“Duffy Huntington Wright, lurcher….

“A dog barely able to walk….

“Gentlemen, they can rebuild her. They have the technology. They have the capability … to make Wrightington Towers’ first bionic dog.

“Duffy Huntington Wright will be that dog.

“Better than she was before.

“Better… stronger… faster.”

*[OK. It’s actually The Six Million South Korean Won Dog at current exchange rates. But that doesn’t roll off the tongue so easily (no cheap cuisine-based pun intended), so do please forgive me for choosing poetic licence over accuracy in order to shamelessly serve my thematic purposes.

For those of you who were too young/cultured to waste your time on such fripperies in the ‘70s, voila the inspiration for my starting point.]

When I wrote our last Duffywatch instalment, replete with mock-up images of ‘the prisoner’ behind bars, as an homage to the prison escape film genre, little did I think that our heroine would soon have to be behind literal bars. And yet, as Robert so often says… And yet… Here we are, now fully living a life inflected by other film genres…

It started, as so many sci-fi/horror/dystopia films do, with an idyllic scene.

<Cue soundtrack: Puffin’ Billy>

I’d booked us into the newly-opened dog park near us, and Robert had packed his favourite picnic hamper (yes of course he has more than one picnic hamper…). The sun was shining… it was warm enough for Robert (just) and not too hot for me… Duffy was delighted to have full dominion over two whole acres of secured romping ground, and merrily sniffing away to her heart’s content, prior to a spell of trademark lurcher-zoomies.

Said zooming commenced, and then… it stopped. In that fateful moment, we realized that we would now be sharing our home with a tripod.

<Cue soundtrack: opening notes of The Eve of the War>

We had noticed her occasionally being careful with her left hind leg for a few weeks before this, but it was only brief and intermittent, so we’d been keeping an eye on her without major concern, but this was clearly of a different order, and required a visit to the vet post-haste.

Why yes. Of course it was a bank holiday. So yes of course there would therefore be an emergency surcharge…

The provisional prognosis wasn’t good, and an x-ray would be required to confirm the damage (in more than one sense).

The day of the x-ray duly arrived, and we entrusted the patient to the tender care of the unfailingly lovely people at Minster Veterinary Practice.*

*[PSA for Yorkies who may be in need of such services in the future: highly recommended]

Upon her return to Wrightington Towers, she was clearly not Having A Good Time (as I believe those in certain sub-cultures say) for the next day or so. But at least she was still able to be in her favourite place - i.e on the sofa - which would, unbeknownst to her, soon be strictly verboten. All we could do now was await the final verdict and a date for the now-clearly-inevitable operation.

It came to pass that a relatively epic operation was indeed on the cards. Tristan (the very lovely veterinary surgeon) explained that Duffy had got a golden ticket of patellar luxation and cranial cruciate ligament rupture – almost certainly the inevitable outcome of a ticking time-bomb created by some sort of trauma when she was a puppy and/or, possibly, due to something congenital. This operation would, it transpires, always have been necessary; it was just a question of when. And ‘when’ was now officially July 27th, to be followed by at least 8 weeks (probably 12) of STRICT rest: no jumping, no walking beyond lead-led brief essential trips outside, no skipping about, absolutely NO stairs, and ABSOLUTELY NO SOFA.

So as term was drawing to a close, we set about looking into how best to facilitate said STRICT rest - not least a crate, possible alternatives to the dreaded Collar of Shame, and rearranging the living room to make a ground-level recovery area.

Duffy has, it’s fair to say, got separation issues - not in the least uncommon with any pet, and still less so with an adult rescue pet. She’s not, therefore, able to be left alone at the best of times (saving up for some sessions with a dog behaviourist has long been on our We’ll Manage It One Day list), but is generally very good at not going where she shouldn’t. As regular readers may recall, the sofa is as much her domain as ours, but we’re OK with that, as she leaves all other furniture alone. She is wont to being convinced that every car door opened or closed brings someone to see her (vide left), but tends not to nudge past a temporary minor barrier (e.g. a pile of papers or a glass) to get somewhere - even the sofa. She sleeps in our bedroom, but not in our bed, so we were hopeful that with one of us sleeping on the sofa, we could make the living room bearable for us all and safe for her. Hmm…

Fast-forward to Operation Day. We were relieved to find that her x-ray experience had not diminished her excitement about visiting the vet, and did our best not to be too put out by the eager alacrity with which she happily trotted off into the inner sanctum with the NEW EXCITING lady, without a backwards glance at us. We were glad to have the first session of Great Archaeological Discoveries to distract us during her overnight stay, and that she wouldn’t need a second overnight stay as suspected. Duffy, however, was less glad to find that the things which had changed prior to her stay had been joined by still more changes - not least a cage (ordered to arrive before her departure, but delayed in transit), and a non-accessible sofa.

That first evening gave us an additional bonus. We’d assumed that we were both feeling so grotty because standard-issue end-of-term-itis (although there’d been a hiatus in classes, there was no hiatus in Stuff Needing To Be Done), but it transpires that we’d chosen this precise moment to finally succumb to covid (unfashionably late, as is our wont these days). This suddenly explained why we were both moving with the speed and acuity of zombies. Clever us, right?

Duffy, meanwhile, was somewhat consoled by frequent small doses of chicken broth - which made us all happier (she’d refused to eat anything for the duration of her stay at l’Hotel d’ Minster Vets) - and relatively OK with staying parked in the cage, while we were right next to her. Things inevitably took a turn for the worse, however, when it was time to reintroduce a collar and close the cage door.

Admittedly, we’d possibly not helped on the former front by having opted for a ridiculously humiliating alternative to the Collar of Shame… *

*[Not, as some might suspect, for comedy value. I spent a looonnnng time trying to find a less misery-inducing alternative. Honest.]

We’d chosen a cage with a half-door in the gate panel, to facilitate light-touch comforting in moments of extreme distress during the night. Let’s just say that said half-door has been open for considerable periods of time during the last twelve nights. Unfortunately, Duffy is true to the reputation of her breed in terms of doggedness, and a good proportion of those considerable periods of time has entailed whimpering, howling, hyper-ventilating, and trying to get both her and her collar onto the other side of the door. I’m not sufficiently cruel to take photos at such times, but to give you the general idea…

[see also this, c/o Lee@Grafiklee].

For the most part, though, all times except bedtime have been calm, and we’ve got ground-level living closer to OK than we’d expected.*

*[I’m trying very very hard to gloss over the potential fallout of a nanosecond’s lapse of diligence, which allowed a fleeting jump of the forelegs onto the windowsill when a van pulled up outside. To err is human. So… err…]

Every night is a battle of the wills (It’s camping, Jim, but not as we know it) …

…but as of yesterday, the ridiculous collar is no longer necessary, and the lovely Tristan has prescribed the equivalent of Duffy-spliff (that’s not what he called it. He’s far too lovely and too professional to be so vulgar, of course), which will hopefully reduce her anxiety and allow me some sofa-based sleep at some point over the remaining ten weeks of trying to reduce the likelihood of further surgical intervention. We remain hopeful…

There is an elephant in the room (which I choose to illustrate with a shameless plug for reference to our October Short & Sweet Saturday offering of The Silk Road), and that elephant is… insurance. Since we’ve been embarking on this …err… episode in our Journey… kindly, and understandably, the hope that we’ve got insurance has often been raised.

So I’ll come out now and say - alas, nope. We were not being feckless or cavalier in not doing it. It was a conscious gamble, given our circumstances and Duffy’s age, and we went instead for the half-way house of a maintenance plan with our vet until things were less fraught. Ironically, I’d decided in May that we could now just about afford to start insurance proper, but was too busy to do it until the end of term. I know…

Hey ho. We’re not the first to be thus scuppered, and we won’t be the last. All we need to get us back on track is 37 new Denizens, each of whom will book one full course. Sounds easy when I put it like that, right…? Do please spread the word, O Denizens… friends, family, postman, random person with whom you get chatting in the supermarket… all are welcome!!

PS Some of you - if you’ve got this far - may well be thinking, “It’s a DOG, for goodness’ sake. Relocate your spines and stop being so indulgent”. Pre-Duffy, I may well have also thought something along those lines, had it not been for one set of memories which will never fade - namely controlled crying, a.k.a the mid-’90s version of “sleep training” for one’s spawn. I still instinctively twitch at the recollection of those parents who had a child which slept (and were smugly convinced that this was due to their own strength of character and parenting skillz, rather than sheer dumb luck) saying things along the lines of “Oh you just need to be firm…. Show them who’s boss or they’ll walk all over you…. You’re making a rod for your own back…”, etc etc. <twitch>

One thing that that grim time, more than a quarter of a century ago, has taught me is that This Too Shall Pass. It may not feel like it at the time, but it will. So 2022 is our summer of going to the Winchester, having a nice cold pint, and waiting for all this to blow over.

Cheers!