Part II Chapter 7 Doctor Dolittle's Return by Hugh Lofting
SQUIB THE COCKER SPANIEL
But these departments of his big establishment were not the only things that began leading John Dolittle back into his old ways of living. In former days the most important concern in "the little house with the big garden" had been the dispensary, where animals and creatures of all sorts came to him for the treatment of their sickness and injuries. Of course anyone can understand that as soon as he began to move about and let himself be seen word would get abroad to the animals outside that the famous man was back in Puddleby once more.
And, sure enough, it was only a few weeks later that our patients began to call—first a pair of rabbits, very scared and timid. I found them on the doorstep at the crack of dawn one morning. Could they see the Doctor, please? I asked them what was the matter. They said they had a sick baby—didn't know what was the trouble with it. I told them the Doctor was still in bed and I didn't like to wake him because he was very tired. Where was the baby?
"Oh," said the mother rabbit, almost bursting into tears, "it's not far away. If you'll come with us we'll show you and maybe if you bring it back here the Doctor will be awake by then. But we must make haste. It's very sick."
"All right," I said, "I'll come with you. Lead the way."
Well, the mother rabbit was in a hurry. She and her mate shot out the garden gate and went bolting down the road like a streak of lightning. Time and again I had to call to them to wait and let me catch up. After they had gone about a mile toward Oxenthorpe they left the highway and started off across country. Over ditches, ploughed fields and swamps they led me—under hedges, through copses, over hill and dale. At last they came to a stop before a hole in a bank beside a wood.
"The baby's down there," said the mother. "Please hurry up and get it out. It's terribly ill."
Of course there was no earthly chance of my getting down a hole that size. But there was a farm nearby. I ran over to it. It was still very early in the morning and no one was about. I found a garden spade in a turnip field. I borrowed it and ran back to the rabbits. Then I got the father to show me about how far his hole ran into the bank. I dug down in that spot and got the young one out. He certainly looked pretty ill—breathing very hard. Some sort of asthma I suspected. I picked him up, left the spade where the farmer would find it, and started off, on the run, back to the Doctor's house with both the parents at my heels.
John Dolittle was up and shaving by the time we got there. He gave one look at the baby rabbit, dropped his razor, took the patient out of my hands and ran down the stairs with it to the dispensary. There he swabbed its throat out with some kind of disinfectant and laid it in a shoe-box on a bed of hay.
"You only just caught it in time, Stubbins," he said. "I think it will get all right. But we'll have to keep an eye on it for a few days. Put it up in my bedroom—under the bed. Tell the parents they can live there too for a few days. Give them some apples. Hah, it's a fine youngster! We'll fix it up all right."
At breakfast I told Dab-Dab about it. She rolled her eyes towards the ceiling with a sigh.
"We'll have to take the carpet up," she said. "There will be apple-cores all over the room. Ah, well! We might have expected it. That's the way it always begins—after he's been away. Now we'll have every kind of animal in the countryside calling on him with their toothaches and bruises and blisters!"
And, sure enough, she was right. From that time on the animal patients began to arrive thick and fast, at all hours of the day and night. Foxes, badgers, otters, squirrels, weasels, hedgehogs, moles, rats, mice and every kind of bird, formed a line outside the dispensary door—a line which seemed to grow for ever longer and longer. The wild animals' world had learned that the great doctor was back.
And so the little house suddenly became a very busy place. The Doctor was here, there and everywhere. Jip's friend Flip came and was given a comfortable home in one of the dog-houses in the Zoo enclosure. In fact he found it so comfortable, and enjoyed being a guest of the Doctor's so much, that next time he visited the town he told all his friends about it. And as soon as it got abroad in dog society that the famous Home for Cross-bred Dogs was open once more, we had all descriptions of waifs and strays and mongrels for miles around wagging their tails at the gates and asking to be taken in as members. The Doctor never could resist a hard-luck story from animals. And we soon had a wonderful collection down there in the Zoo enclosure. Never had I seen such mixtures—crosses between greyhounds and dachshunds, between Airedales and mastiffs, Irish terriers and foxhounds. But the more mixed they were the better the Doctor seemed to like them.
"They're always more intelligent and interesting, these cross-breds, Stubbins," he said, "than the pedigree dogs. This is splendid. I always like to have lots of dogs around."
He did have them; there was no question about that. The real trouble came when not only the stray dogs of the neighbourhood—those who had no owners or places to go at night—but the regular dogs, many of them thoroughbreds, heard of the "Home" in the Doctor's garden and just ran away and came to us.
This, as can be easily understood, caused a lot of trouble for John Dolittle. (It had done the same before, as a matter of fact.) Angry owners of pet poodles, dogs who had won prizes and blue ribbons in shows, came round to see the Doctor. Furiously they accused him of luring away their precious darlings from their proper homes. And the Doctor had hard work pacifying them. One case I remember that amused me very much. It was a Cocker spaniel. When she arrived at the house she told the Doctor she was annoyed with her owner because she would treat her as a lap-dog.
"And you know, Doctor," she said very haughtily, "we Cockers are not lap-dogs, like the King Charles or Pekinese spaniels—those piffling flea-bags who do nothing but sit on cushions. We are not that kind. We are sporting dogs. I can't stand my owner. I wish to live my own life. We're descended from the water spaniels—a very old and respected breed."
"Of course, of course," said the Doctor. "I quite understand."
"I don't want to sit on sofas," the dog went on. "I want to run in the woods—to smell the deer. I love going after deer. I've never caught one and I don't suppose I'd know what to do with it if I did. But it's the fun of the thing, don't you see? My mistress says I mustn't get myself wet, running through the long grass and all that. But I just hate the life of drawing-rooms and afternoon teas! I want to come and live with you and all those jolly mongrels down in your Zoo."
"I see, I see," said the Doctor. "And I understand your point of view. Quite, quite. But what am I to say to your owner when she traces you back here and comes to tell me I've stolen her dog?"
"Oh, let her go and buy herself a toy one," said the spaniel—"one of those made out of rags. It would do just as well for her. She doesn't know anything about real dogs."
Well, that was the kind of thing the Doctor found himself faced with all the time. And it certainly kept him busy. This particular spaniel did actually stay with us. We called her Squib; but, as the Doctor had prophesied, her owner, a very elegant lady of one of the county's best families, called and started a rumpus. However, Squib was so rude and unfriendly to her former mistress and made such a fuss about being taken away, that the lady, after the Doctor had explained things to her, finally went off and left her with us. And the spaniel to her great delight was allowed to join the Home for Crossbred Dogs.
Although she was frightfully well-bred, a champion in her class and all that, she never boasted about her pedigree to the other dogs. Squib's one great ambition was to trail a deer and run him down in the woods. She never succeeded—with the short legs she had. But it didn't matter anyway. In fact it was just as well she never did. Always she had still something to look forward to. As she had explained to the Doctor, the fun of the game was the thing that counted. She was a true sportswoman; and all the other dogs were mad about her.