Merlin

     I was standing in the prep room washing my hands when a chunky Springer Spaniel pushed his way through the door and against my knees, stuck his nose in the air and looked up adoringly at me, his whole neck pressed against my leg. I dropped my hand to tickle his ears and he nearly knocked himself over by wagging his tail furiously. Merlin had arrived. Having completed his rounds of saying hello to everybody he ran away back through to his owner in the waiting room. I followed him and we all went into the consult room, Merlin first. It was a pattern we followed every visit.

     As I leaned over to have a look at him I saw that he had blood all over his feet. His owner saw me start and said
“When we went in to his kennel just now there was a big pool of blood with big clots in it. I took him out for a pee and it was just straight blood.”
     Right enough when I looked at him the source of the blood was his penis – he had pee’d so much blood he was splashing about in it. I checked his prostate but couldn’t feel any problems there, and his gums were still nice and pink with a slightly slow return to normal when I pressed my thumb against them to make them blanche. He certainly didn’t seem ill, he was full of beans. I lifted him up on to the examination table and felt his belly. His secret was revealed – a tumour the size of a large orange at his bladder. It must have burst into the bladder itself, and now he was slowly bleeding to death through it.

     Here was a tough decision. The chances of successfully removing the cancerous tissue and saving him were small and he was getting on a bit; it was a big op for an old guy. I would desperately have loved to be able to pull off a miracle for this most beloved of patients, but we had to be realistic – Merlin wasn’t going to make it. His owner didn’t want to put him through the invasive surgery. They couldn’t face the prospect of taking him home overnight and so we all agreed that the only way forward was to put him to sleep today, now. His owner was devastated, fat tears slipping off her nose and chin, dripping to the floor.

     I tried to get IV access, but as his blood pressure was dropping, his peripheral blood vessels were constricting to keep the blood flow to his core tissues preserved. On top of that the wriggling and waggling didn’t give us a stationary target. I made the decision to sedate him so he wouldn’t know what was going on and wouldn’t be distressed in any way. A mid range dose and ten minutes wait had him floppy and snoring on the floor. “Come on, son” I said, “let’s get you up on the table”. Despite his sedation, his tail started wagging at the sound of my voice. He was otherwise unresponsive, but every time I spoke to him, his tail thumped against the tabletop.

     Talking to him all the way I slipped the needle in, and delivered the fatal dose. His tail wagged and wagged and wag… and stopped. His owner howled in pain. She hugged him, then threw her arms around me, quivering with grief. And then she turned on her heel and burst out the room, out of the practice and out into the dark.

     I bent and kissed him on top of his head, pressed my face into his neck, and allowed the silent heaving sobs that I had been holding back to be released.