animal stories by James Herriot Read Free Book Online Page A

smaller.”
    “Is there any way of shiftin’ him, Mr. Herriot?” Bert asked.
    I paused for a moment. “I’m going to put forceps on his head and see if he’ll move. I don’t like using forceps but I’m going to have one careful try and if it doesn’t work I’ll have to take her back to the surgery for a caesarean.”
    “An operation?” Bert said hollowly. He gulped and glanced fearfully at his wife. Like many big men he had married a tiny woman and at this moment Mrs. Chapman looked even smaller than her four feet eleven inches as she huddled in her chair and stared at me with wide eyes.
    “Oh I wish we’d never had her mated,” she wailed, wringing her hands. “I told Bert five year old was too late for a first litter but he wouldn’t listen. And now we’re maybe going to lose ‘er.”
    I hastened to reassure her. “No, she isn’t too old, and everything may be all right. Let’s just see how we get on.”
    I boiled the instrument for a few minutes on the stove, then kneeled behind my patient again. I poised the forceps for a moment and at the flash of steel a gray tinge crept under Bert’s sunburn and his wife coiled herself into a ball in her chair. Obviously they were nonstarters as assistants so Helen held Susie’s head while I once more reached in toward the pup. There was desperately little room but I managed to direct the forceps along my finger until they touched the nose. Then very gingerly I opened the jaws and pushed them forward with the very gentlest pressure until I was able to clamp them on either side of the head.
    I’d soon know now. In a situation like this you can’t do any pulling, you can only try to ease the thing along. This I did and I fancied I felt just a bit of movement. I tried again and there was no doubt about it, the pup was coming toward me. Susie, too, appeared to sense that things were taking a turn for the better. She cast off her apathy and began to strain lustily.
    It was no trouble after that and I was able to draw the pup forth almost without resistance.
    “I’m afraid this one’ll be dead,” I said, and as the tiny creature lay across my palm there was no sign of breathing. But pinching the chest between thumb and forefinger I could feel the heart pulsing steadily and I quickly opened his mouth and blew softly down into his lungs.
    I repeated this a few times, then laid the pup on his side in the basket. I was just thinking it was going to be no good when the little rib cage gave a sudden lift, then another and another.
    “He’s off!” Bert exclaimed happily. “That’s champion! We want these puppies alive tha knows. They’re Jack Dennison’s terrier and he’s a grand ‘un.”
    “That’s right,” Mrs. Chapman put in. “No matter how many she has, they’re all spoken for. Everybody wants a pup out of Susie.”
    “I can believe that,” I said. But I smiled to myself. Jack Dennison’s terrier was another hound of uncertain ancestry, so this lot would be a right mixture, but none the worse for that.
    I gave Susie half a c.c. of pituitrin. “I think she needs it after pushing against that fellow for hours. We’ll wait and see what happens now.”
    And it was nice waiting. Mrs. Chapman brewed a pot of tea and began to slap butter onto homemade scones. Susie, partly aided by my pituitrin, pushed out a pup in a self-satisfied manner about every fifteen minutes. The pups themselves soon set up a bawling of surprising volume for such minute creatures.
    Bert, relaxing visibly with every minute, filled his pipe and regarded the fast-growing family with a grin of increasing width. “Ee, it is kind of you young folks to stay with us like this.”
    Mrs. Chapman put her head on one side and looked at us worriedly. “I should think you’ve been dying to get back to your dance all this time.”
    I thought of the crush at the Drovers’. The smoke, the heat, the nonstop boom-boom of the Hot Shots and I looked around the peaceful little room with