There's A Hole In My Doggo

I was in the study when I heard my son come in from school. As is his habit, the kitchen was his first port of call, specifically, the snack cupboard. In the distance, I could hear him rounding up handfuls of carbs and sugar. He’s a growing boy and at 14, he needs to eat almost constantly.

Then it all went curiously quiet.

My phone rang. I picked it up, it was Doug.

“Dad! Where are you?”

“Upstairs. In the library. Not sure we need the phones, eh?”

He terminated the call and resorted to shouting instead. “Dad! Come down!”

“Why,” I shouted back, “what’s up?”

“There’s a hole in the dog!”

I paused, can of coke inches from my lips. I must have misheard.

“What?”

“Come down! There’s a hole in the dog!”

I put the can down. “There should be one at either end, Doug,” I shouted back. “He’s just a big hairy donut. Beware the one with the tail on it, that’s the dangerous one.”

“No, Dad! He’s got another hole in him. Come down!”

Someone’s shot Aitken? Finally, I gave in to my curiosity.

There was a hole in the dog. He looked nervous. I guess under the circumstances, I would have too.

“What the fuck?” I gently pulled at a two inch triangle of skin and fur that was only attached to the dog by its shortest side. “How did you do that?” I asked the dog, who was paying quite a lot of attention to what I was doing. He looked at me and hung his head.

I turned to Doug. “You think he caught it on something?

“Shit.” I stood up. “Can’t leave him like that, I’ll call the vet.”

Five minutes later, having told the vet that Aitken was going to need stitches, I called the wife to let her know.

“I have no fucking clue what he’s caught himself on, I’ve checked everywhere and I can't—“

“Ah. I think I know what’s happened…”

“You do?”

“This morning. He went up to a grumpy old Labrador and it nipped him.”

“It’s not a nip, honey, it’s a tear. Did he squeal?”

“No. He just came back with his tail between his legs.”

“And you didn’t notice the blood?” To be fair, I’d been in all day and hadn’t noticed but then he had been asleep on the couch.

“No. I had to go to work.”

So, I told Doug to get his shoes on and we took Aitken to the vet’s.

---

“Normally I wouldn’t stitch bite wounds, they just get infected, but that’s huge!” said the vet, clearly impressed.

“Yeah, it’s not every day you take a kicking off an elderly Labrador. Only Aitken could be so gormless. I swear he has a big neon sign above his head that only dogs can read.”

He stopped prodding the dog and looked at me. “What does it say?”

I was tempted to say, ‘How the hell do I know, do I look like a fucking poodle?’ But, although the trap was sprung, I resisted.

“VICTIM,” I said, somehow managing to convey the upper case throughout.

“Ah. That bad?”

I sighed, “He was savaged by a cocker spaniel the other day.”

“Oh.”

“Our previous dog, a big German Shepherd, used to use spaniels as squeaky toys. He’d put a paw on them to hold them down and then growl in their ears. They used to squeal like they were being peeled.” I looked into Aitken’s sad eyes, he doesn’t like the vet’s. Our previous dog, Mac, hated every one of them. They were scared of him. “I guess this guy is proof that Karma’s a thing.”

“Nice dog though. Big fellow too.”

“Labradoodles are a lot bigger than I ever thought they were, he’s 45 kilos.”

“Does he bite?”

“Nah, and anyway, he’s only got these silly little poodle teeth. Only way I can see that dog hurting anyone is if I pick him up by a hind leg and swing him like a club.”

The vet looked at me as if I’d started barking. I guess he’d never considered dogs to be articulated hairy cudgels before. I appeared to be going downhill in his estimation, a recovery attempt was needed.

“He’s the softest lump you’ll ever meet. Best family dog I’ve ever seen, only dog I ever met that will come to you while you’re sitting on the sofa and put one paw on either of your shoulders and give you full-blown cuddles. The kids love him.”

This softened the vet up a bit, “I’ll have to heavily sedate him anyway, give him an anaesthetic and sew him up. You can pick him up at quarter to six.”

I looked down at Aitken.

He looked back up at me with those big brown eyes.

I didn’t know I would have to leave him.

I swear I could see a lump in his throat as he swallowed.

---

“You tore him, you can pick him up!” I felt guilty as hell for abandoning Aitken in the vet’s to get punctured and stitched but what could I do? I couldn’t leave bits of him flapping about in the breeze. So, I attempted a guilt transfer to the wife.

“Ok, ok!” she said. “I’ll get him.”

Breathing a sigh of relief, I let her pootle off to get the dog. It didn’t take her long, half an hour and she was back.

“That was expensive,” she said, glaring at the dog.

“Oh?” said I. “How much?”

“£240.”

“How much?!? Who does he think he is, a sodding plumber?”

Aitken, the labrafuckingdoodle, is a rescue dog. He grew up in a barn for the first 18 months of his life. As such, he cost us nothing but a little field rent – his previous owner has some horses on our land. In the last year he’s cost us two hundred quid for shots and various scrapes, a hundred and fifty for his balls and now this.

It seems he wasn’t entirely free, we’re just paying him up over the next seven years or so and the interest is crippling…

(Image is mine)