And Dog Makes Three

B.E. Nugent

It was the last day of June and late in the evening. The day was typical of mid-summer on the western sea front of County Clare. As their wont, the clouds spent the waking hours gathering and brooding until the sun, in a fit of pique no doubt, hoisted her skirts and sank into the ocean, unseen but for the faint spread of her pink under slip.

Anne and I retired to this coastal retreat five years ago, three years before the events I recall, leaving behind our adult children in Limerick, the city that no longer held us enchanted.

Pink to purple, day ceded to night. Not far above, the clouds bloated supreme, filling the sky like distended bladders. As the fading light flickered to extinction, they let loose their load, lashing against the lonely coastal road that leads from here to the village and from the village to the town, drenching the low stone walls that divided the barren fields all around us. The downpour soaked the solitary crab apple tree that stood defiant in our back yard and beat on the roof slates, the walls and the doors of our house. Coming sideways, driven by unforgiving winds, it battered an incessant, suffocating patter against the window facing me as I stood at the kitchen sink, cleaning the ware from our evening meal some hours before.

Anne left after eating to visit Sally, her friend who lived in another old country cottage about three miles away. In her absence, cleaning up lost its urgency and I loitered with a book and a coffee by the living room fire until, anticipating her return, stirred to attend to my duties. You would often have found me in the kitchen; washing dishes, sweeping the floor and wiping the surfaces; such was my contribution. Anne’s friends habitually passed remark on my domestic burden, to which I would shrug and answer that I had long ago accepted my fate. Neither their expressions of sympathy nor my feint of oppression held even a smidgen of truth. They and I knew very well that no-one would expect the dishwasher to assist with laundry, clean the bathroom, prepare the food, or any of the multitude of chores that maintained the semblance of good housekeeping. Regardless, these little exchanges lost nothing in their repetition, serving their purpose of indifferent courtesy. My preference for self-containment would not impinge on their amicable intrusions into our home to visit their friend. I supplied them with tea and a brief interjection to their conversation before returning to the kitchen to sweep the floor again.

Such was our routine and I found it entirely satisfactory. Anne voiced no displeasure.

We raised four children together, two boys and two girls, managing to oversee their progress through their formative stages without inflicting insurmountable injury. They arrived, said very little that was intelligible for some time, settled in and couldn’t shut up, then later devolved back to monosyllables before I really came into my own and drove the fledglings from our nest.

“We must let them fly,” I said, to assuage her maternal anxieties.

Then, witness to horror, an addendum. “Plummeting comes before flying. They will be ok.”

They were more than ok and successfully breached that chasm between childhood and independence. Occasionally, they return to us, standing tall and meeting us eye to eye. Then as now, the world comprised an adventure that they expected to master.

I taught them nothing.

It was late. Anne preferred not to drive in darkness, particularly when the wind and rain conspired with her failing eyesight to render the journey most hazardous. Having removed her spectacles from the table when clearing the plates, I knew she would be blind as a deaf bat out on the road. Whether hidden behind the salt cellar on the kitchen table or perched on top of her head, her glasses were forever impossible to locate. I finished my chores, resolved to make that telephone call to determine which of my imagined disasters had come to pass, when the front door burst open. Anne launched through and came hurrying down the hallway. The wind swirled behind her, fallen leaves orbited her small frame. Her hair was sodden and clung to her face, but her hands were in agitated motion, as though conducting the twirling raindrops in her wake.

“Quick, quick,” she cried, “we need a vet.”

There are many and varied responses that I can easily compose at this remove. Some pithy, some mundane, the most obvious being, “wouldn’t we first need an animal?” I didn’t pose this question, nor pass remarks, pithy or otherwise. I may have said “uh” and “wha…”, though I could be mistaken, concentrating as I was on keeping step with the dancing leaves and raindrops as we were swept behind Anne outside to the car.

On the back seat, Anne kept the woollen coat that had been my gift to her on her birthday. Costing more than I considered entirely necessary, my daughters thought otherwise. It was their thought that counted. No longer rolled in a ball, it now lay stretched the length of the back seat. On the coat, there was a large collection of wet fur from which a pair of black eyes blinked wearily at me as I crouched for a closer view.

Picture an adult Labrador and you have its size; imagine that Labrador’s clandestine liaison with a border collie and you have the dubious pedigree lying on its side, with black fluid pooled under its hind leg. Streams of water joined at my delicate extremities and yielded to gravity from the tips of my nose, my chin and my ears. I swept the excess from my face. Themovement drew a whimper from the dog, as though I meant him harm. To another whimper I gently touched the hind leg and felt his mouth close lightly over my hand, ready to bite down, I knew, should my examination prove malicious. Though unfamiliar with the specific dimensions of canine anatomy, it was clear that he had a joint where none should exist, a clean break to his leg at a point where bone surfaced through skin. The blood had thickened and darkened but the injury remained severe.

At Anne’s insistence, I carefully gathered both the dog and the thoughtful coat and hurried indoors while she recounted their sudden encounter on the darkened road. His colouring blended seamlessly with the roadside in the driving rain. She shivered when recalling the terrible thump as her wheels careered over his hind quarters. In the interests of moving this along, I’ll skip to where Anne and I, dripping wet, more closely examined the grievously injured dog, placed ever so carefully on a rug on the kitchen floor. As a younger man, I would have reached this point in my tale much sooner and withsome sense of urgency. I was in a hurry back then. If there’s one thing that experience teaches, it’s how to deal with premature articulation.

“We need a vet,” Anne repeated.

“It’s late. They’re all closed.”

“I’ll check for out of hours emergency services. There has to be one.”

“That will be expensive,” I said. Receiving no response, I ventured, “more expensive than the shovel we have in the back hallway.”

“This is no time for stupid jokes,” Anne said, somewhat charitably.

I chose not to contradict. Instead, I repeated myself.

“He’s badly injured. I don’t think we can afford this. We just don’t have that kind of money.”

“We have that money in the kitchen dresser. There’s at least four hundred euros there.”

“Yes. But that is for the hotel in Mayo. Two weeks from now? With your sisters? Remember?”

“We’re not going to Mayo.”

“Oh! That’s new. Why not?”

“We have an injured dog? Remember?”

“Of course.”

Anne ended the conversation with a look of impatient consternation. Secretly, I was dreading that three-day break in Mayo. Not that I have anything against Anne’s sisters. Individually, each is as pleasant and kind as one is likely to meet. Collectively, however, they exist behind a wall of sound that I find impenetrable. Some time ago, I realised that I simply don’t speak quickly enough to keep pace with the ebb and further ebb of their conversation. And I state conversation in singular because each episode is merely an extension of the previous. Even after more than thirty years, I have not deciphered the code that was encrypted prior to my inclusion in the family. It requires an agility that I don’t currently possess but, truthfully, I’ve never been much of a gymnast. But, I digress. With the dog as a viable excuse, Anne would cancel with her sisters and I would be absolved of sabotage.

Anne searched online for an out of hour’s veterinary service, eventually arriving at a mobile number that answered. The dog lay flat on the rug, occasionally raising his head in a call for action. And act we did, carrying him back to the car and the fifteen mile journey to the veterinarian, a young woman in a new practice, fluent in the sombre facial gestures that confirmed the expense we would incur. She even mentioned it more than once, but expressed a more positive prognosis when the four hundred euros was proffered. We managed half that again three days later when we collected our new addition to bring him home. Wearing his surgical collar, he resembled a kitsch ‘70’s table lamp.

Though I preferred “the dog”, with or without circumstantial expletives, Anne insisted on calling him Charlie, after her childhood pet. Unsurprisingly, none came looking for him but he soon repaired and adopted us entirely. At least he seemed very fond of Anne and tolerant of me, no doubt because I was part of the package. The children and their children found him adorable and he gave every indication that this pleased him greatly, behaving more doglike and less the duplicitous manipulator of my suspicions. He joined Anne and me on our coastal walks and kept her company on those rare occasions that I had business in Limerick.

Anne seemed convinced that Charlie and I shared a masculine affection that, in the manner of males of every species, was stubbornly subverted into laconic gruffness. As evidence, she cited that solitary occasion when she returned from visiting Sally to find me sleeping on the couch with him stretched out beside me, also asleep, his head on my leg. I can still recall the sudden realisation that struck both dog and me as we leapt from our repose. He slinked away to his bedding in the back kitchen as I brushed myself down. I could not have thought myself more unfaithful had Anne returned to find another woman’s head resting on my lap.

Many years ago, Anne and I were two that became one. The addition of four children brought exponential variation for a time until, with an empty nest, we reverted to two, within touching distance of unity once more. This dog brought an upheaval that I have yet to enumerate. Within these mathematical conundrums are the mysteries of life, I am certain, but I still count with my fingers. Anne tells me that I am doomed to failure precisely because I try to reason when it is understanding that is required.

Our home has been opened to a creature that, Anne insists, brings far more than he takes. He’s worked me out, though, throwing surreptitious glances as he curls at Anne’s feet of an evening, declaring, within his limited vocabulary, that he is not the first mutt she has rescued.

Published in Issue No. 11, Custos Verborum, August 1st, 2025.

B.E. Nugent is Irish and new to creative writing with nine stories published.