The new dog – now just “the dog”, I guess – has an appointment to be spayed. Thanks to a number of unforeseen events the procedure has already been cancelled once, and my wife is keen not to miss our Friday morning slot. When it’s time to leave she comes out to my office shed with the dog following.
“We’re off,” she says.
“Do you want me to come?” I say.
“Why?” she says. “Do you want to come?”
“Not really,” I say. “I’m just offering.”
“What possible use would your presence serve?” she says.
“I’m being polite,” I say. “If I thought there was a risk of you saying yes, I wouldn’t have asked.”
My wife goes to the supermarket after dropping the dog off. In total she is gone for about three hours. During this time I pace back and forth between my office and the kitchen. At one point, to keep myself busy, I wash up a bowl, drop the bowl, break the bowl and, in a belated bid to catch the bowl, cut my hand open on one of the larger shards. I am thinking about what possible use my presence might serve when my wife walks in with two full bags of shopping.
“How was that?” I say.
“A nightmare,” she says.
“The vet?” I say.
“No, Sainsbury’s,” she says. “The vet was fine. She loves it there.”
“When do you pick her up?” I say.
“Not until 4.30. There are more bags in the car, by the way.”
By the afternoon I am fretting about the dog’s operation to the extent that I take myself to bed with a book to calm down. I don’t wake up from this activity until the front door opens at 5.15.
The dog staggers into the bedroom dressed in a snug short-sleeved onesie printed with a peculiar pattern, like pyjamas for a very long toddler, or a canine prison uniform. She is at sea – too groggy to climb on to the bed, and too wary to be lifted.
“She doesn’t like the vet any more,” my wife says.
“Nice suit,” I say.
“It’s instead of the head cone,” my wife says. “She wasn’t having the cone.”
“How long does she have to wear it?” I say.
“A week to 10 days,” she says.
“She looks depressed,” I say.
“I think she feels a bit betrayed,” my wife says.
“Yeah,” I say, looking at the dog. “But not by me, right? As far as you know, I played no part in this.”
The dog looks up at me, forlorn, confused and dressed for bed.
After a long sleep the dog regains most of its former joie de vivre. After two days she appears to have fully recovered. After four days of not being allowed off the lead, she is bouncy and dangerously under-exercised.
Weirdly, however, the dog never raises any objections to the onesie, or makes even a half-hearted attempt to get out of it. This is an animal that has effectively eaten three dog beds, that regularly reduces dog toys to their smallest constituents, that chews up pillows, blankets, plastic flower pots, footballs, shoes and anything with a handle.
“It’s like you fancy yourself in it,” I tell the dog. “Even though it would be fair to say it does nothing for you.” The dog’s tail wags through the little hole at the back of the suit.
“I hate that thing,” my wife says. “But when I suggested taking it off early the vet told me grim stories about dogs chewing their stitches out.”
According to the advisory letter that came with the dog’s medication, it’s acceptable to remove the onesie in order to wash it, provided you keep your dog in your sights the whole time. But after six days the dog will not allow anyone to undo the snaps running along the top. She seems to have forgotten about life before wearing pyjamas all day.
“It’s been a week,” my wife says. “You can take her to the park with a ball if you like.”
“No thanks,” I say.
“Are you embarrassed by her outfit?”
“No,” I lie.
On the afternoon of the eighth day the dog spends a happy hour rolling around in the wet garden. When she comes back in with the onesie covered in dark mud, my wife grabs her by the collar, undoes all the back snaps, and wrestles it off her.
“Do you want me to keep an eye on her while you wash that,” I say.
“That won’t be necessary,” my wife says, flinging the onesie in the bin. The dog looks on, naked and bereft.