Growing up, I wanted badly to be a large animal vet. This was entirely inspired by James
Herriot books and a vaguely romantic idea about stomping around barnyards in
Wellington boots and birthing cows— which could probably only seem romantic to
someone who, like suburban pre-adolescent me, had never actually seen a cow up
close.
In time this was discarded, to be replaced by subsequent
desires to be a novelist, a Broadway star, a singing waitress (let it never be
said that I don’t adjust my expectations realistically), an Egyptologist, a
socialist historian, a Peace Corps volunteer (arguably the ultimate way to put
off knowing what you’re doing with your life) and now, in what will hopefully
be my last pivot, an environmental conservationist. (Or a writer for National Geographic.)
I bring this up because I finally got the chance to live the
dream, so to speak, when my bush dog, Scipio, passed the six-month vaccination
mark and simultaneously went into heat for the first time. I had been half-heartedly planning to
take her in to the nearest vet in Guider for her rabies shot for several weeks,
but the thought of trying to transport an almost-fully grown dog on a moto for
an hour was enough to encourage my procrastination. That changed when she started getting lethargic and drippy,
emanating a musky smell so strong even I noticed it—as did every male stray in
Mandama, to judge from the rustling and whining around the back door each
night. After three straight nights
of being woken around midnight to Scipio howling in the salon, and the
successive check of windows and doors to assuage my paralyzing dread of Boko
Haram, I decided it was time. Skip
and I both needed for her to be fixed.
So into Guider we went, Skip squashed onto my lap on the
moto, head resting on the driver’s shoulder—a more intimate but equally windy
version of the head-out-the-window. I took her to the Délégation d’Elevage, the Ministry of
Animal Husbandry, an officious name for a peripatetic large-animal vet, or
Guider’s very own James Herriot.
The walls were plastered with posters advertising various bovine
prophylaxes, vaccinations, and vitamin supplements; all featured glossy photos
of glowering cattle and smiling herders.
Beside the office door, a notice warned against avian flu. “THE SALE OF DEAD BIRDS IS HIGHLY
ILLEGAL”, it blustered unnecessarily (really, who would buy an already dead but
not cooked chicken in 105-degree heat?
This isn’t the Safeway freezer case we’re talking about).
The vet, a kindly man with small glasses and an unexpectedly
professional air, had to rummage through his cabinet to come up with the rabies
vaccine. He didn’t get many dogs,
he explained—sometimes cats, but mostly his clients were goats and bulls. I asked about getting Scipio fixed, and
his face fell. Ah, yes—well, there
was no surgical theatre on the premises, and that was a fairly intrusive
procedure. If this were a male dog, no problem, he could do it
right here in his office (this accompanied by a snip-snip motion of the fingers), but no, he could not help
Scipio. Was there such a thing as
canine birth control? I asked.
Some shot, or pill? At this
he laughed heartily. “If you need
family planning,” he chuckled, “go to the hospital.”
And so I did. I
tied Skip to a tree outside, hoping that none of the moto drivers lounging
around waiting for clients would harass her, and walked up to the font desk in
the triage area. “I’d like to buy
Depro,” I announced, knowing from my own health center that the three-month contraceptive
shot would be widely available.
The nurse immediately shushed me, leaning in to whisper, “If you need
family planning counseling, go down the hall to the second office on the right
and ask for Dr. Abdoulaye.” It
hadn’t occurred to me that I would be the assumed recipient, and while I was
glad to see the staff treating a topic so taboo in Muslim culture with
sensitivity, I felt a need to correct her misapprehension. “It’s not for me,” I told her,
realizing as I did so that this was about as plausible as “I got this black eye
walking into a door”. She nodded,
and smiled knowingly. “Right. For a friend?” Sensing that
this might not be the time to introduce my menstruating dog into the
conversation, I agreed, and went in search of Dr. Abdoulaye.
The doctor, head of family planning services in Guider,
ushered me into his office and closed the door tactfully behind me. Feeling a little embarrassed by the
thoughtful yet unwarranted level of discretion being shown, I introduced myself,
then launched in: “I want Depro, but not for me, I already have an IUD. C’est
pour mon chien,” my dog. Dr.
Abdoulaye frowned, confused. “Pour ton… chef?”, your boss? “No, no,” I corrected him, “mon chien.” He looked startled, glancing under my chair as if he thought
I might have smuggled a dog into the office beneath his notice. “She’s outside,” I explained, hooking
my thumb towards the entrance.
“Should I bring her in?” The doctor considered this, then shook his head
uncertainly. “Umm… tell you what,
I’m just going to sell you the medicine and a syringe. You work at a health center, you know
what to do.” In fact, I didn’t,
having expressly avoided being trained in administering shots; I’m not
certified to give clinical care, and had felt uncomfortable being asked to do
so. I didn’t press the point with
Dr. Abdoulaye, however, relieved that he had not ordered me out of his office
in anger.
I paid for the needle and small vial of birth control, and
was about to turn and leave when he hesitated, seeming torn by some internal
struggle. Finally his highly
trained bureaucratic instincts won—Cameroonian doctors are above all civil
servants—and he flipped open his register. “What is your dog’s nom
de famille and prénom?” he asked
formally, and thus Mlle Scipio Skove officially joined the Guider Regional
Hospital Family Planning Services Depro program, with a return visit scheduled
for April.
I got back to Mandama and immediately sought out Benjamin,
our emotionally volatile nurse. We
are good enough friends that I figured I could bully him into doing me this
favor, although I was sure he would mock me for days about it. Unfortunately, he had left for Mayo
Oulo. The chief of the health
center was already at the millet beer cabaret, deep into a calabash of
bilbil. Wishing I had agreed to
take shot training after all, I read the tiny print on the bottle, uncapped the
needle and vial, and loaded the syringe with milky medicine. I was surprised how much resistance the
vacuum created by the empty syringe and sealed vial gave, and nervously
faltered, letting bubbles into the syringe. Cursing, I finished drawing the liquid up out of the vial
and pulled the needle out, pushing the plunger gently down to force the excess
air out. When a white drop of
Depro appeared on the tip of the needle, I shook it off and took a deep
breath. It was as ready as it was
going to be. Glad this was an
intramuscular administration rather than an intravenous one, I pinched up the
skin on Skip’s left haunch like I had seen the vet do with the rabies shot,
slid the needle in, and began to push the plunger.
Beads of white liquid appeared on Scipio’s side, sliding
down her long hairs. I had slid
the needle into fur, but failed to pierce the skin. Thinking how much easier this seemed in theory, I readjusted
the needle. This time Scipio
yipped, and I knew I had hit my mark.
She began to squirm, and I used my left elbow to pin her down while I
finished giving the shot at a steady pace.
This presumably won’t solve the problem of Scipio going into
heat, but at least I can feel less like a father with a teenage daughter,
hovering around the porch yelling at the strays to bring her straight home, and
no fooling around in the car. I
don’t think I realized how much maternal instinct having a dog was going to
bring out in me; every time she trots off to chase guinea fowl in the bush, or
disappears to hunt out fallen cow horns, I worry about her. There are so many things that could go
wrong! Angry cattle! Angrier herders with machetes! Roving bands of feral dogs! Honestly, how do people ever survive
having children?
SHE IS SOOO CUTE!!!!!
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