Views From Medicine Spirit Ranch

I have written several blog pieces lately about our new puppy, Beau. Writing about Beau and his antics reminds me of our experiences with our first  Border collie, Bandit. Bandit played such a meaningful role in our lives and had much to do with relocating Trudy and me from a frantic urban existence to the peacefulness and solitude of Medicine Spirit Ranch.

If lucky, once in a lifetime your perfect dog comes along. Bandit was that dog for me. Bandit below as a puppy.

Beau reminds me of Bandit in so many ways including his looks, enthusiasm, and intelligence. Our initial unexpected encounter with Bandit came about via Trudy. The story goes something like this.

In The Beginning

While shopping at the Lubbock South Plains Mall In 1997, my wife Trudy unwittingly sewed the seeds of my early retirement.  For one whose life had been meticulously planned and extensively fretted over, this single instance of pure happenstance played a huge role in my future.

“Ooohh, look at that darling puppy!”

So began Bandit’s story with us in mid-April, 1997 when Trudy lovingly uttered these simple, affectionate words,  having locked gazes with a floppy eared, seven-week old black and white puppy. It had cocked his head quizzically and viewed Trudy through the front window of the pet store. With its white tipped tail and white paws, the pup unabashedly stared at her, seemingly beseeching her to take him home. I visualize Trudy standing outside the Lubbock Pet Store window, hands resolutely on hips, head cocked to one side to mirror the puppy’s head cocking and with her usual steely resolve melting faster than an ice cream cone in July.

Andy, our eldest child, had expressed a heartfelt wish for doggie companionship to divert him from his life of torts and criminal proceedings. Andy lived by himself in an apartment in Raleigh, North Carolina and was lonely — an emotion he felt that the right dog would promptly alleviate.

“So why a Border collie?” I had asked.

He responded by saying, “I like smart schools and smart people and want my dog to be smart.” Blissfully ignorant of Border collie ways, other than their reputation for being the most intelligent breed of dogs, Andy determined that a Border collie puppy would make the perfect pet.

Trudy and I proved equally ignorant of Border collie ways. However, we were supremely proud of our son, our Duke Law School student- a boast we trumpeted far and wide. Admittedly, we proved once again to be indulgent parents.

After watching the endearing puppy with the warm, golden-brown eyes ever so cleverly displayed by the owner of the pet store in the front window, Trudy as if pulled by a tractor beam was drawn into the shop. Among the fluttering of parakeet wings, the musky smells of the animals, and amid the mews and barks, she requested to personally inspect the puppy in the front window. A young blonde haired clerk fetched the puppy and placed him in Trudy’s arms. There the conniving rascal had immediately snuggled into the crook of her elbow.  Trudy said she sniffed that unmistakable  new puppy scent and immediately fell in love with the puppy. He solidified his future with us by soulfully licking her arm and playfully chewing on the cuff of her blouse. In retrospect this mere nibble had significance far beyond Trudy’s understanding at the time.

With her usual practicality by then in headlong retreat, Trudy with puppy pressed to her chest had headed further into the pet store where she proceeded to fill a basket with what she described were “a few” puppy-related items.

Trudy’s “few” items later became apparent to me when unpacking her Datsun SUV and finding a dog bed, collar, kennel, six month supply of dog food, chew toys, balls, pull toys, leashes, dog raising instructional books, assorted dog magazines, and various toys- all of which when compressed emitted irritating squeaking noises.

“You think we’ve enough supplies?” I asked in mock irritation.

She replied, “Well, if we’re going to have a dog, we need to be prepared.” I nodded dumbly. Had we only known then how truly UNPREPARED we were.

We assumed the puppy and Andy would stay the summer before returning to North Carolina for the Fall term. Within a few days the dog’s paraphernalia lay scattered about the house like landmines, but what the heck, we thought, such disorder wouldn’t exist for long.

Several weeks later, Andy arrived home, having completed his first year of Law School. He proved eager to hold his new puppy that he previously had seen only in pictures. Andy shared with us that knowing he had a puppy waiting for him had powered him through the slog of final exams.  His mother and I beamed proudly, having done our best to stoke his enthusiasm by phoning him cute puppy stories and mailing him photos of the adorable pint-sized pup.  His excitement reinforced our thoroughly rationalized– if unenlightened– decision to buy the dog.

We had sent Andy one picture showing the fluffy imp staring adoringly into the camera.  Beside his kennel we had placed a sign that read “Andy, Hurry Home Soon.”

“Your Mom and I have been calling him MacDuff. Since the Border collie breed originally hails from the border of Scotland and England, the geography fits.”

Andy glanced away and studied the tiny animal that lay before him. I sensed Andy didn’t care for our suggested name but was careful not to offend his doting parents. After all, we were paying for his incredibly expensive higher education, an expense near equal the economy of a small third world country.  Andy squinted his eyes and looked out the window before tactfully torpedoing our name for the puppy.

Andy sat cross-legged on the carpeted floor while inspecting his pup.  He rolled the puppy onto his back, studied each white tipped foot, tweaked his tiny black nose, and scratched his rounded and protruding belly.  He stared thoughtfully for a few moments into the puppy’s sensitive, dark eyes.

Andy lifted the puppy to his neck, sniffed its uniquely appealing scent and snuggled it. He lowered the puppy while pointing and said, “Look at these black patches around his eyes, looks like a Bandit’s mask… I think I’ll call him Bandit!” Below when Bandit was older with his distinctive black eye patches.

So Bandit the puppy became.  And while it wasn’t the name we had in mind, its appropriateness over the next several months became especially evident.

The Adventure Begins

“Trudy, have you seen that pair of socks I laid out?”

“Have you looked on your feet?”

Not only socks but shoes, books, belts, and small throw rugs disappeared, only to reappear in unusual places, and sometimes having acquired gnaw marks. Items were regularly recovered from under beds, in the tiny spaces behind the sofa, and anywhere humans could not easily access.

One morning just before heading for the hospital and while in a rush frenzy, I could not locate my black medical bag. The allure that my leather bag might hold for a puppy with a leather fetish suddenly struck home.  I became increasingly concerned, bordering on frank panic. Trudy and I launched a search in the usual doggie hiding places. Eventually to my embarrassment, I discovered that sleepy me had failed the night before to remove the black bag from my car.

“My mistake Bandit, but don’t you ever even think about taking this bag,” I said, as I held out my medical black bag for his inspection. Bandit cocked his head to the left and gave me a look that I interpreted as, “Who, me?”

“If Border collies are so smart, maybe you can train him to search for your black bag, because I’m sure not going to, Sherlock,” Trudy harrumphed. I blew her a kiss and backed sheepishly out the hall door into the garage.

A Glimmer of Understanding

The white-coated heavy set vet assistant with heavy footsteps ushered us along an narrow hallway barely large enough for her to pass and into a room at the far end. The room smelled faintly of antiseptic and was furnished with a stainless-steel examination table, sink, and three chairs.

Before the vet arrived, I passed Bandit to Trudy and tried to wash the yellow stain from my sleeve.  I scrubbed with paper towels and hand soap drawn from the dispenser, accomplishing little except spreading the stain.  I had just finished with my unsatisfactory effort when Dr. Brown with white coattail flapping blew into the room. He was a man of average size with an open face, curly salt and pepper hair, exuberant eyebrows, and better tanned than any hard working, small animal veterinarian should be.

Dr. Brown soon turned his full attention to our young dog. Our puppy tried with licks, moans, and waggles to endear himself to this new potential playmate.

“So you decided on a Border collie, did you?” Doctor Brown said while lifting our dog up and onto the polished metal examination table. The puppy fidgeted about while trying to gain traction on the slippery metal exam table.

There was something unsettling in the vet’s tone of voice.  Was he being haughty?  I ignored it, assuming due to my fatigue I was imagining an affront. “Yes, we knew Borders to be such intelligent animals,” I responded.

“Oh, he’s not ours, he’s our son’s to take back to school,” Trudy chimed in, sounding, I thought, a little defensive.  But my wife had reinforced my suspicion that she too had detected something left unsaid by the vet.

Dr. Brown raised his thick bushy eyebrows to a remarkable peak, shooting us a brief look of strained disbelief, if not outright incredulity. He then turned his attention fully to examining our pup.  He began to gently probe the dog’s protuberant belly. Our dog returned his interest by applying a slow lick along the veterinarian’s chin, ending just short of his well tanned left ear lobe. 

Doctor Brown ignored the affection and continued his exam by checking the puppy’s teeth, listened to his lungs, auscultated his heart, and finally administered various vaccinations.  He then surprised me by asking if I would restrain little Bandit while he performed a rectal swab.

Soon the veterinarian completed his taking of a stool sample. I lifted the puppy from the table, again sensing his softness, and cradled the puppy in my arms. Before leaving the room, Dr. Brown looked earnestly at Trudy and me and said, “Border collies can be pretty busy, you know. There’s an old adage, ‘You have to give a Border collie a job, or else he will become self-employed… and never productively.’” Again, as if to emphasize his point, he arched his impressive eyebrows in his quite remarkable way.  He then turned quickly and exited the room, carrying his sample with him in a small piece of white gauze.

“Well, what do you make of that?” I asked when the door had closed behind Dr. Brown.  “I thought his eyebrows were going to kiss his hairline!”

“What did he mean with that job bit?  Audacity, if you ask me.  Maybe not a Border collie lover.  Looks more like the Schnauzer type.”

“Besides,” I said, “You’ve emptied the pet store of supplies and toys, and I’ll take the dog to the park every few days.”

“He just doesn’t know how capable we really are!  Look how successful we’ve been raising our two children.  How much trouble does he think one little bitty dog can be? Besides, we successfully raised a not too bright Dalmatian and two Shetland Sheep dogs. One tiny dog, Piece of cake!”

We murmured all this while keeping our voices low, as Dr. Brown banged about next door within his laboratory.  After about fifteen minutes, the door to the examination room burst open, and the veterinarian like a sudden summer storm swept back into the exam room, his broad face bearing an unmistakable look of satisfaction.

Dr. Brown confirmed to us what he had apparently suspected. The rounded belly (that very one that Trudy and I had found so adorable) resulted from distension caused by parasites.  PARASITES! He explained our dog was small, because he was competing, and none too successfully mind you, for nourishment with his belly worms.

“With a round of antibiotics, we’ll put those parasites on the run and get this dog growing again,” Dr. Brown clucked.

“Great, we sure hope so,” I recall saying, an aspiration I would later seriously regret.

Trudy later reminded me of the old adage that says- be careful of what you ask for.  Little did we know? It was months later before Trudy and I appreciated the full significance of the veterinarian’s not so subtle warnings.

           A Growth Spurt

As predicted by Dr. Brown, those magic little pills shrank the dog’s belly but also had a similar effect on my wallet. The pup over the next several weeks, lacking his parasitic competition, began to grow like the time-lapsed pictures from the TV dog food commercial.

The dog ate prodigiously. He ate vast amounts of puppy chow, canned dog food, leftovers from the table, morsels stolen from trashcans, my comfortable old leather loafers, and a few tasty treats from the refrigerator that admittedly I snitched for the puppy. Yes, I aided and abetted the seemingly starved puppy.

Following several futile refrigerator searches, a miffed Trudy reported she had harbored other plans for the missing leftovers. Our poor parasitic wracked dog deserved a few extravagances or so I thought.

Although he began small, our dog soon surpassed the average fifteen to forty pounds for the breed.  Even more impressive than his weight that had zoomed past 60-pounds was his meteoric increase in height. Despite his classic Border collie markings, people often inquired if he carried any non-Border collie blood.

Soon after beginning the antibiotics, a geyser of energy developed in Bandit.  While he had been active before, Bandit then became super-charged. Admiring his spike in liveliness one afternoon caused me to daydream of performing a medical study to distill the remarkable goodness of his overachieving mitochondria into pill form and cash out by advertising on late night cable TV.  When I shared this daydream with its potential for Midas-like riches with my wife, I once again was treated to her “dumb look” and her lack of a verbal response.

A month after our visit to the vet and after entering from the garage one night, I greeted Trudy and  sheepishly inquired how Bandit had done that day.  Almost on cue, I heard a faint scampering of small paws from the den, followed by a series of noises, suggesting minor collisions in the vicinity of the dining room, followed a few moments later by Bandit in full stride charging through the kitchen door. With an ecstatic face between two floppy black ears, he rocketed off the carpeted dining room, churning like a dynamo on a path straight for me.  Several feet away from me, he hit the brakes, thrusting his paws out in front of him.  The pup sensed that he had lost all traction on the linoleum and immediately entered an uncontrollable slide.

Bandit developed a quizzical look on his face, casting uncertain eyes upward to me in what I thought was an apologetic way.  He vigorously began to backpedal before ending up in a furry heap atop my shoes. From there he looked up at me with a look of adoring and abject joy.

I lifted the squirming puppy to my cheek where he began licking furiously.  Such ungoverned displays of joy are not unusual with Bandit. They have occurred following my being out of town several days, or having just returned from the corner mini-mart.  The dog just doesn’t take long to miss his people.

“Honey, maybe we could get him a job as a greeter at Walmart?” I offered lamely.

To this Trudy responded with a weak smile and a “Huh”.

Trudy and I failed to match Bandit’s surge in energy. His need to stay busy while typical for Borders is not for middle-aged, pudgy, and chronically fatigued humans. Our plans for more frequent doggy exercise hadn’t meshed well with our exhausted physical states.

“Honey, do you feel a slight vibration?” I asked one night while I dozed in my favorite chair in the den.

“Nope, but I thought I heard grinding.”

“There it is again, I know I feel a slight vibration in this chair,” I said.

Fearing what I might discover, I slowly leaned over the side of my chair and looked beneath it. I spotted an open mouthed snout bearing tiny razor sharp teeth with a death grip on the chair leg.  “Say Honey, this chair you like so well?  I think it’s become an alteration project for the Bandit dog!”

Bandit’s piranha-like teeth unfortunately were not limited to teething on chair legs but extended to sampling cushions, carpets, table legs, and even plastic patio furniture.  The dog seemed to have become a pint-sized canine version of a wood chipper. This called for action.

We Fight Back

In a desperate attempt to limit further damage to the house and furniture, we tried distraction. Bandit became the designated companion for any family member leaving our home on an errand.  He became the ever present, excited, ear-flapping, ride along dog, drooling out the window of a Hutton car.

I had never seen him happier than when riding shotgun for the family. Perhaps he saw his rides as a job. I imagined that he felt like the guy on the stagecoach carrying the gun, protecting the driver from desperadoes or Indians on the warpath.  Clearly Bandit’s new position was not the job for which a Border collie had been bred, but it was, nevertheless, a job.

“Say, Shotgun, want to ride to the emergency room with me?”  Bandit wagged his tail vigorously.  “Well load ‘em up Shotgun and mind the strong box.  We’ve got some rough country to travel!”

Andy and Katie, our high school aged daughter, recounted that Bandit visited local fast food establishments and cruised the broad boulevards of Lubbock, often until deep into the star studded west Texas night. Bandit would ride along, head extended from the window, as they drove past the statue of Will Rogers astride his horse, Soapsuds, located on the Texas Tech University campus or circled through downtown Lubbock, passing by the oversized statue of a guitar toting,  thick rimmed and bespectacled Buddy Holly.  Bandit happily accompanied anyone with errands to run or packages to mail.

Bandit occasionally even went on dates with Andy. Trudy and I chuckled at what Andy’s girlfriend must have thought, sharing her date with an enthusiastic puppy.  We imagined Bandit at a drive-in movie snuggled between them, curled up around a box of popcorn, enjoying his people. To my surprise, once prior to a date night, I found Trudy down on the floor next to a curled up Bandit, instructing him on his responsibilities as a chaperone.

“You don’t think this is really going to do any good, do you?”

“Hey Buster, these dogs are really smart, and besides, I don’t trust that bleached blonde bubble-headed temptress,” Trudy said, twisting around to look at me.

“Do you think at the end of the evening both Andy and Bandit will give her a goodnight smooch?  Suspect Bandit could really tickle her tonsils!”

Ride-along car trips were not our only gambit for distracting our young dog.  Desperation, after all, breeds creativity.  At our urging Andy and Katie spent hours playing with Bandit, teaching him to sit and shake, walking him up and down the block, and showing him off to their friends. Bandit proved a quick study at learning tricks and entertaining friends, and particularly enjoyed chasing sticks thrown by Andy, Katie, and their friends.

To our relief, the time Bandit spent playing fetch was time not spent digging gorges in our backyard or shortening our furniture. Trudy and I suffered from sapped energy, stemming from our busy, stressful lives at the clinic and from attempting to keep up with the energetic dog.

To her credit Trudy signed the dog up for two series of obedience classes. After a long day at the office, she sacrificed many evenings, trying to improve our doggie’s decorum. To Bandit’s credit, he became the star pupil in his obedience class.

Trudy took pride in relating his ability to learn quickly. Trudy returned from class more than once disdainful at the slowness of other dogs to learn even basic commands.

“You should have seen Sal, a really stupid and clingy Cocker Spaniel.  The instructor worked for 15 minutes just getting the lop-eared hound to follow her.  All he wanted to do was stay with his master or else sniff other dogs’ butts.  I wasted my time just standing there at the end of Bandit’s leash and watching that dim-wit.”

“Now dear, not all dogs are as smart as Border collies,” sounding I feared a bit too patronizing.

Toward late summer, unexpected complications arose with Andy’s Fall housing arrangements. While reviewing his apartment lease from North Carolina, Andy had discovered a previously overlooked clause that pointedly excluded dogs weighing over 30-pounds.  By then Bandit had eaten his way through the canine middleweight division and was on his way to heavyweight status and was still growing like Jack’s, well fertilized, beanstalk.

The Ask

While Andy toyed with fudging this not so tiny detail in the contract, at about the same time another complication arose in taking Bandit with him back to North Carolina.  Andy learned his scheduled clerkship in criminal law would require longer absences from his apartment than he previously thought.  Lacking a fenced yard, Bandit would have to remain inside the apartment for lengths of time beyond the bladder endurance of a young dog.

“Dad, Mom could I speak with you for a few minutes?”

Something in Andy’s voice should have tipped us off that sweltering August evening, and we should have run the other way. How we missed this opportunity to avoid THE TALK, I will never know. Had I been wise, I would have grabbed my pager and my black bag and trumpeted how pressing matters awaited me at the hospital.

With the gravitas befitting an eighteenth century French diplomat, Andy politely requested we join him at the kitchen table. Outside I heard crickets chirping what must have been a warning.

Once Andy had us gathered at the wooden pedestal kitchen table and had confirmed that we were comfortable and not lacking for refreshment, he bit by bit came around to his point. After more thoughtful moments, as if choosing his words for a final summation before the U.S. Supreme Court and after reiterating his unexpected housing and scheduling difficulties for the third time, Andy came to his question.  I saw him swallow hard and with a look of earnestness on his handsome young face blurt out the reason for our meeting.

“Mom, Dad do you think you might keep Bandit, just till after Christmas?” He quickly added, “I’ll take him back in January, soon as I complete my criminal law clerkship.”  His plight and sincerity proved strangely moving. 

Silly us, I should have known it was a well-rehearsed ploy, a mere affectation learned by all fledgling law students.   Trudy and I should have considered letting our eldest child endure the consequences of his poor planning, although, admittedly, we too were complicit.  It could have been character building for the son– right?

Fortunately, unanticipated consequences of faulty judgments do not always become immediately clear, especially when parents’ well-loved children are the committers. It may even be better for parental self-esteem that we don’t perceive our foolhardiness right away.

At the time I was struggling to manage a busy private practice, direct a neurological research center, and maintain stability in a fractious physician group. These were a lot of plates to keep spinning at the same time.

Trudy had left the practice of law as Director of Lubbock Legal Aid to manage the Neurology Research and Education Center that I had established.  I had simultaneously created the Center along with the private practice but was finding too few hours to do justice to both. Actually she, a Family Law attorney, had tired of divorcing people who inevitably were contentious and angry. I rationalized that she longed for a fresh career outside of Law; however, this doctor/husband has enjoyed claiming (even perhaps boasting at times) to have reduced the legal workforce in Lubbock by one.

In Trudy I had complete trust to coordinate the Neurology Research and Education Center. As a wife, she knew the emotional importance to me of maintaining research and educational interests despite my having left the rarefied air of academia.  Her selfless sacrifice for my career was vintage Trudy.  Whenever my professional advancement had required a change of location, Trudy had agreed to support the change, even when it conflicted with her own career- no blatant feminism in Trudy.  I knew my blessings.

Both Trudy and I had stayed overly busy with our jobs, rarely seeing each other during the workday, despite working mere steps away.  Trudy’s day at the Neurology Research and Education Center would end around 5:00 P.M., and she would depart for home to prepare dinner, clean the house, pick up dog toys, and attend to  family chores left undone from her largely absent husband.

Many days I would work 16 hours or more in the hospital and clinic only to come home with a big stack of electroencephalograms to interpret and to be on call for the emergency room and urgent hospital consultations.  Neither Trudy nor I had time for a needy puppy, especially one as active as a Border collie.

As I listened that evening while sitting across the table from Andy, I glanced past him into an adjacent bedroom. There I spotted Bandit’s impish white face with black eye patches, pink tongue, shiny black nose, and floppy ears protruding from beneath the bed’s dust ruffle.  Bandit cocked his head imploringly in our direction, as if expectant of our parental response.  Trudy and I gave each other meaningful looks, and then answered in unison, in a manner as predictable, as it was foolhardy.

“Of course, Andy, we’d love to keep Bandit!”

So dear readers of my blog, please know that by the time the Christmas holidays eventually arrived, Bandit, Trudy, and I had become so bonded together that Andy could not have gotten that dog away from us with a gun. The weld was sound. Our emotions had meshed. Our schedules somehow had expanded to fit our needs. Our affection for Bandit had become enormous.

The reasons for this tight bond and our love for this amazing dog will be revealed in future blog posts.

To be continued.

If you have not had the chance to read my latest book, Hitler’s Maladies and Their Impact on World War II: A Behavioral Neurologist’s View (Texas Tech University Press), I invite you to do so. The book explores an important aspect of the Hitler story and World War II that has not been well studied. Many of Hitler’s catastrophic errors including the premature invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941, the slowness of German forces to counterattack at the Battle of Normandy in 1944, and the highly risky Battle of the Bulge in late 1944 into 1945, can be better understood, knowing the sizeable impact that Hitler’s physical and mental conditions had on these vital battles.

Also, consider picking up a copy of my earlier book, Carrying The Black Bag: A Neurologist’s Bedside Tales (Texas Tech University Press). Please join me on my personal journey as a physician and meet my patients whose reservoirs of courage, perseverance, and struggles to achieve balance for their disrupted lives provide the foundation for this book. But step closely, as often they speak with low and muffled voices, but voices that nonetheless ring loudly with humanity, love, and most of all, courage.