I thought I’d get right to the important part in the post title – I mean it was the earliest I could do it.

This morning, as we were in Dr. Barnard’s waiting area, the doggie nurse remarked that she had never seen him that agile before. She didn’t work there when  he was a younger dog, dontcha know? In fact, he seemed like a different dog. Gone was the hunched walk; gone was the rigid belly that brought whimpers when touched. He looked years younger. We have seen this in December – in the space between Pearl Harbor Day and the 8th.

How did this happen? Twice? Well, it’s the doggie version of the miracle of antibiotics – administered in a shot that works for two weeks and skips the stomach and digestion juices. It’s pricey, no doubt about it, but, oh, how well it works.

Okay, no one got called last night about midnight because we didn’t want to worry folks, but Sydney began exhibiting signs of being in considerable pain, for which a pill did not seem to help.

He walked and paced and tried to dig and paw into corners and got up on the sofa with me, only to lie there stiff and panting. And his rear half was all hunched up like it gets when he has a pancreatic attack.

So we called the vet and he met us at the clinic. Sydney was more agitated (frantic was the word the vet used) than he had ever been before. (At least since he was a pup was the qualifier the vet used) He got an antibiotic shot and a pain shot and we will be going back in the morning at 9:30.

Right now we are back home and I am too worried to go right to a prone position in the dark, so I am sitting here with an electric table lamp and an oil lamp; and actually, I need the flickering flame of the oil lamp more than I do the electric one. It’s a comfort thing.

Sydney has jumped up on my sweater and is resting now; his breathing is slower and I think he may just manage to sleep. I’ll sit here and sip some green tea with peach mango and watch over him for awhile. In my little pool of light with the dark around us, I am remembering the cottage vigils in All Creatures Large and Small.  I imagine, like James and Tristan and Siegfried, I will nod off in a bit myself.