Episode 51 : Bike bites dog

It was like any other ride back home. The usual stopping outside the gate and intentionally honking even though Papa Hyde is only a few seconds away. The usual welcome by Phoebus where she runs and stops in front of my path, prancing around, her tail wagging hard.

And I rev hard as usual and pretending to make a go at her while she usually tries to avoid it.

This time, however, both moved at each other.

Phoebus took the blow on her right foreleg and I almost fell. With a yelp, she jumped back in shock and began to limp. But the crazy dog that she is, she couldn't stop prancing!

A preliminary examination showed that the skin was punctured at three places, not serious but required a bandage nevertheless. But Phoebus wouldn't stop howling piteously. She was quiet only a few moments ago.

That is when I noticed blood on my fingers. There was a fourth puncture on the underside, larger than the other three put together.

Enter vet.

"She needs a few stitches on the larger wound. The others can be bandaged. You want to do it the normal way or do we need to sedate her?'

I took a look at her wriggling self. 'We must sedate her, she will never let us work on her.'

Phoebus is very friendly with the vet, till he takes out a syringe. That's when hell usually breaks loose, but this time I guess the pain in her foreleg distracted her.

'The sedation should last at least an hour. For some dogs it takes up to five hours' the vet claimed. For a dog of Phoebus' size, I expected a couple of hours at least. One hour was all we needed.

We knew the sedation had begun to kick in when Phoebus suddenly got up and, with a scared look on her face, looked around. She hobbled away from each one of us. The look on her face was clear; she had no idea what was happening to her. Like a drunkard, she kept swaying till she felt the need to lie down.

The scene was gut-wrenching. Partly out of guilt for what I did, and partly at what I saw.

After a few minutes, we set to work. The vet tested by lightly pinching her hindleg. No reaction. When he applied tincture on the wound, Phoebus curled her paws. 'Strange, very strange' the vet murmured.

After cleaning the wound, he set about stitching it. The needle had scarcely dug into the skin when Phoebus twitched her leg and blinked her eyes. When he sewed the second stitch, Phoebus growled slightly. By the end of the fourth stitch, Phoebus had begun to regain consciousness.

'I have never seen a dog regain consciousness so quickly for a normal dose!' the vet exclaimed. The sedation lasted less than thirty minutes.

While leaving, he advised us to give her milk after she regained full consciousness and let the bandage stay as long as possible. 'Quite likely the bandage will be out by tomorrow morning, dogs usually tear them out. But it is alright, clean the wound if it bleeds and give her the medication I prescribed.'

I did not want to take any chances. I lightly wrapped a handkerchief around the bandage and gently caressed her as she lay quietly.

'She is making you do everything you made us do' Mama Hyde remarked.

'I was a better patient.'

'Tell that to the nurses!' she countered.

'Stick a tube into her nose and then tell me!'

Mama Hyde laughed and all of us turned in for the night.

I was sleeping on a cot that was only a few inches off the ground, with Phoebus next to me on the floor. I felt her shiver as the ceiling fan beat down on her.

I covered her with a corner of the blanket I was using, my right hand resting on her belly.

Phoebus made a small grumbling noise in her throat, as if blaming me for everything that happened.

'I am sorry' was all I could tell her.