crazy,” he whispered. “She wouldn’t let anyone near her, so we had to muzzle her. She slammed her head into my face.”
“Oh,” I said.
I shut the door and retuned with Dougal to the waiting room, where we pretended not to know the people in Exam Room 1 and nonchalantly perused pamphlets on pet disease. Our cover was blown after Mesa and Shawn came out into the waiting room and came over to us, Mesa panting heavily in her muzzle.
“Well, they couldn’t do anything with her,” Shawn said from behind his ice pack. “We have to come back. Go see what they can do with Dougal.”
Well, we’d have no problems with Dougal, of that I was sure. He’s a sweet guy. The problem, it turned out, was Liz.
When she returned to the exam room where Dougal and I were waiting, she was visibly shaken and nervous. She stood with one hand on the door knob, poised to flee. I let Dougal walk over to her, where he sniffed her trembling hand and then licked it. Liz yanked her hand away violently, which startled Dougal.
“It’s ok, Doogie,” I said. “That lady doesn’t like dogs. Come here.”
“That other dog tried to bite me,” Liz said.
“I’m not surprised,” I said.
“She’s bitten someone before?”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“Does that one bite?”
“Of course not.”
Liz took a tentative step toward Dougal, who turned his head to look at her. Liz shrank away as if he had lunged.
“You seem nervous,” I said to her.
“Does that one need to wear a muzzle?”
“He doesn’t, no. Do you need him to wear one?”
“I don’t wanna get bit,” she said.
“Would you be more comfortable if he was wearing a muzzle?”
“Yes.”
“Well then, get him a muzzle.”
When Liz returned with a muzzle I warned her, “You know he’s never worn one of these before. It’s likely to freak him out.”
Dougal, to his extreme credit, took the muzzle in stride. But it was too small.
“It’s too small,” I said to Liz.
“Make sure it’s nice and tight,” said Liz.
“It doesn’t fit.”
“Oh.”
I took the muzzle off Dougal who gave me a look at clearly asked, “OK, now what was that about?”
“Good boy, Doogie,” I said.
Liz reached for the muzzle, and Dougal licked her hand again. She gave him a pat on the head.
“He isn’t mean,” I reminded Liz, who, nonetheless produced a larger muzzle.
I can think of no logical thought process that would explain what Liz did next. She attempted to put the new muzzle on Dougal herself. If she was afraid of him, why was she shoving a strange object into his face? If she wasn’t afraid of him, why was she muzzling him? Dougal reared back and away from Liz, who immediately began to shriek, “He bit me! He bit me!”
“Oh, he did NOT!” I said.
“Yes he did!”
“Where?”
“Right here,” she said, holding out her forearm.
“Where?” I asked.
“Right here,” she said. “There’s nothing there, but he did bite me.”
“I was right here, and I didn’t see him bite you.”
Exasperated, Liz turned and opened the exam room door. “This dog bit me,” she screamed down the hallway.
I finished putting the muzzle on Dougal, who immediately dropped to the floor and began to paw at it. This was all going terribly, terribly wrong,
Another, older, vet tech appeared, and tried to calm Liz.
“He bit me!” Liz was screaming, frantically shaking her head.
“Where?” the other vet tech asked.
“Right here!” Liz said, pointing at her forearm.
“Where?”
“Right here,” Liz said, pointing to the unblemished skin of her forearm. “There’s nothing there, thank God, but he could have really hurt me.”
“Excuse me,” I said. “My dog did not bite her. That’s why there’s nothing there.”
“Yes he did!” Liz shrieked. “And that other one tried to bite me too!”
The older vet tech gave me an uncertain glance, and then looked back at Liz. “Why don’t you wait out here with me,” She said to Liz. “We’ll send the doctor in as soon as possible. You’ll have to wait until a male doctor is available.”
A male doctor? What?
“Excuse me,” I said again. “Why a male doctor?”
“Our female doctors don’t feel they can control that dog.”
“I see.”
While we waited, I attempted to soothe Dougal who was getting more and more unhappy with the strange new thing on his face. He was starting to hyperventilate, and being unable to open his mouth certainly wasn’t helping his anxiety. I was about to take the muzzle off him and take him home when the doctor came in.
“So there’s the troublemaker,” he said. “I need you to take him into the center of the room here and hold onto him so I can get his pulse.”
“OK,” I said. I took Dougal into the center of the room and had him sit. Then I held him still in bear hug.
The doctor then walked around to Dougal’s blind side and put his hand out and touched Dougal’s back. Dougal bucked, and suddenly the room filled with a rank stench.
“Whoa!” said the vet, jumping backward. “We’re not going to get anywhere with this dog today.”
I looked around and saw brown liquid on the floor behind Dougal. “What’s that?”
“Secretions from the anal sack. Dogs are kind of like skunks. When they get scared, they release that scent.”
“You’re kidding me.”
“No.”
“He’s that terrified?”
“Seems like.”
“He has never been this scared in his life,” I said, appalled. “For a dog that comes from a shelter, that’s saying a lot. Your vet tech made him wear a muzzle even though he was being friendly. If she had just petted him and given him a cookie, we wouldn’t be in this mess. Instead she screamed at him and made him wear this thing. If you had bothered to pet him and say hi before.... And then you sneak up on him! Ooh, I am so mad. This is a disaster.”
I took the muzzle off Dougal, dropped it on the floor, and walked him out into the waiting room. Mesa’s muzzle was off, and Shawn was still holding the ice pack to his lip.
“How’d it go?” he asked.
“I....hate...Liz,” I said loudly, taking Mesa from him. “I can’t deal with these people anymore. You go talk to them, and then let’s get the hell out of here.”
In the end, they gave us sedatives for both the dogs and suggested we sedate them before we bring them in next time. For these people, though, there will be no next time. Shawn reported that Liz came into the exam room and subtly asked, “Whew! What stinks in here?”
I am more than willing to admit our dogs are not a couple of Benjis, but neither are they Cujos. But one thing became evidently clear; in order to make them socially acceptable, they would have to be trained to ignore the mistreatment and bungling of others. Our dogs would have to be trained to obey a sit and stay command, regardless of who was attempting to shove what into their rectums.
It’s a long, dark road ahead. I’ll send you a postcard
Posted by johnfrommelt
at 11:40 AM
