Phone Call

While I don't regularly have to work after-hours or nights or weekends, there are exceptions. On Christmas Eve, I did a necropsy on a police K9. On MLK Day, my colleague and I did a necropsy on a racehorse that collapsed on the track that morning. These are high-profile cases that require us to provide a fairly immediate response. All after-hours cases come in via a dedicated phone that my colleague and I swap between us every few weeks. Right now, I have that phone. Last night, it rang at 2:17am.

I was asleep but jerked awake right away. I fumbled around a bit, and managed to answer the phone in time. It was a guy who told me that his dog had just died. He wanted us to do a necropsy so he could find out what happened.

I always try to manage expectations for these companion animal owners, because necropsies are not magic. Our track record is very good, but we don't always find a cause of death in every case. And for this kind of case, we wouldn't be doing the necropsy until Monday. We briefly talked about a few logistics (we have a dock cooler where companion animals can be dropped off after-hours).

But it turned out that what this guy really wanted was to talk to somebody about his dog. I was that somebody.

So I took a deep breath, sat up and rearranged my pillow and blankets. I spent about 20 minutes on the phone with this guy, talking about sharing our lives with dogs. Talking about seeing our dogs get old. Talking about grief. My eyes kept drifting across my pack--Archie curled up under the covers at my feet, Azza under her own blanket at the other end of the bed, Mimi tucked up next to me, belly in the air, and the cat curled up next to her. I kept this guy on the phone to make sure he heard the words he needed to hear.

Don't misread this. This story isn't about me. It's about being a caring human being. Life lessons.