Three Black Spots

72 on 79

I hate magazine articles that promise to explore your psyche with 20 multiple choice questions, and provide insights into the deepest corners of your mind and soul in eight minutes flat. What if they’re right? What if that’s all it takes to decode my mysteries?

 These days there are as many magazines for Dog Owners as there are for nubile teenagers, or bug eyed Sudoku maniacs. And they promise to unlock the secrets of your dog for you.

 How smart is your dog?’ 79 breeds of dog were rated for their IQ in New York Dog. And quelle horreur, Shit Tzus clocked in at Number 72.

It’s like being told that your child will score in the bottom 50^{th percentile in the SATs and will never go to the Ivy League. How can this be? Where did we go wrong? How could we have failed so badly? Surely there is something wrong with the study. Can’t we demand a recount?}

 Sometimes you can deflect bad news with humor. For a while we took to calling Yoda Mr 72. Not a good idea. He was smart enough to know that he was being mocked.

 How do you measure a dog’s IQ? When we looked at all the top breeds, we could see that Yoda could never match up.

 He can never round up sheep.

 He can never trudge through the Alps bearing cognac in a keg.

 He can never jump through hoops, let alone hoops that have been set on fire.

 He can never trail a suspect, detect drugs, find buried bones or treasure, or ride on a fire truck.

 He can never swim across a river, or even a bathtub.

 He can’t even fetch my slippers or a newspaper. Some Sunday papers weigh more than he does.

 Yoda has a whole different raison d’etre. He is the George Clooney of the canine world. He looks good. He’s well dressed. He has a wicked gleam in his eyes. He loves women and they love him back. Even men like him. He is loaded with charm, and has a delicious sense of humor. He’s smart, but wears it lightly. He spreads joy and goodwill, just by being.

 72 on 79 hah! No SATs for Yoda. He’s already the Big Man on Campus.

And then Yoda blinked

What to do when a dog stops eating? Yoda had completely lost his appetite for kibble and other ‘doggy food’ while he was not well. George gave us some practical advice. ‘Find something that he likes, and give it to him. It doesn’t matter what it is. He needs to eat’.

Tyson’s roasted chicken breasts. Microwaved till the skin glistened, the juices dripped, and the aroma of chicken flooded the entire house. Yoda would do his dance of joy, while the chicken was being warmed up, and then cut into tiny little strips. He would reach a frenzied state as we waited for the cool down. His feet would do a tap dance on the kitchen floor. Chop Chop. Get on with it. Take your finger out. FEED ME. His body language was very clear. At chicken time, he would not be trifled with.

Two months passed, and Yoda was on the mend. George brought us bad tidings. Yoda had to get back on to a balanced diet. Pure chicken was good and tasty, but not healthy. Yoda needed to go back on to his kibble.

It’s like being told that you have to change your eating habits, go on a healthy diet, consume all the food groups, and bring balance into your consumption. Doctors always want to make you weep into your foie, and deny you the foie to weep into.

Yoda went on strike. He absolutely refused to eat his food. He would go up to it, sniff elegantly, make a nose, flounce off to a corner, and plop himself down with a ‘humph, if that’s your attitude’ kind of sigh.

We empathized. Tyson’s chicken smells fantastic, and tastes very good. How would we react if we were reduced to eating musty brown bits of industrial pellets, when we had got used to high protein, high fat, well textured pieces of roast chicken? We know the agony of people who go off the steak and cream Atkins diet, and contemplate their daily bowl of steamed vegetables. The iron has entered their soul, and it would be wise to keep a safe distance, talk softly, and avoid any form of provocation. So it was, with Yoda.

Eight pounds of determination. Versus two adults torn between ‘this hurts me more than it hurts you’, and ‘would it do him that much harm to have some Tyson’s?’ We got lots of sympathy from George, but no flexibility. We would have to ride it out. Yoda would eventually eat his kibble, just to stave off hunger.

As we sat at the dining table, Yoda would watch reproachfully from a distance. With every morsel we ate, his big eyes would seem to glisten, and he would put his head down between his paws. The sight of us eating seemed to fill him with great sadness.

Our game of chicken lasted forty eight hours. Believe me, we counted. And then Yoda blinked. He ate his dry food. He ate his wet food. He slurped down lots of water. And he went to sleep.

We knew what Kennedy must have felt like after the Cuban missile crisis.

The hunt for Imazol

Monday morning. Let’s find a way to get Imazol into the USA. All we had to do was to get someone in the UK to buy it for us, and then have someone bring it over. Simple idea.

Our first call was to a business associate in the UK. One of those ‘more dash than cash’ types. ‘Don’t worry Mohan, I’ll get it done today’. Four days later it was obvious that he had not even called his vet, but every time we spoke it was ‘ I’m dealing with it as soon as I put the phone down’.

Life lesson. Don’t ask anyone who is not a pet lover, to do you a favor for a pet. They just don’t get why you are so anxious. After all, it’s only a dog. Either they should be a pet lover, or you should be their boss, in which case self preservation kicks in.

By Thursday, I knew we needed to ask someone else. Charlotte, a wonderful friend, with two delightfully named cats Lefty and Righty, was our next port of call. Within an hour she called back to say that her vet had written a prescription, but Imazol was completely out of stock in the UK. The company had stopped making shipments for some reason. Fifteen mintes later she called back with the name of the company and their phone number in London.

The next morning, I spoke to the company, and got through to one of the nicest service people I have ever dealt with. No, they had no stocks. No, they did not expect to have any available for at least 6 weeks. Yes, she would find me just one bottle. I think that she did not want to hear a grown man cry. She didn’t even charge me for it

A quick call to Ronnie, a friend of ours in Bombay, who is a purser with Air India. A quick call from Ronnie, and we had the name of a purser who was due to fly from Heathrow to New York, that very night. A quick call to the company lady, and she arranged for the vial to be delivered to the airport hotel in time for the purser to pick it up and bring it to us. Thank God for these quick calls. And thank God for friends.

That night, we waited by the phone. Air India is perennially late, and we half expected to hear that the flight had been diverted to Labrador or Timbuktu. But no, this was the home stretch. The Imazol was in our hands.

Yoda got the Imazol. We found Dr Kokoma who was conducting clinical trials at the University of Illinois for the FDA and he was really helpful. He checked Yoda’s DNA before and after the treatment. Finally, we knew that the bug was out of his system.

Yoda was healthy again. And Yoda’s DNA tests were part of the evidence that helped get FDA approval for Imazol in the USA. Yoda had made a small contribution to animal health.

Yoda falls sick

The Indian monsoon lasts for three months. Nonstop rain for eight to ten days, followed by a few days of sunshine. Then the next bout of rain. The winds are fierce, they rattle the glass, and the sound is like a 747 taking off.

Late one monsoon night, I heard the key being turned and the front door opening. And there was Mina, holding Yoda in her hands. ‘Yoda is sick’. She had driven all the way from our beach house at Nandgaon in the blinding rain. ‘I don’t know if there was more water outside the car in the rain, or inside the car from my crying’.

Yoda was listless, and did not move very much. He had not eaten anything for a day and a half. We gave him lots of water through the night, and took him to see Dr Silloo the next morning.

“He’s got Erlychia. Its very common in the Alibag area. It’s a tick borne disease, and Yoda must have picked it up from the garden, or from any of the stray dogs. There is no treatment in India. There is a medicine called Imazol, but we don’t get it here. I have a vial, but it’s date expired. If you are planning to go abroad, why don’t you go now, and get him treated. You better do something fast”. ( This was some years ago, fortunately Imazol is freely available in India today).

Mina called George, our vet in New York. He wanted us to bring Yoda as soon as possible. But he warned us that it might already be too late. Yoda could end up needing a complete blood transfusion, and even that might not help. Mina said ‘ Let’s go tomorrow night’. We planned to take Yoda directly to see George as soon as we landed in New York.

Since Yoda was not eating, we were giving him a saline drip. Mina took him for a last round before we went to the airport. She came back very angry because the doctor was unable to find the vein, and kept poking around. Yoda was howling in pain, and fear. Mina had sworn at the doctor. There was no shortage of drama.

Indians have great faith in coconut water. You can find poly bags filled with it on sale outside every hospital. We filled up his water bottle with coconut water, and took along a couple of extra bags with us. The flight was empty, and so Yoda had his own seat beside Mina. I sat behind them, and patrolled up and down the cabin.

The plane got to Paris, and we were happy. Now it was just another three and a half hours across the Atlantic. Soon we would be in George’s safe hands.

The Concorde took off from Paris, flying sub sonic till it reached the open waters. At about the time when the plane would normally reach Mach 1, the captain’s voice came on. He announced that something was wrong with the plane, and we were turning back. The plane would need to dump its fuel, so he warned us to expect a ‘little turbulence’. When the pilot tells you to expect ‘a little’, you expect a lot. Sure enough, the plane wobbled all the way back to Paris.

Three hours, while they got another Concorde ready, and then we took off again. All the while, Yoda slept and did not complain. Every once so often, we would wake him up to give him some more coconut water.

We had called George and told him we would be late. There is something quite glamorous about telling someone that the Concorde had to turn back because its after burners did not light up, and it could not go supersonic. Jargon is always so much fun. But, not today. We would have given anything for the flight to have gone smoothly.

We got to New York, rushed Yoda to the hospital, and got him on another saline drip.

George looked at the blood reports from Bombay, and turned to us. ” We know what it is, and we know that IMAZOL is the only treatment. Unfortunately, the FDA has not approved IMAZOL for use in the US , so it is not available here. It’s on sale in the UK, but you can’t take Yoda there because of the quarantine”.

We were jet lagged, we were tired, we were depressed. It was a Saturday afternoon, and we could not do anything till Monday.